For this 3P98 project I chose to do an animation, for one main reason and that was it wasnt really covered in class in the same depth as the other topics and as such I believed it would have been an interesting area to try my hand in order to broaden my understanding and if it came out well enough to use it as a resume enhancer. I was right this project gave me a whole new respect for those animations that we watch. The amount of work that goes into an animation is staggering. From story boarding to modeling to sound editing each of these takes a considerable amount of time and effort. I did every aspect of this project myself and as such I can justifiably say that each of the different aspects posed challenges as well as amazing discoveries.
In this project I thought that coming up with a story or event would be easy and simple to accomplish but it wasnt this way at all. It took me over three days of brain storming to come with anything that would give this project substance. But after the first idea, an average morning in the life of a student, I was stuck again. So I decided to move on to the next phase of the process, modeling.
Modeling started off simpler than the brain storming aspect but after I had mapped out a layout of an apartment. I realized that I would have to model everything that a typical person would have in an apartment, and every time I believed I was on the last model I would come up with something else that was required in the apartment. With every new item to design and model days were being chipped away from my allotted time. I had finally finished what I believe would have been a well furnished apartment. I had modeled the apartment, a bed, a lamp, an alarm clock, night stands, a sofa, a T.V. with remote control, a fridge, a dishwasher, a stove, the kitchen counters, the kitchen sink, the toilet, the shower, the bathtub and finally the bathroom sink. Then I realized that someone needs to live in this space so I started to work on my character but somewhere between realizing this and starting to work, I had decided that the model will be based on the character from Hitman. So I changed my story slightly to the average morning in the life of a hit man.
Once I started work on the modeling of the character I quickly realized that my Blender sculpting skills were severely lacking. So I trashed the idea of a character and had to go back to the storyboard, I had a well furnished apartment and no time to model any other kind of scenery. So I decided that a miniature car race through the apartment would be good. Thats when I also realized that I had been doing my modeling in Autodesk Autocad and to port it to blender would not work without an add-on but instead of shelling out money for the add-on I installed FreeCad imported the format into FreeCad and exported it to a blender friendly one. While this way worked it was not the best as depending on the format faces would be missing or objects would not be there at all. I had decided to continue with the process however after finishing the porting I modeled a car and ported that as well. It was finally time to do the animation.
This process was not as difficult as I had expected and was surprisingly enjoyable seeing your work come to live with each additional key frame was invigorating. After framing out how the cars would move and where they would move, it was time for the wheels. That is where the animation phase increased in difficulty but it was just a matter of time. And then it was rendering.
After the animation and rendering, there was still no sound. I had started off with the concept of I wanted to do everything myself but there was no way I could make sounds that would be reasonable for the animation. So I decided to outsource the tire squeals and engine roars to YouTube and other websites. Upon finding the appropriate sounds I then had to record them to an audio file and cut them into the pieces I needed. This process was also much more time consuming than I had initially thought but with that complete the project was over and it was ready for final rendering and submission.
In final this project has allowed me to appreciate the amount of effort and work that goes into an animation and provided me with an insight into a field that was not even in my line of sight.