Finished Avatar

Ok so here is what I shall be showing in my presentation. This work took FOREVER to render. Mainly because I used a skylight with shadows enabled. Anywho, here it is:



The fly over of the environment took 20 hours to render for just 10 seconds worth of clip, crazy.

I’m quite pleased with how it’s turned out. There is only one thing I’m disappointed about, when I came to animate him to make him move like in my storyboard, I had realised that I collapsed all the entities that make him up. This meant he was just one big blob instead of the carefully built super blob that I had hoped him to be. It also meant I couldn't finish making the morphers for him! Grrr. I made an additional copy from a while back (for safety so I didn’t mess up or lose my work) But that one had been collapsed as well. So I’m quite angry with myself. I didn’t have the time to go back and re-do him again. Oh well...sigh

Anywho, time to go finish of my presentation which is due soon. I’m feeling quite ill and weak which sucks as I don’t want it to affect my performance in my presentation. ARG!

Vainty Lair

Ok, since its taking a lifetime to render anything from 3D studio max, I thought I’d watch a bit of 4OD (channel 4's online on-demand TV). I’ve started to watch a program called "Vanity Lair". (This is related weirdly to identity)

In this program, 10 people reside in a house and fight it out to win and become the most beautiful person. Each one of the individuals thinks they are highly attractive.

So how is this relevant to identity?

Well, I noticed that when they had to rate people on attractiveness, it wasn't always based upon physical appearance. It was how they acted; their personality and how they came across that really affect people’s decision. So although you may be the most attractive person in the world, which admittedly might get your foot in the door for some things, it really isn’t that important.

This is partly why I’ve made my avatar the way he is. He clearly doesn't represent me at all, not physical at least, but on the other hand, I’ve tried to animate him to give him a personality.

I read another book recently by Edward De Bono which also supports this. His book is called "How to have a beautiful mind". I will give the synopsis since it pretty much sums it up:

"We spend a fortune on clothes, cosmetics, diets and workouts - even surgery - to make our bodies more attractive. Yet we hardly consider the one thing that enhances everyone's appeal. It costs nothing, takes very little time, and without it even the most physically beautiful person will be unattractive: it is a beautiful mind. No matter how stunning you are, if your mind is full you have no hope of impressing people in any situation"

Your identity is how you are perceived by other people,if we did not have speech and a way of expressing ourselves then looks would mean everything! But since this isn’t the case, Identity is what people are able to see.

Since I can animate my avatar, I’ve decided to give him a little bit of personality (however little it may be) because what you can perceive is just that. One example where looks mean everything is graphic design. Here there is nothing but imagery to portrait identity, so all emphasis is put into the design and look of it instead.

Anywho, hope that made some sort of sense ^_^. Read it again if not hehe.

The Environment

I liked the idea of having a non-realistic environment. Since my character is very unlike me in physical appearance, I thought the environment needed a bit of a touch up.

I decided to have it in the style of a game: Cartoony, bright and most of all unrealistic, but at the same time visually pleasing. I’ve therefore tried to incorporate these aspects into my environment. I’ve chosen to do this as I personally really do enjoy games!

One example are the trees. I based these on the game from Paper Mario:


Here is what my environment actually looks like:



Yesterday, and well, until today, I rendered a fly over of this environment with a sky light put in with shadows enabled and it took 20 HOURS!!!! This was for about 10 seconds worth of clip, not good! I was planning to animate him in this lighting but looks like that’s not going to happen since my presentation is on Tuesday! There just physically isn’t enough time to do it then render. I may have to change the lighting unfortunately... sigh but it looks so cool.

Storyboard

I decided to make a storyboard for my avatar, since he doesn’t represent me in any way shape or form (since that is the point I’m trying to get across!) he should at least have a bit of my personality, so I wrote up a storyboard to capture a little essence of me ^_^:





Hopefully il be able to implement this fully in 3D studio max, but that’s always easier said than done.

It's too bright!

Today we had a lecture with David Downes who specialises in interactives. While I was sitting in lecture Rob had his laptop open and Kane showed us some cool lighting effects such as a "sky light". Now, this light is absolutly amazing. Especially if you have to shadows turned on. There is one problem with it however, which is that it takes a lifetime to render just one frame! I think I will use this in my final piece but il have to leave at least a day or two to fully render everything. Here is what it looks like, click on the pic itself to enlarge:

Avatar - the morphers have arrived!

Today I started to implement morphers into my avatar. A morpher is a copy of the original that has been edited to look different. The original can then reference itself back to the morpher. This allows me to easily change the appearance of my avatar without moving every little tiny bit. We learnt how to do this in a seminar a while back with the bbc3 worm ident, and I must say a big thank you to Andy Love for that. It’s SUCH a time saver, and it looks better too! I’m excited now as to how my little dude will turn out.

Here are some of the morphers below the original:



One problem I’ve come across with morphers is that they can’t seem to do multiple morphers with one button; well at least I haven’t found it yet. So as I move the mouth and face, the blobs that are attached to his body don’t move! I can tell you I am not going to move every little one individually, not after I’ve learnt morphers ^_^. I got around this by actually attaching them to the body itself. By doing this, I could move my morphers around and it wouldn't just be affecting the blobby body but also the extra bits on him too, making him more realistic, well, a more realistic living blob then before ha. Now I just have to work out how to attach the eyes and still keep the move ability of the eye-lids. hmmmm

Avatar mapping / altering

Still playing around with my avatar, I made some texture and bump maps in photoshop for the body and the warty lump like things that cover him. This is what he looks like now:



I think hes coming along nicely. I've still yet to add the morphers so I can easily animate him. Soon though!

My avatar progression

I have decided to use the blob guy as my avatar! I can’t wait to start animating the little guy. This is how I’ve been getting on so far:



As with the BBC ident worm, I decided to start with a cylinder. From there I "tapered" it and gave him a slight curve. I converted it to an editable poly which then meant I could make the eye holes and most of all his lumpy body. I Inset and bevelled the teeth and coloured them white. That was.... well the easy part.

Then I moved onto the eyes. This is where I started to have some problems, I thought I could just whack a sphere in the hole, map it with a simple texture, and be done with it. Nooo. It just didn't want to work. Well it did work but it was really quite rubbish, so I decided to model it around a real eye:


I made each of the parts separately and joined them together to make a complete eye. The cornea is quite cool as it reflects light, it’s not just a flat eye like my other one, to make it I put the opacity of a map down and then put up the secular and glossiness up. It worked out much better giving a more realistic eye. I’m pleased

So far so good, the environment will come soon, I've already learnt how to make terrain using certain tools so that should cut out sometime. Anywho, that’s him for now, he’s a bit gob smacked by the looks of things, but soon il start using morphers to make him move about. Can't wait

Slugsy

I forgot to put this up. We made this a week or two back in one of our seminars. Our task was to create an animated cartoon worm much like the one from the BBC3 idents.
Here is what the BBC3 worms look like, funny little guys:



So this is what I came up with. I tried to animate him a bit, but unfortunately I just couldn't resist killing him at the end :( oh well. I gave him a good run:



I did this using 3D studio max again, I’m starting to become more and more familiar with it the more I use it. I started off with a cylinder and worked from there adding and carving his shape.
I then added a modifier called "turbosmooth" which makes him look all nice and round. I then had to use a modifier called "morpher" which I messed up at first but eventually got the hang of. What you can't see in the below picture is the several copies of the worm which contributed towards the movement. I hid them all for when I rendered the piece. Each one was altered so I could change the original and animate him with greater speed and accuracy. It basically meant that I didn’t have to move every little vertex point! So I was very happy to have learnt that from the seminar.


Anywho, must be getting on with my actual avatar. Laters.