Final Conclusion

Final Conclusion
06/12/2016
Vasil Nikolov

In Conclusion, the creation of the following 30 second animation was a great experience in which one does not hoold any regrets and knows that if he has to re-do he can use much more efficient ways to achieve some of the items that he desired (For example changing the colour of the cabin to a brighter blue in order for the viewer to see better the cockpit of the tie pilot).

But for now I can only hope you enjoy it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBmfjArPlhM

Building the sequence

Building the sequence
05/12/2016
Vasil Nikolov


Building the sequence was possibly the best part as it once again allowed me to use the software that I used back when I was a media student. The software used was called Cyberlink PowerDirector 14 and is possibly one of the best types of software to use for creating videos. With it I managed to quickly build the sequence. Add the title as prommised and even add the sound effects that I found. They are off course not mine and I did check before I added them whether they could be used.

Above you would be able to see how the editor looks. 

Animating and Rendering Scene 8, 9 and 10

A and R Scene 8/9/10
03/12/2016
Vasil Nikolov

Again this scene was now added as an aftermath filler in order for the user to make sure that the Tie Figther`s faith is sealed. As it was only half a second, the set-up for it was very quick to make as it was recycled from Scene 6. The only difference this time was swapping the Falcon and Tie fighter place and then making the blaster effect green and slightly bigger.

 From then onward the two ships were unconnected and then grouped as separate objects for Scene 9. Another path was drawn, which the Tie fighter followed gracefully. Further addition to the scene was the flame effect that was seen in scene 4 when the cruiser was set alight. The only difference was tweaking speed at which the fighter started falling so it could explode off screen without actualy needing to. This was done thanks to a close-up on the middle of the flight path and letting the audience only see the fighter beginning to fall.

The second reason to do it was in order to make the final scene as a more appropriate ending needed to be made due to the importance and "coolness" of the Falcon as a sign of rebelliousness. Thus a half-second scene was made where the Falcon was seen picking up speed before initiating a hyperspace maneuver. The greatest challenge in this section was adjusting the camera so the audience could feel like the Falcon is just a couple of meters above their head as it flies past. This was not helped by my inability to have a steady hand, however, after a while, the correct position was given and the  speed of the Falcon adjusted from the speed graph.

And with these last word ends the A and R sequence of posts. Hope you did enjoy, two more should be up soon.

Animating and Rendering Scene 6 and 7

A and R Scene 6/7
01.12.2016
Vasil Nikolov

And thus come scenes 6 and 7.
The interesting bit about scene 6 was having to insert a Tie fighter and then deleting almost all of it. As you can see, only the front frame of the fighter was kept and was attached to the camera. While some may question this idea, they must remember that horror films sometimes put a mask on top of the camera in order to give perspective of the killer. As an ex-media student, an example one could give is from the 1978 Halloween film, which put the audience in the eyes of the killer with a simple prop being used in the beginning of the film and being put on the camera.

The next scene showed the new flight path with which the Falcon saves its turkey. The reason for once again modifying the scene from the original storyboard was that making a charge fly out of the Falcon and then causing the Tie fighter to explode would take too much screening time, so it was much easier to make the Falcon do a Loop De Loop and outsmart the Fighter. Furthermore, this way, the story would be more true to the flying style of the captain of the Falcon a she would try and outsmart the enemy rather than just cheat.

 And thus come the end of this segment.

Animating and Rendering Scene 4 and 5

A and R Scene 4/5
29/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov

Scene 4 depicted the new flight path that was made for the middle cruiser. Another feature would be the burning effect, which could be found under the FX Layer. It was quite easy to implement, however, a word of warning would be that it does consume RAM. Another interesting point would be that in the official storyboard, the audience would see an explosion and then the two other ships being hit by the blast wave and moving in opposite directions. While this was very cool and not impossible in theory, Maya decided to provide me with the challenge of not wishing to shatter my cruiser. A new attempt was done by putting two cruisers and a trapezoid that was squished in the form of a cruiser and set on fire so the audience would not be able to see it un-textured and not really looking like a cruiser. However, Maya once again found the object too hard to shatter. Because it was getting late and doing the issue now, rather than near the beginning of the year, a new scene had to be improvised. Thus the idea of the middle cruiser catching fire and begging to fall (Similar to the falling stars book cover) was made, which was feasible but also led to a gap in the time as the scene now would be much shorter.

 And thus scene 5 had to be altered as well. Originally it would have been a close-up of the split nose and the falcon flying out of it, while being chased by a Tie fighter. The cruiser was cut out and two extreme close-ups were added to show how the blasts from the fighter were getting closer and closer to the Falcon. The scene was doen twice with the camera being moved on the two sides.

And thus these two scenes had arrived by an end. The moral of the story would be that it would be better to check earlier for such issues in order to prevent having to wonder how to fix the issue.

Animating and Rendering Scene 2 and 3

A and R Scene 2/3
19/12/2016
Vasil Nikolov

Scene 2 proved to be uneventful as the formula from the previous scene was the same with the slight difference of moving the planet behind the ships and the camera being moved more towards the left and more upwards in order to show the vastness of space.

Scene 3 was the more interesting as the camera was now moved as a close-up and following the rocket that hits the leading ship (The one in the center).

The graph technique had to be used in order for the rocket to look like it was traveling at a much faster pace than the ships. 

The image above shows how the camera stood before Maya decided to crash again. Furthermore, the space that was used would not be visible in the scene files as it was on the desktop of my computer and the path would lead to it (Which you would not have sadly).

As said before, these were the only sniggles during the rendering of the two scenes.

Animating and Rendering Scene 1

A and R Scene 1
25/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov

Hello one and all to the second to last milestone in the journey. So far, I have heard that the animating and rendering would be the most challenging bit as Maya is not always the best at doing some editing styles. This is why, This first post will be a longer version on one scene and the others would mainly mention the failures encountered during their creation.

 As you can see for the animation, I used a path for both the camera and ships to follow. Getting the camera to follow was probably the hardest bit as Maya sometimes did not like looking through another view except the camera itself. This made timing the ships passing by while the camera is panning towards the moon they are passing much more difficult. Another challenge that was met was getting the sphere with a space image to work. Sometimes the texture would just not wish to work in the space that was given it. Nevertheless, thanks to a colleague (That I still owe a KFC), the sphere secrets were explained to me and in the future images, you will be able to see it.

Getting the ships to run together was the most fun bit because it meant that they needed to be grouped before they could be united in one and then added to the path. If I did know that I would need to do these two steps, I would have saved me an hour in wondering why they would merge as one ship once they were attached to the map.

A big "thank you!" should once again be expressed for my colleague Kain, who helped me with the art of modifying and centering the point to the new objects. This made the manouvres of the many items much easier to complete. 

 Maya was also kind enough to crash 3 times in the span of 10 minutes. This is why some of the renders took me a much longer time to complete as the software would crash just before the updated version would have been saved.

While not scene in the images, another tool that was used was the speed graph, which allowed me to times the sequence correclty and make the ships look like they were traveling appropriately.

Nevertheless at the end, the perfect render for the scene was achieved and the scene looked marvelous.

More updates would be comming in soon and hot.

Falcon Texturing Initiated

Falcon Texturing
23/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov


Sup?
How are all of you doing. Here comes the final post that is to do with the texturing. The Falcon proved to be the most difficult to texture as during the testing faze of texturing it, it showed many weaknesses to the model. This is why, an updated post was created in order to explain the changes that were underdone to the model.

 The first challenge was the small circle in the middle, which unlike the tie fighter was not separated from the front place. This is why the knife cut tool had to be used in a very small manner in order to create a small panel.

 Both the top and bottom window used once again the phong material, which made the windows more and more polished and professionally looking.

 The top is with the pre-edits of the surface. While it does show the final version of the colours that will be used, the tiles needed to be upgraded.

 Front lights used the standard material, which was with a higher brightness option in the special effects. While not visible in editing mode, the render preview did make it look much more wizzard.

And thus ends the texturing section. Hope you did enjoy it. Coming soon will be the next milestone which will be the editing and rendering section

Crusier Texturing Initiated

Cruiser Texturing
21/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov

As much as one would wish to say that the cruiser was the most hard model to texture (As it is the biggest), the award for a long texturing would have to go to the Millennium Falcon as that model required to be updated in order for the final colours to work correctly (See the images from the Update post for evidence).

Nevertheless, the imperial cruiser was still fun to texture as it required to have one correct colour in order to look nice and proffesional. The rest would have been added with the magic of careful positioning in the scene (Shadows) and the lighting to be just right.

Blin was the most used material for the imperial cruiser with only the front of the tower and the engines receiving a limbert material colour.

While the engines in the pictures do not look like the glowing beams of power from the original model, the preview in rendering mode will show the actual beautiful glow. 

 Both the sides and undersides received a smaller texturing as they did not require as much detail as they offered. The sides were given a slightly darker shade of grey, while the bays for fighters were light with a limbert in white.

Tie Texturing Initiated

Tie Texturing
19/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov

Hello one and all again to the blog, For the next 3 blog posts, I will be discussing how the texturing of each ship went. The reason for the shortness of this section is that similarly to the update section there were not that much items to be done.

So let us start with the smallest and probably quickest ship to be textured.

 For the model, the two most important materials to be used were the "Blin" (Seen around the entire body and outer/Inner solar panels on the wings) and the "Phong" (Used for the creation of the lovely glass panel). The reason for using the Blin material in stead of the standard Lambert was that the Lambert made the fighter look very bland. Also in all of the Star Wars Books, the imperial navy was always portrayed with vehicles that were always clean, polished or shiny. This is why it was more appropriate to use the slightly more expensive (come rendering) but still light material, known as blin. This made the fighter look more polished and closer to the real model.

 The front glass panel of the Tie fighter was done with the most expensive (come rendering) material from the 3 that one used for his models. The "Phong" is known to give the effect of polished glass or metall of the chrome alloy. This is why, it was used for the window panel. It was possible to use the Blin as well, however, it did not give the same polished effect as this one did.

 Finally the back of the fighter received the same treatment as the front of the cruiser`s tower. For more info, check the previous post.

 Overall the model look very nice and realistic with the current colours and is worth some brownie points.

Small update on the Millennium Falcon

A small update
15/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov

Hello one and all. This post will be the last one that is in the update section as the Tie Fighter was perfect enough (In one`s opinion to not need any further updates). As you can see in the images, some segments of the falcon have added colours, however, these were there just as an experiment. For example the two yellow circles are the lights of the falcon and are of "limbert" type as this type of material allows the lights to have a glow effect and look very 80`s.

The only update that this svelte beauty needed was the extrusion of all of the panels on the main body as otherwise, the colour that would be applied for some of the panels would cover the entire segment, which was not the desired effect. Thus the brilliant idea of using the faces function and extruding each of the desired pannels allowed for the effect in the two images to appear.

Small update on the Imperial Cruiser

A Small Update
13/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov

Hello one and all to the section of post that covers small upgrades to different aircraft that were up for updates. First craft to receive a face-lift is the Imperial cruiser. While the bottom and side of the craft were efficiently detailed, the tower of the cruiser did desire more detail as even in the distance that I wished to use for the rendering, they would still look poorly. This is why, they were first for an update.

The first item that was modified was the mid antennae. While it used to be one long line, the drawings were showing that it was actually four. Also as this was a quick job, I only needed to change the size of the original antenna and then duplicate it another 3 times. Thus as you can see, the mid antenna makes the model look much more professional.
The other segment that needed an update was the two side towers. The images portrayed that they would be waved by several struts. This is why I decided to make half of the original as the camera would not portray the towers in such a close distance that the user would notice the missing extra strutts.

The next big change was the front of the tower, which looked very poor. Upon the testing of textures, one found that the front face was very hard to add illuminates. This is why, the front was updated using the lovely cutting tool. The tool allowed me to precisely cut the shape I wanted and then by using the Extrude function, I was able to push the big base in and place several perfect shapes in a aligned distance. The final result showed a very professionally looking front, which even at a slightly closer distance makes the tower look similar to the "real" tower of a cruiser.

The final updated feature would be the addition of a black limbert background in order for the windows to look more visible, without the need for special lighting to be added, which would make the rendering much more time consuming.

Overall the new tower makes the model look much more professional and similar to the original cruiser. Off course, if the model had to be re-done, the two towers would be more square as the originals would be and the front nose would be remade as it is still slightly incorrect.

1st Conclusion

Overall
1507952
Vasil NIkolov

In Conclusion, the building of these models proved to be quite an interesting initiation to 3D Design and Modelling. I believe that the models for the animation proved to be of sufficient detail. While some may argue that the Falcon or the Imperial cruiser might have been more detailed, I believe that they would do much better with textures rather than extra details as too-much detail would lead to longer rendering time and stress on the GPU. Nevertheless, I would like to stress the importance of the In-Class exercises which provided me with the skills that helped me build the models for my coursework. Interestingly, when I was originally going to build the Tie Fighter, followed by the Falcon and Destroyer/Cruiser, however, my lecturer tipped me that the Falcon usually takes longer to build. This is why, the Falcon was the last in the line even though, it actually took me less time to build it than the destroyer.
Nevertheless, I am really excited to start texturing these models soon.
Wishing all a lovely week,
Vasil

Model Build: Engines (Check), Escape Pods (Nearly there), Bits that hang around (Check), Weirdly shaped holes (definitely there now)

Safety?
1507952
Vasil Nikolov



As you can see, the final parts of the Falcon are up for assembly. the exhaust ports, engines, engine covers and some satellites and wiring needed to be added.

The antenna was the first item to be added.  I used a sphere and then used a cube to cut it and re-shape it.

The exhaust ports proved to be very time-consuming as they were made from several shapes and then needed to be glued together and tilted to the correct angle.

The bottom of the aircraft is probably the only place of disappointment would be the bottom of the aircraft as there were no extra features  (a part from the bottom cannon).

Model Build: A Cockpit for the captain (Plus some small bits)

Cabin Accessories
1507952
Vasil Nikolov



Building the cockpit was the second most fiddly bit with the Falcon as it required careful selection of the end of the big cylinder and then extrusion before the rotation of the cockpit commences. Getting the correct size of this cylinder took twice as long as the others, as the schematics were not as helpful as possible for the recreation of the size.

The second part of the cockpit was easily built thanks to re-shaping the same end that was used to extrude the cockpit from the previous image. From then on, two Tauruses were used to outline the windows of the cockpit and then the same were duplicated and reduced to become the front lighting.

Similarly to the Tie Fighter, the side escape pods were made in the same way. This made the detailing in an improved way. Furthermore the two front teeth of the airship were pruned and given a shape that resembles the actual model. Similarly to the imperial cruiser, the side panels will be textured, however, by being shaped, the model will look even more professional.

Final aditions from today`s post involve the addition of cooling ports (4 circular at the front) and 3 square/trapezoid shaped cuts in the top. They were all done using the knife cutting tool, which provided a valuable and time saving experience.

Model Build: A Ship that can do the Kessel Run in 12 par-secs

Best spaceship
1507952
Vasil Nikolov

"You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?…It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs."

―Han Solo

Yess! it is finally here! The time to build it has arrived and is now being initiated. The Corellian YT-1300 light freighter is probably one of the most known models and I have finally started to build it.

So let us start here! Yes, this is the body of the falcon. My idea was to make the main body first, then add sides and port holes and finally engines and some other bits. The most detail would be given to the top and back as they would be the main views seen by the camera in the animation. Meanwhile, the bottom would be more reliant on the textures.

Making the main fuselgae was a surprising doddle. I used a cylinder, which was then made slightly thinner and then stretched. The top and bottom were then made by cutting 75% of a sphere and then stretching it onto the main body. Once it looked nice, the same 25% were duplicated and rotated at 180 degrees. While this may be counted as a simple choice, it did save me time from re-creating the bottom. This was followed by a cube being stretched and then angled and mirrored. And hey presto, the middle front bit is created. A copy of the cube was then re-molded into the two sides that act as the main lights of the falcon.

Following this, a single cylinder was stretched in the middle of the fuselage and christened to be the upper and bottom turret.

The turret itself was consisted of 2 cubes and 12 cylinders in total. It was necessary to be detailed as possible, as this way, the Falcon would look good in the close-up scenes of the animation.

Model Build: Imperial Cruiser; Engines and canons are a must!

Optional extras
1507952
Vasil Nikolov

This is where the final additions to my cruiser were added. The bottom needed to be finished with several towers needed to be added to the bottom as they contained the places for the lights.
Cannons were also on the list (4 on each side to be precise) as they were in the original schematics and last but not least was the engines.

The cannons were probably the least stressful bit to model as they would never be seen at a camera position as close to the one above this text. There was no need to have advanced shapes as the canons only needed to look like cannons from a distance.

And here you should be able to see the full undercarriage of the ship. I had highlighted it in order to make the extra parts more visible. As you can see, the ship now has its two ports as well as the protective bars on the side and the light towers. It took some time for the cubes to be re-molded, however, the task was very simple to get done. I believe that with some texturing, the model will look even better than it is.

This was the final bit of the build. The back was cut with the knife tool into two triangles, which were then rotated in the opposite way from one another. This was done by selecting the face option after right-clicking with the mouse and selecting the "face" option. This allowed me to then highlight the triangle i needed and then rotate it at the correct angle so it looks as close as the original machine did. Once this hard task was done, building the engines was easy as pie (the mathematical pie as cooking pastry is known to be a more challenging en devour).

Overall it was very pleasurable to build the ship. I found it more challenging than building the Tie fighter but I am very thankful that I had done the in-class exercises as they provided me with the correct tools and knowledge on dealing with some difficulties. Now it is time for the most anticipated model to be made. :)

PS: These pictures are from the older model, however, there main difference between them is only that the newer version is slightly more stretched sideways.

Model Build: Imperial Cruiser; basic front and top

Cruiser on the horizon
1507952
Vasil Nikolov


Continuing on from last time. The front nose could have been slightly improved as in the original images, the front is square, while my one was as sharp as the original. As I had made the mistake of grouping the objects together, I was unable to use the Boolean tool and trim the nose to the correct shape. This is why, I had to improvise and build one that looked good enough to be not too serious. If I have to build a cruiser in the future, I would probably not group the different objects into one as otherwise the Boolean tool seems to have an issue.

This stage of the build proved to be the longest part of the journey as the cruiser has a lot of towers that are on top of one another and each peace of the tower is differently sized and shaped. In all honesty, the entire top of the cruiser was made from one type of shape but duplicated 7 times and then re-shaped into different thicknesses and parameters. For the first time, the most useful tool was the combination of right-clicking the mouse and then using the edge option which would then be moved and allow me to remodel the cube more quickly.

Adding the tower was the less challenging part of the model as by now, the tower was built and the final stretch is on its way. The main reason for not detailing the front of the bridge and not making the small struts that held the antennas was that the top and side of the cruiser would be heavily dependable on the textures that await it. Nevertheless, some details were added in order for the model to look detailed from a certain distance.