Summary of Group Project

I feel I have worked hard on this group project to create accurately shaped and sized components of the steam engine. When modelling my allocated parts I found the photos I took whilst visiting the museum a much needed resource and believe from referring to these regularly throughout the modelling process I have created quite a realistic shape for the machine.

In reference to the animation I would have liked to have had a go at more, but due to the nature of the project it was not possible. When modelling we could each work on a separate file and merge them once complete, as long as all of the team were working to the same scale. But when animating if the two animated files were not aligned properly many alterations would need to be made and as a group we felt it would be more time efficient if one member completed the interlocking animation of the machine, this being the group member who was best at animation. However, I did get to animate the dial needle and a camera in the environment and feel these have turned out reasonably well.

I am pleased with the way the group has worked with one another. I found all members were supportive and helpful to me and I tried to be supportive and helpful to them. All members were dedicated to completing the work assigned to them and without this commitment made by all of the team I doubt the project would have been finished by the deadline.

Week 12- Review of Presentation

Over the last six weeks we have been working towards the completion of the animation, but today was when we gained a response from the client. We had all spent many hours completing our tasks for the project and so it would be quite disappointing if the client did not like it.

Each group member talked about their individual parts as it was felt by the whole of the team to be best as we would have the greatest knowledge of processes used, problems encountered and decisions made during the production stage.

I was wary before doing our presentation as several groups were criticized for not including narration, something which we had not incorporated into our project. However, we got a good response as we had added text to communicate the information instead, and we explained our reason for this was that the noise level within the museum would prohibit any narration being heard.

As the clients responded well to the animation I am happy with how the presentation went.

Week 11-Completing the Project

My task for this week was to finish the work assigned to me so that another member can create the video before the presentation next week. To start I applied the glass material to the cover on the pressure gauge dial. I found the instructions of how to create this material in Introducing 3ds Max 9: 3D for Beginners (Derakhshani, Munn, McFarland, 2007, pages 473-4) and tried it out during week 9 where it worked well.

To begin I went to an empty slot in the material editor and from the material browser selected the raytrace material. Then I set the transparency colour to white as this would make the material fully transparent. Next I removed the tick from the box by the word reflect and increased the reflection value to 20. The final change I made in the basic parameter rollout was to the index of refraction, which sets how much of the surrounding materials are refracted in the glass, was set to 1.55.

Next I made changes in the extended parameter rollout in the material editor window. Here I set the reflection type to additive and set the gain value to 0.7.

After this I went to the supersampling section where I turned off global setting by removing the tick from the box. Instead I ticked the box by enable supersampler and made sure “Max 2.5 Star” was selected from the drop down list.

The final alteration I made to this material was to change the specular highlight settings in the basic parameter section. I changed both the specular level and glossiness values by increasing them greatly, firstly by changing the specular level to 98 and secondly the glossiness value to 90.

The last step for this material was to apply it to the cover of the dial. Once applied I looked at the result of this in the render window.

When I saw the outcome I was really happy with the outcome as the face of the dial was now visible. There is a little reflection by the spindle on the dial, but not too much to make the needle difficult to see.

Next I went on to create my final piece of animation, this being the camera movement for the first 3 parts of the storyboard. The purpose of this of the final video would be to set the scene where the steam engine would have been used, this being for a dredger on a lake in Zurich in 1892. Before starting the animation I first checked the timeline was the correct length. This section of animation was planned to roughly last for 15 seconds. The timeline was currently set to 400 frames and with a frame rate of 25 frames per seconds this equalled 16 seconds of animation. As this was about the time originally decided by the group to use for the section I was working on I decided to leave the timeline at 400 frames in length so that there was additional space for editing.

Following this I added a camera to the scene. I selected a free camera as I wanted the focus point of the camera to change as it moved towards the dredger and felt as a result of this plan the free camera would be most suitable. Then, using the move and rotate tools, I position the camera in the scene where I roughly wanted the animation to start.

Afterwards I used the spline tool to draw out a path for the camera to follow. Before creating the spline I set the type to smooth as I wanted the cameras movement to be as fluid as possible. Once I had the initial line drawn I edited the position of the vertexes to make the line curve like I wanted it to.

I was now satisfied with the shape of the spline and so selected the camera and went to the animation menu. Here I chose path constraint and attached the camera to the spline. I then went to the final frame in the timeline and then repositioned the spline with the move tool so that the dredger was in the centre of the camera shot at this point.

I felt this had gone well so far, but the original plan was not for the camera to move for the full length of the timeline, just for the first ten seconds. To resolve this I moved the key frame at frame 400 to frame 250.

This corrected the end; however there was still a problem at the start. The animation was meant to open at an image of the mountains to set the scene, but currently the camera was facing the wrong direction. To resolve this I selected the camera and turned on auto key before using the rotate tool to position the camera so it faced the mountains.

Afterwards I moved the keyframe at the beginning of the cameras movement forwards along the timeline so the camera was still at the start and then started to move after roughly half a second to a second as I felt this would look most professional.

Now I was happy with the animation of the camera I tried rendering a single frame to see the outcome. I was quite pleased; however there was a gap between the top of the sky and the top of the rendered image. To correct this I first tried to move the spline path lower, but this did not hide the entire gap and did result in part of the dredger being cut off in the image. Instead I increased the height of the cylinder which contained the sky material with the scale tool. This was successful in removing the gap.

Next I went on to create the fade of parts of the material on the dredger. For this I planned to use the material morphing technique I had tried out earlier this week as it worked well.

To begin this task I worked out where I want the machine to be placed and therefore which sections of the dredger I wanted to fade away. When doing this I took into consideration the size the steam engine will need to be scaled to when merged into the scene and as a result the amount of the front of the dredger which needs to be faded away. I did not want to fade away the whole of the front of the dredger as this would display the inside as well due to the fact I do not know what else would be inside or where.

Once I had an idea of where I wanted the machine to be positioned within the dredger I made the different parts of the dredger into editable polys. I then entered polygon mode and went down to the material ID section to set the material ID for the areas I wanted to fade. Several of the material IDs had already been used for one of the objects and so set this section to the next available material ID, this being number 4. I set this material ID to all of the areas I wanted to fade.

I then opened the material editor and created a new material. I needed to create a transparent material to use in the morpher so I could fade between the dredger material and the transparent one during the animation.

Afterwards I created a morpher material in an empty slot in the material editor and added multi/sub object material to the top two channels in the morpher material. In the first multi/sub object material I applied the normal dredger material to all four channels so I could use this as the first material and then in the other multi/sub object material applied the original dredger material to the first three channels of this material and for the forth applied the transparent material I had previously created.

Following this I selected the objects which make up the dredger and from the modifier list chose the morph modifier. I then clicked on “choose morph object” and selected the one object which made up the dredger. This resulted in the "choose morph modifier window opening where I highlighted morpher before clocking on the bind button.

At this point I found that I was unable to use the same morpher material for more than one object and so I created two more morpher materials with the exact same setting as I applied to the first. Then I placed the morpher on another part of the dredger by choosing to pick the morph object before choosing bind.

The preparation of the material was now complete and so I turned on auto key and made changes to the percentage values of each channel accordingly due to the position of the slider along the timeline. I did not want the front of the dredger to fade until the camera had stopped moving and so I kept material one at 100% up to frame 300 and then between frames 300 and 350 faded material one to 0% whilst fading the second material in to 100%.

When I checked this in the render window the colours of the dredger were not changing. I tried this over and over again, but I was not successful through any of these attempts and could not work out what I was doing wrong. This was quite disappointing as the trial I completed for the material morpher earlier this week worked really well. I discussed this problem with the group and as it was the end of week of 11 it was decided to just have the camera movement for this part as the scene still needed to be rendered and the video created. As it was estimated each group member would have roughly 15 hours of rendering to complete I left this as camera animation alone.

My role within the group was not complete in relation to the project files. All that is left for the remainder of the semester is to prepare for the presentation during week 12.

Week 11- Research into the Morpher Material

One element of our animation is for the dredger to partly fade away to reveal the machine inside. As this part of the animation has been allocated to myself I have spent some time this week researching a possible way of achieving this in 3Ds max.

There was only one tutorial I found which had any relevance to what I was trying to achieve, this being a material morpher (see http://www.freewebs.com/adriantiba/morpher.htm) To see if this was usable I did a trial of the method.

I began by creating a box in the perspective viewpoint. I then opened the material editor and created two materials in different material slots. Next I went to a third material slot and clicked on the button labelled ‘standard’ to open the material browser window. From the possible options I chose ‘morpher’ as the type.

This brought up a level in the material editor window with several blank material swatches. I then dragged the two materials I had created into their own morpher channel.

Following this I selected the box in the viewport and applied a morph modifier to this from the modifier list. Then I returned to the morpher material in the material editor and from the morpher rollout clicked on the ‘choose morph object’ button. I then selected the box in one of the viewpoints and in the window which appeared highlighted ‘morpher’ in the list before selecting the bind button.

Now the materials were established and linked to a morphing shape I went to the modify panel and when at morpher lever turned on auto key. Then at different points along the timeline I added key frames by changing the morpher percentage.

This had gone well, however for the group project I would have to apply this to selected parts of the shape only. I had a go at this as otherwise the method would be irrelevant to the project.

This time to start I created a sphere and made it into an editable poly. I then entered polygon mode, selected several of the polygons which made up the sphere and set these as material ID 2 while leaving the remainder at ID 1.

When I created the material for this shape I did so in multi/sub object mode so I could experiment with morphing two materials on the same object at the same time. Once happy with the materials I created again a morpher material and continued with the process detailed above, but this time assigning the material to the sphere.

This material also morphed successfully and so I feel this is suitable to incorporate in the animation.

Weeks 9 to 11- Research into Steam Engine Information

Within the brief given to us for this project it was identified that educating the visitors was important to the museum. As a group we decided we would include facts about the exhibit as the camera moved around the engine, so during the past few weeks I have been trying to find relevant information on steam engines which could be included in the final video. This task, however, was not as easy as I expected it to be.

I found it quite difficult to find information specifically about the machine we had selected to model and animate as it appears to be a unique engine. This problem was discussed during one of our group meetings and it was said by the group members to find as accurate information as possible, even if it was for steam engines in general.

For generalised information on steam engines I found a web site dedicated to the history of Paxman steam engines at the web address http://www.paxmanhistory.org.uk/classA.htm which I felt could be useful as this was the maker of the machine we decided to model. Also, a diagram within the Science Encyclopedia (Graham, Taylor, Fardon, Oxlade, 2000, page 67) identifies the purpose of several parts of a steam engine and the order in which the parts work to create the power.

The only information I could find specifically relating to the machine we selected was that which was collected during the visit to the museum. However, there is only a limited amount if this information which is suitable for use within the group project as the majority is based around the restoration project taken on by the museum when the steam engine first arrived in 2004.

During this weeks team meeting I presented all the resources I had gathered throughout the past couple of weeks to the group member whose role is to add this to the video. I just hope there are enough appropriate facts to be included.

Week 10-Working on the Sphere

I hope to finish the modelling this week so this last file can be combined with the others and the project can hopefully be completed next week.

This week I began by creating the cylinder to represent the pin which went through the central post under the sphere. I set the radius to 0.442cm as I felt this was a realistic width and the height to 10.49cm so that a little of the cylinder was visible either side of the lever.

Next I went on to create the part which attaches to the side of the lever, once again starting with a cylinder. I used the move and rotate tools to position this at the correct angle before creating a third cylinder, but this time smaller in height and with a larger radius of 1.197cm.

I then made the most recent cylinder into an editable poly, went into polygon mode and highlighted several of the segments along the bottom edge. I then opened the extrude window and repeatedly extruded these polygons to an amount of 1.396cm until it reached the height I required. I then transferred to vertex mode and with the use of the move and rotate tools created the bend in this shape.

Afterwards I drew out a new cylinder where I increased the height segment value to 3. I then made it into an editable poly and deleted the unnecessary polygons at the back of the shape. This left me with space to create the shape I required which I did with the create tool. Whilst still in polygon mode I drew around the open edged vertexes to recreate the shape as I required it to be. Firstly I created the segments at the back and then the ones on the inside of the shape.

Once this shape was complete I came out of editable poly mode and used the rotate tool to position it at the correct angle.

I then returned to editable poly mode and in edge mode used the cut tool to segment the cap. I sliced the polygon in many segments by dragging the dividing line between two points which were opposite one another.

Following this I selected the edges I had just created and opened the connect edges window. Here I added one extra segment so the cap was divided into two rings of polygons.

At this point I realised errors had been made when cutting the polygons and so used the weld tool to join two vertexes which should be one.

I then highlighted the polygons which made up the smaller ring before opening the extrude window. I applied an extrude value many times, each time changing the height of extrusion so it represented the height of the area I was trying to create.

Whilst doing this I realised that one half of this rod was a mirror image of the other, and so worked to the half way point where I applied the symmetry modifier. Once the symmetry modifier was applied I used the mirror property in its rollout to position the symmetrical part correctly in relation to the first. This took some time to perfect, but eventually I was happy with this.

Next I went on to create the bolts along the joining rod, and as before I did this in editable polys vertex mode. I then used the scale tool to make the bolt area larger than the rest of the cylinder. However, when I was doing this I found it would not scale properly due to the angle the rod was positioned at and so I removed the rotation I had previously applied before completing this task. When I then tried to create the bolts the outcome was that the sections were much more even.

Finally I reapplied the rotation.

After this I went on to create the part which joins onto the box part of the steam engine. For this I started by creating a box and segmenting it 5 times along the length and 3 along the width. I then made it into an editable poly and scaled the vertexes which made up the segments apart before scaling the vertexes which made up the top and bottom row to create a curved outer edge.

Next I created a cylinder with a radius of 0.722cm as this fitted nicely into the box shape just created. I then created an array of these at 1.7cm apart.

Next I selected the edited box and from the compound objects section of the create menu selected Boolean. Here I selected subtraction (A-B) from the list to create a hole were the cylinders was. I then repeated this for the other cylinders.

I then created the part which joins the rod to the box of the machine. For this I started with a cylinder which had a radius equal to the width of the top of the Boolean box and positioned it here. I set the cap segment value to 2 to make it easier to work with.

Next I made it into an editable poly, went to polygon mode and highlighted the segments in the middle of each cap. I then extruded both sides at the same time to a rough amount before perfecting the height of each extruded section with the move tool in vertex mode.

I added the finishing touches by adding the pins to either end of the rod to give the illusion they were joined. I positioned the cylinder which made the pins carefully so they were in the middle of the end segment of the rod.

The modelling was now complete and so I applied a mesh smooth; however this did not smooth the shapes as I required it to. To correct this I made alterations to smoothing group setting on necessary objects in polygon mode and set the mesh smooth to pay attention to the smoothing group settings. As before when I wanted a surface to be smooth I applied one smoothing group value to the whole area but when I wanted there to be an obvious join I used two different smoothing group values. Below is the model with the mesh smooth modifier and smoothing groups applied. Some areas were difficult to do, such as the top of the area extruded out of the top of the sphere, as it took a while to work out which parts should belong to which smoothing group.

The modelling of the engine is now complete. Next week I hope to complete my part of the animation.

Week 9 – Glass Creation Trial

I have been researching into how to create a glass-like material in smax and came across a tutorial in Introducing 3ds Max 9: 3D for Beginners (Derakhshani, Munn, McFarland, 2007, pages 473-4) which seems to be really clear. I am going to test this to make sure I can get it to work, and if it does it will be easy to apply it to the necessary surfaces on the machine when I get the change.

To begin I created a sphere in the viewport before opening the material editor. Here I opened up the ‘ get material’ window and selected the Raytrace material from the list. I then altered the settings as detailed below.

Basic Parameters:

Set transparency colour to white so object is fully transparent.
I removed the tick from the box next to reflect and set the reflect value to 20 to apply slight reflection.
Set index of refraction (called index of refr in rollout) to 1.55 to control how the background is refracted in this material.

Extended Parameters:

Choose the reflections type as additive to make reflection brighter and glass clearer.
Set the gain value to 0.7.

SuperSampling Parameters:

Remove tick from ‘use global settings.’
Tick ‘enable local supersampler’ and select ‘max 2.5 star’ from dropdown list.

Specular Highlight Settings:

Set the specular lever to 98.
Set the glossiness value to 90.

With the settings applied I dragged this material to the sphere before I looked at the outcome in the render window, but unfortunately it was not easily visible against the background. I then added a few other shapes into the viewport behind the glass object. I was very happy with the result as the sphere due to its transparent quality and the way it refracted light to make the surrounding objects change shape. I feel this looks realistic and so will apply this to the glass on the steam engine at the next available point.