Friday, 19 November 2010

I began reworking the last shot today with some suggestions by my tutor. Mainly looking at Darren riding in on his bike from the left, to give more drama and take note of him noticing the sign. It seemed simple enough but I ran into some major problems with how the bike is rigged, with the wheels turning in the wrong direction if Darren makes a u turn, which he would do when parking. The only alternative after many woes was to look into placing it on a path. Seemingly simpler however I believed that this would not allow nice curves in the speed of the bike. Yet as it turns out adding a Bezier curve to the percentage of the path instead of the linear solves the problem.

http://forums.creativecow.net/archivethread/18/725524

So I don’t forget, the wire parameters for the wheel rotation is (830.671*Percent)/7. (length of line*percentage) radius of wheel

http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/13/ENU/Autodesk%203ds%20Max%202011%20Tutorials/index.html?url=./files/WS1a9193826455f5ff-3859b43c1215f53d0f3-7091.htm,topicNumber=d0e12397

I also had the peddles rigged up but decided to do these by hand for more control of the movements. Tomorrow i will record some reference on a exercise bike that I can use for the arms, spine and head movement. Particularly how the body moves when steering and peddling.



I decided to remove all smoke from the smoke stacks, and use particle to animate the smoke. However my version of particle combust wont work with Mental ray, so I have decided to leave the smoke out for now, and latter put it in in post if time/necessity requires. It does give the place a more dismal look with the smoke effects, but the stack painted on smoke that was stuck onto the stack detracts from the scene and is instantly noticeable. As a thought I could always create a smoke effect in 3D and use it as a layer and add it on the stack for the end and start sequence. That would probably be the easiest with just the camera tracking to work out. Oh I also made sure the actual building layer of the sky map was also tillable.



Anyhow a highly productive day. Hit a few hurdles but got over a few more.