skinning and rigging

skinning and rigging has been quite fun to learn, and seemed very easy from the exercises I attempted. The issues I had were then re creating it within my design.

I wanted to achieve a very similar effect as too the cylinder exercise I previously did, with a cylindrical element bending when required to make the line which attaches the engines to the 'ship' look more 'flexible'.

The First issue I had was the bones were far to big for the lines, as they are quite thin and long, This meant re sizing the bones to fit within the area required. That proved to be simple to change using the bone parameters. 

Having added the IK solver it appeared to be going smoothly, and thought this would be a really quick and easy task to accomplish. The error happened after assigning the skin modifier to the cylinder, it simply wasn't working as expected, and rather then bending with the bones, the bones bent correctly, but the cylinder simply moved in the direction but stayed straight. Looking through the 3DS max help and tutorials online I couldn't see what I was doing wrong, and in the process changed and ticked a lot of unknown boxes trying to figure out the problem. 

I eventually reloaded the project to an earlier point and decided to run through it again, this time using a new cylinder, This time it worked correctly. The issue was the original cylinder was actually a 'line', which had been modified with the bevel profile modifier, this obviously created an error with the IK solver making it behave in a different way. So I had to delete the original lines on the ship as they were not a mesh which could use the bones technique and recreate them as cylinders and then re-size and move them into position. 

The end result is exactly what I was after, and I simply need to replace the texture. the bones have been attached to the holders on the ship and engines, so when the engines are moved the lines bend as shown in the picture above, this makes it look tethered and will be much easier to animate this way. 

lighting!

The main issue with lighting I have encountered is due to the sky dome added before hand. It has created a slight issue with what the light has an effect on.

The best way round this was following a tutorial around 'omni' lighting, and then adding the sunlight. It took a little while to get my head round the idea of a sky dome, and I have noticed the size of the sky dome is going to have to be very large for most designs. 

The sunlight appears to be very useful, but also harder to control then most of the other light options, placing it by compass and time etc as opposed to manually positioning. 

I have found a few tips that really help with using a sky dome, and lighting it. 

the best thing for a sky dome when working is to go into its options and cull it, so you can effectively see through some of the sky dome, allowing you to see what is going on in the scene a lot easier. 

it is also a good idea to do the same with the plane. There is a lot more in depth lighting options i wish to look into, as i want to make specific parts of my models glow for example, this uses a specific render-er known as a mental ray render-er  but, when rendering the scene at the minute it makes everything black and white, so i will have to research further into this before i can use it, it will also add a lot of render time to my animation later if i do choose to use it. 

Omni lighting is the best lighting solution I have found so far, and Can change the color, it could be possible to use this and focus it independently on the parts of the models i wish to stand out and glow in a different light.  

additional lighting -

I have now added sunlight, using the sunlight and compass, an omni light to just light the sky, and 2 omni lights as engine outputs for one of my models, it has added to the rendering time, but is a lot easier, then adding a mental ray render-er, which was a little bit too much too look into for this project, and I believe would be more beneficial for still shot rendering then animation anyway. The lights give off a nice glow for the engines. the sunlight gives good shadow for the ships as well, which shows they are hovering and will help show the speed as it travels across the sand, and pick up on the hills and dips in the environment. 

texturing

Texturing has proven to be an eye opener. 

I didn't think texturing would be so hard, but to produce good looking textures takes time, and effort. 

From 3DS Max it is possible to Map components of your model with the UV Map modifier tool.
This is a simple way of telling the texture what the object is like and how to wrap round it, using the gizmo sub 'object' of the UV map. But, you need to have a good texture to place onto the model in the first place, or its not really worth it!

I also went further as to unwrap some of the more advanced components. this is done by applying a UV map, and the the UV Unwrap modifier tool, this allows you too select faces and then unwrap the model flat, creating an image I then imported into GIMP too really allow me to add more detail to each individual polygons / face. 

Problem - Creating the models originally I feel I have no created enough separate components. Meaning it is a lot harder to make sense of the UV unwrap! especially as I wanted different sections to have a different texture on it. 

Solution - The way i got around this was too detach the sections creating separate components from them, this would not be the best way to do it, and I understand now that i should have created separate components in the first place, as to me this is a very messy way of doing it. 

Using GIMP is good, but I have not used it for a while, so have found it difficult remembering the tools, you do need to be a good artist to create good textures. 






The textures themselves are very easy too apply after the uv map has been applied, and quite often if the component is mainly one color  it is better not too add the unwrap complicating the process.