Welcome to my first blog post ever. This post is regarding a project that I made by utilizing simple tools within 3ds Max.
Really, the project started off with one thing: how am I going to structure this project? We can put the technical stuff for later, but when I start a project, I need to frame it first. Of course, there is the option for me to just make a bunch of boxes, then add a shape sliding down what seems to be the void, which would be the simplest path to take, but that would also produce the worst results, and I was hoping to reach above and beyond. So with this, I made a plan: there would be a road (which is just a really flat box) surrounded by grass (which are just two slightly less flat boxes) with various buildings (which, may I inform you, are more boxes), and a cylinder (finally something that is not a box!) will be tumbling down the road. The concept is not much, but I felt like I was just a step ahead, and small things build up. After I finished my simple concept, I looked at it, and thought it wasn't enough. I mean, if I saw a cutscene in a game where a cylinder descends in a very non-flashy manner onto a cityscape made up of a bunch of boxes, my reaction would probably be to open my control panel and uninstall the game. So, to make it less unbearably bland, I let the cylinder bounce on the road so there was some life to the project. I mean, you really can't get much life out of a cylinder, but it was something, and I was slightly happier with what I had made. But 0 + 0.01 is still pretty close to 0, so I still wasn't quite happy with it. I thought I could do more. My brain was flying through various thoughts, thinking: What can I do to make it look more cinematic and less bland? Then it hit me: lighting. Hear me out. No cinematic masterpeice is done without good lighting. Good lighting is what creates contrast. Good lighting is what creates beautiful colors. As a person who has taught myself digital illustration for over five years, I know more than well that good lighting is key to a beautiful artwork. Even in real life, it's pretty obvious that taking a picture of someone in a sunset would look drastically better than taking a picture of the exact same person in the exact same look in the exact same pose but instead in a completely white room. My point in all this rambling: lighting is important in making something look good and cinematic. So with that thought, I liftd my sleeves up, and... spent a few minutes figuring out how to use the lights. I'm no expert at this, I had no idea what the lights were going to do, so it was a challenge to have that worked out. I started out by adding a light into the scene and pointed it towards the cityscape. I thought to myself, This would surely work! I was mistaken, to say the least. I changed my viewport to see how the scene would look like rendered and the cityscape was pretty much pitch black, with the weakest sign of light possible. That was mildly infuriating, but I eventually had a decent grasp of what was going on and how the lights were going to work. I added two lights: An orange point light, which was the main light source, and a blue, ambience light. It was an attempt to emulate what something would look like in real life. Plus, orange and blue were complentary colors, so it creates the perfect cinematic contrast. And after I added that lighting, I rendered out the project and was decently happy with my results.
Now, this project was really fun overall. I touched into 3D modeling slightly before, but there were a lot of tools I did not touch. Namely, I never used a light and camera before in my 3D modeling before, and I've also never made 3D animations. It was all new to me, so it was honestly pretty awesome. Both of those tools are sure to help me in the distant future, and even though I didn't exactly make full use out of the tools, I can already imagine the various uses these two features can have, like a simulation for a day-night cycle or animating a run cycle. I also learned how to actually render out my product into image and video format, rather than a 3D model format like .obj or .fbx, which is handy when I'm trying to render a cinematic piece rather than trying to import a 3D model into a game.
However, I didn't use one feature every and any 3D modeling engine has: Actually transforming the model. As a person who has played with a bit of Blender before, I know 3D modeling engines have a way to select vertices, edges, and faces, and then manipulate those to modify the object. There's not a default preset for everything in the engine; the engine won't make everything for you. The user has to modify basic shapes like cubes and spheres to make more complicated shapes, like a human body or a building that isn't just a basic rectangular prism. I originlly wanted to make a car roll down the streets rather than a cylinder, but I couldn't find the tools to modify the meshes, so I had to stick to basic shapes. What a shame. For me, this project was relatively easy. I was familiar with creating objects and moving them around, and making simple transformations like stretching it to be longer. However, I wasn't too familiar with the keyframes system, and again, the lights and cameras took me a bit to get familiar with because I never used either tools ever before. Overall, I think this project was awesome! It's pretty cool that I got to build my first "cinematic" piece, and it's a great way to be introduced to computer modeling and animation. I believe the project would have been better if I were able to build a basic custom model rolling down the streets instead of a default shape instead though.
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AuthorI am Duan Wang, currently a sophomore in Chapel Hill High School. I have been self-taught illustration for over 5 years. CategoriesArchivesNo Archives |