I thought it would be a good idea just to put a brief note about our presentation on here:
Well I think we were happy with what we produced as a group and how we presented it.
This is how it went down:
Craig introduced us and stated what we selected from the museum and why.
We then played our animation.
Adam then spoke about the environment he created.
Steven explained how we assigned the tasks of modelling the pump and its surroundings
and finally I explained why we decided to include a fire/chimnea.
The criticism we received was useful, but also somewhat confusing in one area. The confusing piece was obviously we stated that it was 'Arthur Mumfords Favourite Boiler Feed Pump' and that on top of the actual pump it is embossed 'Joseph Evans'. However we were led to believe that J.Evans created the pump but had some form of link to A.Mumford due to Craig having contacted one of the engineers at the museum multiple times and getting this information.
The other main point was simply that our animation ended a bit abruptly. Given more time obviously we could work this out and smooth the end result out.
All in all I think we enjoyed this project for the most part and worked well together.
Thursday, 10 December 2009
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Craig Barker -Final Post
Today we all got together and finalised the video. I started by booking out a sound recorder from media services, and recording the vocals to be placed with the video.
After a bit of a mess around with the MP3 recorder, it was decided that Adam's voice was a bit more "museumy" than mine so he was used as the voice actor for the script!
The animation was imported into Adobe Premiere without any problems and the vocals were added. We then realised that the vocals out lasted the video, so we looped the video to make it all match up! Finally we added the sound effects of crackling fire to complete the video.
JOB DONE!!!
After a bit of a mess around with the MP3 recorder, it was decided that Adam's voice was a bit more "museumy" than mine so he was used as the voice actor for the script!
The animation was imported into Adobe Premiere without any problems and the vocals were added. We then realised that the vocals out lasted the video, so we looped the video to make it all match up! Finally we added the sound effects of crackling fire to complete the video.
JOB DONE!!!
Monday, 7 December 2009
Final Scene
Steven here, with our complete boiler pump finally placed into Adam's environment. Before I go into any detail, here's a screengrab of the final animation frame:
We spent our most recent meeting putting the boiler pump together, and then placed it into the environment. We also placed a camera into the scene, which moves around to give the viewer a better view of the envoronment, and most importantly the boiler pump as a whole.
Because I've been using the most recent version of 3DS Max, and since my middle part of the boiler pump (and presumably the materials too) will not open in earlier versions of the program, I was tasked with rendering the final video.
Before doing so, a number of changes had to be made, not only to shorten the total render time as much as possible, but also because of other technical issues. The aforementioned changes are as follows, with screengrabs.
Firstly, Adam's water tank was removed from the scene:
This was a difficult decision for me to make, since I imagine that along with the environment, Adam spent a fair bit of time getting the tank to look just right, and it fit in with the scene very well. However, once the completed boiler pump was placed into the scene, we initially had difficulty getting it to fit next to where this boiler was placed. It was shrunk, and even moved to the other side of the room, but I later noticed that it got in the way of the camera, so it ultimately had to be hidden. I personally feel that, had we thought more about it, we probably could have found a way for the water tank to connect to and work with the boiler pump.
Secondly, I had to replace Ryan's fire with one of my own.
The flame does look very good, but a problem that Ryan discovered early on was that, when a light source is included in the scene with this fire, it for some reasons colours some of it blue. While blue is the inverted colour of yellow, we had been scratching our heads as to why the flame was even changing to that colour, or rather how or why the light was changing it. With no apparent answer or a way to solve this, my only option (with it being 2am at the time... I just wanted to get the render started and go to bed!) was to replace the flame with one that I made and used for an earlier assignment:
So after bringing in this flame from a 3D Modelling and Animation assignment from last year, I placed it into Ryan's model, resized it as neccesary, and this is how it looks:
It is a bit of a shame that I had to resort to this, because my flame is actually dimmer than Ryan's, and the reflection effect that the previous flame had has now been lost.
Finally, a bump map that Adam applied to the concrete floor had to be removed.
Bump maps take a fair bit of time to render, so with the floor basically being a giant bump map, that would have been one of the contributing factors to a very, very long rendering time. So I simply had to make one small adjustment to the material to get rid of the bump map...
And this is what it now looks like. You can still see that there appears to be some bumps in the floor, so while it now doesn't have a very realistic texture, it still doesn't look too bad, and again reduces rendering time.
So while applying these changes, as well as making minor adjustments to the lighting and shading, I managed to get the total rendering time from 25 hours, up to around 36, and then finally down to a more reasonable 19 hours. I still didn't think my laptop could handle all of that, so I had to do it in four parts, three of which I slept through. The final render, in video form and with all four parts included, is here:
In our next, and most likely final meeting before we present it to the museum staff, we will be making some more changes like possibly adding a voiceover.
We spent our most recent meeting putting the boiler pump together, and then placed it into the environment. We also placed a camera into the scene, which moves around to give the viewer a better view of the envoronment, and most importantly the boiler pump as a whole.
Because I've been using the most recent version of 3DS Max, and since my middle part of the boiler pump (and presumably the materials too) will not open in earlier versions of the program, I was tasked with rendering the final video.
Before doing so, a number of changes had to be made, not only to shorten the total render time as much as possible, but also because of other technical issues. The aforementioned changes are as follows, with screengrabs.
Firstly, Adam's water tank was removed from the scene:
This was a difficult decision for me to make, since I imagine that along with the environment, Adam spent a fair bit of time getting the tank to look just right, and it fit in with the scene very well. However, once the completed boiler pump was placed into the scene, we initially had difficulty getting it to fit next to where this boiler was placed. It was shrunk, and even moved to the other side of the room, but I later noticed that it got in the way of the camera, so it ultimately had to be hidden. I personally feel that, had we thought more about it, we probably could have found a way for the water tank to connect to and work with the boiler pump.
Secondly, I had to replace Ryan's fire with one of my own.
The flame does look very good, but a problem that Ryan discovered early on was that, when a light source is included in the scene with this fire, it for some reasons colours some of it blue. While blue is the inverted colour of yellow, we had been scratching our heads as to why the flame was even changing to that colour, or rather how or why the light was changing it. With no apparent answer or a way to solve this, my only option (with it being 2am at the time... I just wanted to get the render started and go to bed!) was to replace the flame with one that I made and used for an earlier assignment:
So after bringing in this flame from a 3D Modelling and Animation assignment from last year, I placed it into Ryan's model, resized it as neccesary, and this is how it looks:
It is a bit of a shame that I had to resort to this, because my flame is actually dimmer than Ryan's, and the reflection effect that the previous flame had has now been lost.
Finally, a bump map that Adam applied to the concrete floor had to be removed.
Bump maps take a fair bit of time to render, so with the floor basically being a giant bump map, that would have been one of the contributing factors to a very, very long rendering time. So I simply had to make one small adjustment to the material to get rid of the bump map...
And this is what it now looks like. You can still see that there appears to be some bumps in the floor, so while it now doesn't have a very realistic texture, it still doesn't look too bad, and again reduces rendering time.
So while applying these changes, as well as making minor adjustments to the lighting and shading, I managed to get the total rendering time from 25 hours, up to around 36, and then finally down to a more reasonable 19 hours. I still didn't think my laptop could handle all of that, so I had to do it in four parts, three of which I slept through. The final render, in video form and with all four parts included, is here:
In our next, and most likely final meeting before we present it to the museum staff, we will be making some more changes like possibly adding a voiceover.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
My Final Scene
This is my final scene after some adjustments were made from the previous video clip. I added some surroundings to help set the scene. These objects could be taken out obviously for when we piece the pump together.
Almost there
I thought I would post an update to how the rest of the pump is looking, before I finish it off today (with any luck). Once its all complete I will post all the report in how I created each element.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Boiler Pump Environment
The sequence of images below show the creation of a room, styled to appear like that of a cellar in a large house or industrial building. The intial construction of the room began with four walls, a celing and floor. From here objects were created to fill the environment. consisting of the following:
- Hot water tank (basic cylinder then modelled, rusted metal texture bitmap)
- Toolbox (two chamfer boxes, with extruded sections for form the handle and lock, bitmap applied)
- Spanner (modelled from a basic box with a reflective metal texture applied)
- Shelf unit (box shapes, with applied bitmaps and textures)
- Copper pipes (created as individual assemblies consisting of cylinders with extruded sections to form the flanges and bolts. A coppery texture was created using a yellow based phong material with a smoke map. Bolts used a silver metal texture)
- air cooler box (basic chamfer box with a plastic coloured white material, fan blades created as extruded ellipses and grouped together. vents are flat sections with a rusted metal texture)
- shovel (modelled box and cylinders with applied textures)
- Stairs (standard stair shape from 3dsmax with applied bitmap)
Lighting was created using mental ray omni lights. two directed through the windows into the cellar and a further light located above the stairs. The foreground of the room was left clear to enable space for the boiler pump and to allow it to form the focal point of the room.
Render prior to insertion of the boiler pump
4th Stage after consultation with the group
3rd stage with initially applied lighting
2nd Stage
1st StageFriday, 27 November 2009
Animation
After adding materials and bump mapping to our models, I have now animated the middle piece. There are a couple of minor issues with the render since I had attempted to use Curve Editor to loop the animation, and when it comes to the end it pauses for a brief moment before repeating.
Anyway, here's what we have:
Anyway, here's what we have:
Boiler Pump, Two Thirds Complete
Here are a few screen shots of mine and Steven's models together. As you can see, the pump is really starting to come to life. All we need now is Ryan's side of the pump and we are ready to add it into Adam's environment!
Friday, 20 November 2009
Left and middle pieces
Steven here, with my middle piece of the boiler pump. I've done a bit more to it, adding more parts as my guesswork alone is teaching me how the machine works, giving me a much clearer idea of how it should be coming together.
This is what it looked like last night, before I started adding more pieces, applying meshsmooth to one or two parts and changing the colours from something you'd see in Toytown to match the appearance of the actual machine:
It's looking much better now, but there are still a few more details I need to add before I start animating the swivels and pistons. Aside from what's lacking at this moment in time, I'm very pleased with how it looks so far.
Craig seems to have finished his left part of the machine, and I think he's done a pretty good job. He's also recoloured it to match the paint job that the boiler pump has, and this is the result:
I have to say that I'm quite impressed with the model as a whole, especially the amount of detail that he's put in.
Now, it's time to bring these two parts together to create two thirds of the boiler pump! So with mine and Craig's modelling powers combined, we have...
...discovered that our models are completely out of scale with each other. We have both been using centimetres as our measuring unit in 3DS Max, but my part is stupidly oversized, whereas Craig has been working with the correct scale of the real life boiler pump. So, it's now time to shrink my piece down to the right size and bring the two together...
Although there are a few minor niggles like overlapping pieces and some colours not quite matching, it's starting to come together quite nicely. Keep a look out for my next entry as I apply finishing touches to my middle piece, and start adding some realistic materials to our models.
This is what it looked like last night, before I started adding more pieces, applying meshsmooth to one or two parts and changing the colours from something you'd see in Toytown to match the appearance of the actual machine:
It's looking much better now, but there are still a few more details I need to add before I start animating the swivels and pistons. Aside from what's lacking at this moment in time, I'm very pleased with how it looks so far.
Craig seems to have finished his left part of the machine, and I think he's done a pretty good job. He's also recoloured it to match the paint job that the boiler pump has, and this is the result:
I have to say that I'm quite impressed with the model as a whole, especially the amount of detail that he's put in.
Now, it's time to bring these two parts together to create two thirds of the boiler pump! So with mine and Craig's modelling powers combined, we have...
...discovered that our models are completely out of scale with each other. We have both been using centimetres as our measuring unit in 3DS Max, but my part is stupidly oversized, whereas Craig has been working with the correct scale of the real life boiler pump. So, it's now time to shrink my piece down to the right size and bring the two together...
Although there are a few minor niggles like overlapping pieces and some colours not quite matching, it's starting to come together quite nicely. Keep a look out for my next entry as I apply finishing touches to my middle piece, and start adding some realistic materials to our models.
Ryan Jackson 0705370
My task in the group is to create elements of the environment. My aim to create water (or some other liquid) that will be held in a container as if it were to be fed through the pump. And fire, which of course provides the steam to power the pump itself. I will also be modelling parts of the main pump itself, to which we are referring to as the 'right' side of the pump.
At the moment I am concentrating on the fire effect. Here is a video of how it looks so far with a rough idea for the house of the fire.
One particular issue with the fire at the moment is when a light source is added in the environment. It seems to be changing the colour of my flames to blue for some reason - this is not the case in the video above as there is not any lighting in the surrounding area.
More to come soon!
At the moment I am concentrating on the fire effect. Here is a video of how it looks so far with a rough idea for the house of the fire.
One particular issue with the fire at the moment is when a light source is added in the environment. It seems to be changing the colour of my flames to blue for some reason - this is not the case in the video above as there is not any lighting in the surrounding area.
More to come soon!
Craig Barker 0607747
Here I have added the final bits to my side of the boiler pump. I have added the the little taps at the bottom and created a quick render of my model so far using mental ray, which I was unfamiliar with at the start of the module, but with some online guidance, I created my first video clip!
Monday, 16 November 2009
Steven Reeves 0701858
For this group project, my own task involves modelling and animating this particular section of Arthur Mumford's pump, circled in the photo below:
This part features swivels which are seemingly attached to clamps that move a pair of pistons back and forth. And by "seemingly", I mean that I can't clearly tell whether or not they are actually attached just by looking at the photos (I was never able to visit the museum myself, so a lot of guess work has to be done by me). Presumably, the swivels on the sides actually push the clamps attached to the pistons back and forth without actually being attached to them:
Look where the arrow is pointing. The swivel doesn't appear to actually be attached to the clamp, and the part where the arrow points to appears to have had a load of paint scratched off over time. So at the moment, this is the only lead I've got as to how this part works.
Here's what I've modelled so far:
I started out by modelling the main body of this section (the part in gold), which I did by making a box, adjusting the size and number of faces as I needed, and extruding the faces in order to match the proportions of the actual machine. From there I added more shapes for the various parts of the machine, with a bit more work going into the swivels and the clamp holding the pistons.
I will use modifiers to smooth it all out when I feel the time is right, but I want to complete the modelling process fist. There is still one little bit that I'm currently stuck on...
These two joints. And I have no idea how the work or how they move, so it seems that there's plenty of guess work for me to do.
This part features swivels which are seemingly attached to clamps that move a pair of pistons back and forth. And by "seemingly", I mean that I can't clearly tell whether or not they are actually attached just by looking at the photos (I was never able to visit the museum myself, so a lot of guess work has to be done by me). Presumably, the swivels on the sides actually push the clamps attached to the pistons back and forth without actually being attached to them:
Look where the arrow is pointing. The swivel doesn't appear to actually be attached to the clamp, and the part where the arrow points to appears to have had a load of paint scratched off over time. So at the moment, this is the only lead I've got as to how this part works.
Here's what I've modelled so far:
I started out by modelling the main body of this section (the part in gold), which I did by making a box, adjusting the size and number of faces as I needed, and extruding the faces in order to match the proportions of the actual machine. From there I added more shapes for the various parts of the machine, with a bit more work going into the swivels and the clamp holding the pistons.
I will use modifiers to smooth it all out when I feel the time is right, but I want to complete the modelling process fist. There is still one little bit that I'm currently stuck on...
These two joints. And I have no idea how the work or how they move, so it seems that there's plenty of guess work for me to do.
Friday, 13 November 2009
Craig Barker 0607747
I was allocated the tasks of collecting all needed information on the boiler pump, along with creating the small end of the pump where the steam exits.
I started off by making the indented top of the pump complete with the four nuts and bolts.
In order to make the indented top, I had to select the required amount of faces from the editable poly modifier and use extrude to pull them down a small amount. However, I noticed from the reference images that the four corners of the indented top were rounded and not square, to make them rounded I selected the edge modifier from within editable poly, selected the inside edge, and pulled it in slightly. I did this for the remaining three and then added a turbosmooth to make the edges nice and smooth!
I then continued modelling the rest of the pump. Below are a few pictures of the pump so far. Once the modelling is complete, I will add textures to it to make it more realistic.
I started off by making the indented top of the pump complete with the four nuts and bolts.
In order to make the indented top, I had to select the required amount of faces from the editable poly modifier and use extrude to pull them down a small amount. However, I noticed from the reference images that the four corners of the indented top were rounded and not square, to make them rounded I selected the edge modifier from within editable poly, selected the inside edge, and pulled it in slightly. I did this for the remaining three and then added a turbosmooth to make the edges nice and smooth!
I then continued modelling the rest of the pump. Below are a few pictures of the pump so far. Once the modelling is complete, I will add textures to it to make it more realistic.
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Arthur Mumford's Boiler Feed Pump
For this group project, I proposed to the group that due to the time constraints we should concentrate on creating a simple working model of the boiler feed pump and make sure the information for it is correct.
When I visited the museum of power I took many pictures and after meeting with my group, we agreed on this piece of machinery:
When I visited the museum of power I took many pictures and after meeting with my group, we agreed on this piece of machinery:
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