Morphing in my Animation

In my second scene I used both the morpher and reactor tools inside of 3D Studio Max. The scene included a shot of 007 kneeling on the ground infront of his DB9, fireing the G36. The shot was created using all 3 of my models (007, Aston Martin and G36 with bullet.)

I started by inserting the biped tool inside of my 007 model and attaching it in the same way I would if I had created my own bones. Looking back my own bones would have been easier to control the model as the biped proved difficult at times. The model then had any outstanding polygons added to there corisponding bones and began to move the model into shape. The first thing i noticed about this was that my model was built in a difficult position and made adding bones difficult. This then led to having bad shapes and a poor looking model to animate with, and given the time I would return to it and start over. The one addition I did make to the model was his hair, made by simply changing polygones ID and colouring them in a different colour.  Also later on in the animation I noticed that his face had no expression and so used the morph tool to make his facial expression change towards the end of the scene.

Using the morpher tool to add facial features.

The next thing I did was bring the gun into the scene and begin to morph it so that the release chamber opened on the side of the gun. This is not completely accurate to the gun but for the purposes of shoping different techniques I thought this was a good idea and infact came out quiet nicely. The morph was made by creating a copy of the same object, changing the copy to how I would like it to look, and then adding the morph tool to the origonal. This then allowed me to change the look of the gun easily and quickly.

The chamber that comes from the side of the gun was then animated using the reactor tool. I did this by adding the chamber and its container to the reactor and setting the chamber to have a mass of around 3 or 4. I then keyFramed a small side movement for the chamber to move sideways, and then the reactor did the rest by adding a gravitational pull towards the floor. This gave a very satisfiying look which I was very pleased with.

G36 with moropher set to 0.

G36 with morpher set to 100.

The end of the bullet then had to be added which in comparison took little time. i simply moved to the frame where the chamber was removed from the gun and had the bullet come out around the same time. To repeate this I made several copies of both bullet and chamber, and then moved there animations along the timeline.

After this was complete I added the Aston Martin and the background along with the the camera. The camera was made to pan and zoom by using the truck, orbit and dolly camera tools. I felt that this was a good camera shot as the shot was suppose to be a slowed down shot of 007 shooting.

Wireframe of models and Biped.

Models with textures.

Overall i am very happy with this scene. I used a variaty of tools and made a clean animation. If i could change it however I would deffinatly go back and re-design the 007 model, as well as look into lighting more. I was able to use lighting in my first scene via the daylight system however I found that when adding a muzzel flash into the animation it had problems working with the daylight system again.

 

Test render to cheak Reactor appearence.

Scene 2 has now been rendered and added to the trailer clip.

Finished render of scene 4.