Today I created a survey for people to fill in regarding my final animation for Multi-Story Water. I managed to get eight people to fill it in and now have the results. Overall they seem very positive and I am very happy with the outcome. There were 5 questions overall, two to get a small idea of who the person is and then another three questions regarding my animation. Here are the questions:
What is your age?
What is your gender?
What would you rate my animation?
What aspect(s) did you prefer?
What aspect(s) could I improve?
The system used to give the answers was a list of predetermined answers with a tick box next to each one. For the age section there were different ranges; 16 -19, 20 - 29, 30 - 39, 40+. For the answers to the third question I used what is known as the 5 level Likert scale, where the people filling in the survey could give a rating between 1 and 5, 1 being poor, 5 being excellent. For the fourth and fifth questions I gave a list of 5 different aspects of my animation; Models, Textures, Animation, Sounds and Music, giving the option of ticking multiple answers. There was also a 6th option which was 'other' which gave the chance to say that they preferred or thought I could improve in an aspect not listed.
Looking at purely the results for each question I notice that the feedback concerning the third question was very positive, with all but one person giving my animation a rating of 5 and the person who didn't gave it a 4. Also a noticeable part of the results is the results for the fourth question. I had 7 people say they preferred the models and 5 say they preferred my textures. This is very good for me as I believe they are my strengths and if people liked those aspects that must be my strength. This also shows how the two link as one affects the other, a poor texture on a good model could make it look bad and if they were to answer the same questions, less people might have liked the model as a result of the poor textures. Also in this question I am rather surprised to see my sound getting 4 people saying they preferred it as I wasn't very enthusiastic about the results of the sound, so getting 4 people preferring them must mean I did better than I thought. On the last question I was happy to see that nobody thought I could improve my models and my textures, adding further to my confidence in my 3D work. This question also shows divided opinions as compared to the last question, 4 people thought I could improve my sound which means although some liked it, just as many thought it could be better.
When looking at the correlation between different results I notice a few things. One thing is the only two people to prefer the animation aspects were both in the age group 20 - 29. This could be because they have a little more experience than the other people surveyed and might have picked up on the more subtle aspects such as the animating, whereas all the other people were more focused on the actual content. Another thing I notice is that the only female to fill in my results was also the only person to leave the last question blank, meaning they couldn't pick any faults that I could correct.
Since we started our work for Multi-Story Water, every member of the team has been filling out a shared work log. For this work log, each one of us has entered each day what they have done and how long they have worked for. Just above you can see a screenshot showing a week in March, it shows what each person did on their days in college, what extra work they did at home and how many hours they worked in total.
Using this work log we can calculate how many hours we have worked over the course of the project and work out an estimate for how much we would be payed if it were a payed contract.
Total Hours Worked
Overall we spent thirteen and a half hours in college every single week and the project spanned 17 weeks in total. So taking that into consideration we will have at least worked for just under 230 hours. Then taking into account the amount of work at home done we will have done a lot more. The amount of work being done at home seemed to be quite low at first, then as the project continued the amount of work being done steadily increased as what was required to meet deadlines became more and more apparent. Each person in the team did a very similar amount of work at home, which on average was around 6 hours a week per person, which over the entire project would have come to 102 hours. So adding the two together comes to around 330 hours.
Wages
After doing a bit of research into the wages of a 3D artist I have found there can be a massive difference between the highest and lowest wages. This is mostly due to the amount of experience the artist has, with an artist with less than three years experience earning far less than someone who has 20+ years of experience. As most of us have less than 2 years experience in 3D art, we would in theory have been payed a wage somewhere in the lower end, therefore I have chosen £13 an hour for the purpose of the calculations, which is around the wage of a 3D artist with less than 3 years experience.
The Result
In the end if we were each being paid £13 an hour and we all worked 330 hours over this entire project we would have each been paid £4290. I myself am really shocked about how much this is, although, we have spent almost a year on this project and have created a massive amount of content between us.
The first thing I did was take a screenshot from Google Maps of my building and applying it to a plane. Then for the first part of my modelling I used a box and extruded polygons for the cascading balconies on the front of the building. I also had to extrude a few polygons at the top where there was a small lip that extends from the top.
The next thing I did was create the sides of the building, I removed the polygons at the back and then extruded the edges twice, with the second extrusion going off in a different direction.
This part was one of the first "hard" parts as the whole cylinder section was created by extruding the edges on either side many times and wrapping them round into a cylinder. After that I just used the "Create" tool in the polygon section of "Edit Poly" to cover the top.
The next step was to give the cylinder and side walls balcony sections, to do this I extruded the polygons negatively, depressing them inward. This part needed a lot of modelling after depressing the polygons to get rid of the polygons clipping and to make the ledge over the cylinder look correct.
Then starting with a cylinder and extruding the top polygon a few times I was able to create the bars that stretch up the front and sides of the building. Then to bend them I used the "Bend" modifier, with the bars on the side I applied the bend to the top few polygons and with the bars on the front I bent all the polygons apart from the wider part at the base. I also extruded some balconies from the main part of the building on the front to meet with the bars.
I then did the same on the side, extending balconies using the extrude function. I also created the glass and metal fences/barriers that line the balconies. To create them I used cylinders to create the metal bars and boxes to create the glass panes. To connect them I extruded polygons from the sides of the cylinders and modelled them to look more rounded like the clips you see on barriers like that. The hard part of this was to create the kink in the barrier where the angle of the balcony changes.
Then by taking one section of the barriers on the top balcony I was able to reuse it to create the barriers on the balconies below.
This was probably another one of the "hard" parts of creating the model, wrapping the barriers around the balcony on the cylinder and creating the slanted barriers for the front balconies. For the barriers on the cylinder I attached all the sections into one model and used the bend modifier. It took a long time to get it right, reducing and adding sections to get the length right. Then for the barriers on the front, because of the bars that extend upwards, the barriers were all slanted back to varying degrees, meaning I couldn't just make one and copy it. To do this I created them all stood straight up then using the "skew" modifier on the front rows of barriers I was able to slant them to the correct angle without it taking too much effort.
This part was rather easy, creating the stairs that lead up to the walkway in front of the building. This was because of the "Stairs" tool built into 3ds Max, which meant I could create them fairly quickly with only a small amount of editing being needed.
This part was fairly simple, but was hard to get perfect, copying the current model and using it as a base for the next building. First I grouped all the models together and duplicated them. Then I had to flip/mirror them and rotated them so they were in the right position. I also created part of the raised walkway that connects the two buildings which I created using the cap of a cylinder and extruding the edges to extend to both sides of the buildings.
I then extended the walkway further around ready for when I build the rest of the second building. This part was awkward as I had to curve it round where the cylinder was going to be and slope it down to ground level.
This part was another one of the "hard" parts of creating my environment, changing the existing cylinder into something else to allow for the extended section that comes off it on the second building. The shape was a very strange one and as I was editing an already rather complex model, it made it quite hard. Also as part of this, I had to also edit the existing barriers to be the same shap and because it was a strange shape and not more circular I had to do this part by hand rather than using the "bend" modifier. I also created the extended section and depressed it inward same as earlier to create the balcony.
I then added the bars that are on the side of the extended section. This was also a bit fiddly as the layout of them were a little off with some balconies being much wider than others and some connected to one another. I also created the barriers that stretch along the top balcony, this time it was easier as they were all in one long line, no bends or anything.
The next thing I did was create the lower, smaller balconies on the side of the building along with the barriers. As stated earlier, this was made more awkward as each column of balconies were different widths and some were connected, so creating the barriers for them was much more time consuming.
This part was when I created the last part of the base building, creating the cylinder on the end. I used the same technique as with the first cylinder, however there were a few differences which I had to account for when depressing the polygons inward creating the balcony.
Then I had to create the barriers for the new cylinder section, once again using the same technique. It was just as awkward before, but I was able to do it quicker this time as I knew what I was doing and didn't have to experiment much to get it looking correct.
For this part I was extending the walkway downwards, creating little window slits in the sides by using the extrude function to depress them inwards. This was easy but time consuming as it required a lot of forward planning and need loads of different smoothing groups.
I then extended the walkway further round the recently created cylinder section and also created another section which brought the walkway back and down closer to ground level. Getting the curve around the cylinder was awkward and getting it to taper off at a good angle took time too.
After that it was time to texture my model. Overall there were ten different materials used. One was a sort of gun metal grey material that I used for the roofs, balcony flooring, window frames and the vertical bars that extend up the sides of the buildings. It had a slight worn look giving it varying shades and also had a bit of reflectiveness that was neither matt nor glossy. The other material used was for the windows. As I had nothing behind them I couldn't make them transparent at all, so I made them almost like a mirror or chrome, however all reflections were darkened slightly to give the effect that they were letting some light through. For the barriers I used two materials, one for the bars and one for the glass panes. For the barriers I used a material similar to the one used on the windows, however it was much closer to a chrome like material, creating stronger reflections. Then for the glass planes I used a transparent glass material, with a slight blue tint which can be seen when looking at them from a slight angle. Then for the building itself I used three different brickwork materials. Two of them were a kind of sandstone brickwork, with one being a more chunky, darker brick and the other being a lighter, cleaner cut brick. In the image you can see these two bricks, when you look closely you will notice the sandy coloured bricks change near the bottom just under the level of the bottom balconies. The third material was the pinkish coloured plaster like material. This part was actually a mistake after looking at the building closer I realised it was actually pink coloured brickwork in real life, however it was too late to change it. There were also materials used for the walkways as well as the darker brick from the main building. The first is a dark wood walkway section near the back in between the two buildings, it can just be seen in the image. The second is a dark cement material used near the second building where the walkway widens. The last and barely seen texture in the animation was the underside of the balconies, which was a reddish-orange wood with the gun metal material forming bars across them. As part of the textures I also created normal maps for all of the textures to make them stand out a lot more. A lot of the textures were also edited inside 3ds Max, so the actual texture files will look different in hue and brightness to the ones in the environment. In order to save time during the texturing process I made the decision to leave the rear side of the buildings completely untextured as these parts of the buildings were unseen during the animation.
Here are all the textures I used:
DarkSandstone.jpg DarkSandstone_n.jpg
LightSandstone.jpg LightSandstone_n.jpg
PinkPlaster.jpg PinkPlaster_n.jpg
BlackMetal.jpg BlackMetal_n.jpg
Concrete.jpg Concrete_n.jpg
WalkwayWood.jpg WalkwayWood_n.jpg
BalconyWood.jpg BalconyWood_n.jpg
Once my buildings were all finished, fully modelled and textured, I started work on the entire environment, all the things that were separate to my building, the ground, the trees and the sky. I first started work on the terrain. For this I used a flat plain and applied a "Noise" modifier to create lumps and bumps all over it. Then I collapsed the modifier into it to turn it all into an editable poly and applied a "Ripple" modifier to create a wall of hills around the centre of the plane. Then I collapsed the model once again and modelled the rest by hand, flattening the centre for the building to be placed on. The material I used for the terrain was a simple grass texture, along with a normal map I created for it. This had to be tiled many times as the texture only covered what in real life would be 1 square metre.
Here are the textures and an image of the isolated terrain:
Grass.jpg Grass_n.jpg
I then created the skydome by creating a sphere and cutting the bottom half off. Then I used the "Flip" function in editable poly to turn the polygons inside out. For the texture I applied to this I found an image on the internet where someone had used a special fish-eye lens for a camera so it would take an image with a 180 degree perspective. This was perfect for my skydome as it had a very nice sky with a scattering of clouds, buildings on the horizon and had no lens glare from the sun. I also had to do a lot of things to make it work as it should, making it so it had self-illumination so no shadows could be cast on it and it had a consistent level of lighting all over it. I also had to edit its properties to prevent it from receiving certain types of lighting and stop it from casting a shadow across the scene.
Here is an image of texture I used for it and also a render of the skydome with the polygons facing outward so you can see the texture applied to the dome:
The last part of creating the environment was creating the trees and the little wall around the perimeter of the building. The trees I spent a very long time on, creating 7 different trees overall; 3 Oak Trees, 3 Ash Trees and 1 Beech tree. Overall I really only had to make 3 trees and then made variations upon the originals to create the two variations. I would have made two variations of the beech, however I was unhappy about how it turned out so I decided to leave it as just the one. For creating the models I mainly used box modelling as I was running out of time and didn't think I could pull off creating them through polygon modelling. Then for the leaves I used hundreds of planes. After duplicating each tree many times they were soon the main contributor to my polygon count, being at least 99% of my 9.8 million polygons. For the textures I gather most of them from the internet, however I did create all the normal maps for each bark texture. I had a little trouble getting the leaves to look right as the transparency maps were playing up, spending at least a whole days work correcting the issues. The second section of this step was to create the surrounding wall. This part was very easy as all I had to do was use the "Tube" tool and make it 4 sided. Then I applied a texture, the light sandstone texture, and corrected the smoothing groups so that the corners weren't smoothed. I could have just left it as it was then, however I decided to properly line up the texture so that gaps between the bricks would line up on each side.
Here is a render of all the trees and the walls isolated from the rest of the scene:
The next step was to create the lighting that would go with my environment. Originally I intended to use the "Skylight" tool to create my light, however I was unable to use it in conjunction with my skydome and it was also incompatible with the renderer I had chosen, which was needed for my textures. The arangement I chose in the end was to create a dome of target spotlights for the skylight and then a target direct light for the sun. The spotlights all had a very wide spread and had no hotspots so the light created was very even. Each one was also an instance of the original, which meant I only had to edit the properties of one and the rest would change too. To make sure the lights rotated from the origin of the target I had to link the light to the spot, then whenever I rotated the target, the light moved with it. To create the dome of lights I set the target in the centre of the model, raised the light slightly and then, while holding shift, I rotated the entire object by 45 degrees. When releasing the mouse button a dialogue popped up and I was able to duplicate the light 7 times. This coupled with the rotation made a ring of 8 lights around the centre of my environment. Then selecting only the lights, not the targets, and raising them upwards while holding shift I was able to duplicate them all again. Then I used the scale tool to bring them closer to the centre. After repeating the last step a second time I then had 3 rings of spotlights all pointing at the same spot from different angles. As well as enlarging its spread I also gave the lights a faint blue tint to simulate the blue glow that the sky can cast. The second light I had to make was for the sun, which I used a target direct light. For the intensity of the light I set a very low setting as there were so many lights and because the sky is far less bright than the sun itself. This light differed from the spotlight as it casts all the light parallel, whereas a spot light is cast outwards in all directions. For the direct light I used a slight orange tint to mimic the colour of the sun and I also set it so that it would cast ray-traced shadows. I also enlarged the width of the beam so it would encompass the entire environment. For the intensity I made the direct light much stronger than the spotlights because of how bright the sun is.
Here is a screenshot, showing my set-up of lights:
The final step in the creation of my final animation was to animate it. For the animation I animated cameras, panning across the buildings from different directions. The first camera starts just behind a hill, it then moves up and over the crest of the hill bringing the buildings into view. Then It goes down the hill, breaks through some trees and turns to face the first building. It then pans across the building while rotating before coming to a stop at the end of the second building. This is the longest of the animated cameras and was also the most complex with all the different angle changes and movements. The animation from then on consists of short, ten second clips, panning across different parts of the buildings. The first camera pans from left to right looking close up at the top balcony of the first building. The second camera pans downwards with a close up view of the front of the first building, looking at the balconies and the vertical bars. The third camera pans from left to right across the second row of balconies on the second building, showing the top of the second row and the underside of the first. The fourth and final camera pans around the cylinder section of the second building, panning from the top left around and down to the bottom right. All these were fairly easy to make because of how simple and short they were, although I did have to mess around a little with the origin of the rotation of the final camera.
Now with the modelling, texturing, lighting and animation completed it was time to render everything. Due to the number of polygons being at a very unsuitable level of 9.8 million polygons, the time it took to render was a very long time, even at the considerable low resolution of 800*600. Adding to the render time was the use of indirect illumination, which although it made the environment slightly more realistic, it probably doubled the render time. Adding all these variables together my overall render time for about 1500 frames was about 200 hours. This meant I had to render overnight and also because of my computer crashing overnight while I wasn't there to start the render again, it added to the overall time the rendering process took. So overall I only just finished the rendering around 3 weeks after finishing the creation of my animation.
Evaluation
Overall I am extremely pleased with the final outcome of my animation, especially because I had rather low hopes for this project. As usual my favourite part of the entire thing was the modelling, however I did enjoy the other aspects a bit more than usual and I also put more time into them too. If there was one aspect I did badly it was probably my time management as I had just barely scraped the deadline, however it was also due to unforeseen circumstances rather than just poor planning. If I found anything the hardest it would have probably been the modelling, I did overestimate my abilities in some sections and subsequently ended up being overwhelmed by the complexity of what I was trying to do. Examples of this include the creation of the balcony barriers and the creation of the middle cylinder section of the second building where the extended section connects. The easiest parts that added massively to the building were probably creating the vertical bars that extend up the sides and front of the buildings. They were very easy to make, but they were also the most notable aspect of the building as they are very strange and unique.
When comparing my animation to a professional example I have a massive advantage over everybody else. As my buildings were built fairly recently I was able to locate a professional architect's animation of the exact same buildings, giving me a perfect example for comparison. This was both a blessing and a curse as although I could compare my animation to a professional example of the same thing which made comparison extremely easy, it also fuelled my ambitions of my own animation in an attempt to be as good as a professional, which in turn caused me to almost miss the deadline and almost break my computer in the process. However in the end, my animation wasn't far off the professionals and in some aspects it could even be considered better. For the models of the buildings themselves, my building was very similar, however there are certain aspects where the professional example was more detailed, with me missing some parts out like the smaller windows in between the balconies. Also where the professional example was better is with the animation. Mine was fairly rushed and at some points is a little sloppy and jerky, whereas the professional example is much smoother. Then for the lighting, this is probably the aspect that I fall furthest behind compared to the professional. In the professional example the lighting is much more natural and the colouring is much better defined, whereas with mine the colouring of the lights could do with a bit of work and they also caused a few issues with the reflections in the windows. One of the aspects where I believe my animation was best is the trees. In the professional animation the trees are what are known as billboards, where an image with a transparency map is applied to a plane which then follows the camera around so that it is always facing it. With me using trees that have been modelled as a physical 3D object it made them look much better, being able to cast good shadows and looking much better when rotating around them. One thing I notice about the professional example also is the use of billboards for creating people. I had considered doing this however I didn't think the time constraints allowed for such a thing. As for the environment around the buildings, the professional example has much more detail than mine, with hills, shrubs, trees and animals littered around the scene. This was probably the aspect I struggled with the most and probably spent a considerable amount of time on. I had tried many things such as creating physical grass, putting in shrubs and other plants and putting in planes behind trees with images of buildings. In the end I decided the best option to save time was to focus on the building itself and create a fictional environment around it as my buildings were surrounded by many other buildings, that would have been hard to put in without spending a large amount of time modelling them myself.
Here is the professional example...
...and here is my animation.
In the end, compared to a professional example, I believe I came quite close and am very happy with the final outcome. Also from other people I have had a lot of positive feedback, my classmates praising my work, getting a good comment on YouTube from a former student and even a comment about my work on the client's website stating:
"This video of the new buildings at Victoria Mills is perhaps the most accomplished of all the students’ work. The blend of movement, architecture and light is really quite beautiful."
I have learned a great deal while creating this animation, refining my existing approaches to creating 3D models and even learning new techniques. If I were to do this all over again I would definitely plan a little more ahead and I would also spend more time examining the structure first hand, rather than looking mainly at images of it on the internet.
My animation is now finished, along with the sound I created for it. In the end I deviated slightly from my original plans, mostly due to my ability to obtain certain sounds.
For the music in my animation I recorded myself playing bass guitar. My original intentions were to have acoustic guitar music, however I changed my mind as I am unable to play the acoustic guitar and I preferred to create the music myself. I did however keep the theme of the music, a nice, calm and slow tune so it would fit with the animation.
For the sound effects used in the animation I went out and using my brother's iPod I was able to record most of the sounds I wanted. The first sound used in the animation, and the sound that played right through, was the sound of the wind. I found the best sound of this came from riding a bike while recording. This was better than my previous attempt which was to just swing it around with my arm because it provided a more consistent noise. The second sound heard is of birds tweeting, which I recorded in the local woods. At first I planned on recording the sounds of birds in my back garden, however there weren't enough for there to be constant tweeting, so I went to the woods where there would be more. The third and final noise to be heard was probably the one I experimented most with, trying both the actual action and more obscure things, the sound of trees rustling. I made a few attempts with different trees but was unable to get a very good sound with most of the trees as the ones that had leaves were all evergreen, which didn't have the right leaves to make the rustling. I then went back inside to try other materials like scrunched up paper and in the end the best sound I could get was from using a plastic bag.
I then imported my sounds and music into Audacity where I was able to clean up and crop my sounds and music. With my music I had to do quite a bit of editing. First I cut off the beginning as it was just an empty section where I had hit record, but not started playing yet. Then there were also parts of the music where my playing was inconsistent, some parts going really quiet where I didn't pluck the string very well, some parts where I plucked the string a little too hard and made it too loud. So by using the "Amplify" function in Audacity I was able to correct any problems. Then the last editing I did to my music was to fade out the end so it ended less abruptly. Audacity had a tool for this too, so first I selected a section from the start of where I want it to start fading out to the end of the music, then I went to the "Effect" menu and selected "Fade Out".
For the sounds, I didn't do much editing, it was mainly just cropping bits off that I didn't want and quietening bits that were too loud.
To apply all the sounds to the animation I used Sony Vegas, a video editing software made by Sony. I preferred to use this as it had many more functions than Windows Movie Maker and allowed me to overlap sounds. Using Sony Vegas I was also able to change the volume of the different sounds, which was useful as some of the sounds were a little too loud compared to the music and other sounds.
Overall I believe my sound turned out rather well however I would have preferred it if I were able to create some better music. Although, I think it still fitted very well with the animation, creating the atmosphere I originally intended. The sounds I were very pleased with, especially as I didn't think I'd be able to get as good a recording as I did with an iPod.
Compared to a professional example, I could have quite a bit to improve on. My music was a little sloppy and simple, and would have been better performed by someone a little more experienced. Then with the sounds, although the quality was pretty good, there does seem to be a few awkward silent moments in the animation, so it might have been better if I had recorded a few more sounds to fill it in a little more. Another thing I've noticed in professional examples is that the music is also made to fit with what is happening in the animation, with the music changing in someway when something happens in the animation. This could be something I'd try if I were to do it again.
Here's my final animation...
...and this is a professional example of the exact same buildings, along with its own music and sound.
