Roll Camera

 

Using the roll camera option I was able to tilt the camera view, this would become quite handy in my animation for another camera angle. 

Stock Lenses

 

I was able to zoom into one sole object by choosing one of the stock lenses. In this image I have used the 200mm lens. Another way of achieving this effect would be to use the field of view option, the advantage of using field of view instead would be that you are able to easily change the the zoom to how you feel fits best.

Depth of Field

The blur on this image was achieved by setting up a camera in the scene and modifying this camera to enable depth of field. This tool gives a blurred effect as if the image was in the distance. Both of my objects were of equal distance but the box does show as slightly more blurred than the cone.

Mood boards

Below are three mood boards that I have created. I have split my mood boards into three sections, the casino, the action and the lady. I hope to use parts from these mood boards to create my final storyboard:

The Casino

The Action

The Lady

Daylight System

By following the daylight system tutorial on Youtube I was able to create a more natural light. A plane was created with three different shapes added with different materials allocated to each item. By going to create and adding the daylight system to the scene I was able to control the light. We were able to choose our location and also amend the time of day for different shadows. i felt this would be really helpful as it gave a more realistic impression the the omni and spot lights we had been using on our pumpkin.

Pumpkin Tutorial

I uploaded the pumpkin from a file that was already created. By adding the omni light and placing it within the pumkin I was able to light the inside and give it a glow just how a pumpkin with a candle on the inside would have at Halloween. I then added a target spot light to highlight from the back of the pumpkin. With the target spot light I was able to change the spotlight parameters and adjust the beam and fall off field.

I also added the foggy effect by modifying the atmosphere and adding a volume light. This gave an eery feeling to the image.

Leaf Tutorial

To create this leaf I used several material mapping techniques. Firstly I edited the leaf in Photoshop by selecting the white background and making it black. By having to separate versions of the leaf (one with a white background and one with a black background) I was able to convert the image easily in 3ds Max.

In 3ds Max I used the material editor to add the original leaf as a bitmap under diffuse. The original leaf has a white background which is where the Photoshop editing came in handy. By adding the bitmap of the leaf with the black background to the opacity selection under maps this cancels out the original white background by acting like another layer. To add texture to the leaf I also added a bump map to the bitmap. The material was then applied to the plane in the view port. I then went onto adding the 'edit poly' modifier where I was able to manipulate the leaf using soft selection, giving it a more natural curve.

Rendered image of leaf

Assignment Brief and Research Board

Our brief was to use 3ds Max to create a 30 second trailer for a James Bond film, I soon realised that I had never seen a James Bond film in my life and knew that choosing one could possibly be the hardest part!

I had never realised previously that there had been so many Bond films made which made my decision even harder. Initially I felt I may be more inclined to go for one of the very first films produced as I would be able to incorporate a feel of the 60's to my animation. However, having read the synopsis for each film the ridiculous plots had me even more confused and I felt completely out of my depth.

As I was finding it hard to decide I called upon the knowledge of those who knew, asking James Bond enthusiasts what their favourite bond film was. A lot of them were torn between the films and the actual actors who played 007 but they all seemed to agree that Casino Royale was possibly the best as it had a lot of action scenes and iconic Bond moments. I decided to see for myself and after watching the film I came to the conclusion that this was the one, I felt as though there were many scenes within the film that could work well with my animation. Below is my research board for Casino Royale...

Tank

Fruit Bowl

I found my fruit bowl a slight challenge, especially when trying to make the bananas. I ended up using the capsule in the extended primitives selection as the base shape and converting it to a poly so that I could manipulate the shape by extruding it. The other part of my fruit bowl that I had difficulty with was actually making my bowl. I tried to create the bowl by converting a sphere to poly and inverting the top half, this did not work as well as I hoped it would. In the end I used Adobe Illustrator to create a 2d version of half of my bowl shape. Once uploaded to 3ds Max I used the lathe modifier to create my 3d bowl. I was much happier with the outcome.