3DANIM - Stage 1 - Station Ident - Evaluation

Of the three modules I chose to study (Advanced Animation, Audio/Visual Production and Production & Direction For Camera), I found this one the hardest. This is due to the fact that I had never previously opened an animation package before beginning this advanced module owing to not being in the first year at this university and therefore not doing the ‘introduction’ to animation work. Also, combined with the relatively steep learning curve of the program and the demands of work from the other modules and work outside university, I struggled overall.

I did, however, learn a number of things:

• I know how to create objects, change their sizes, move/adjust them etc., bend, squeeze, twist etc. them and animate them using auto-key.
• I can apply a texture from a bitmap and apply a number of different types of lighting (although some were experimental). I messed around with bump-mapping etc., but haven’t quite figured out how to do it successfully yet.
• I originally couldn’t figure out how to render the animation to a video file in high quality. I did find the Animation > Make Preview dialogue, but it produced low-quality videos. I found out how to correctly render videos after some research, including how to make sure it outputted at 720x576.

I came across a few problems:

• I can animate using auto-key fine, but it only worked when I changed the models in some way. Whenever I moved the lighting too, it didn’t move when I played back the timeline.
• I also could not get the IK solvers to work (for bending legs etc.), but I think that was because it was just too far ahead of what I could do for the time being.
• I struggled to be able to animate for 30 seconds, as the timeline only displayed 100 frames, which is three seconds and I could not find out how to change this (I tried right-clicking the timeline, using the help files etc.).
• Finally, I could not figure out how to add sound effects or music, so the rendered video is mute.

Overall I felt I worked hard on this module but simply haven’t ‘picked it up’ in the eight weeks, and my work reflects this in some ways. However, I enjoyed the module and will continue to explore the program(s)/area in the future as I understand how it will benefit me later in the module, in other modules and perhaps when I finish my course(s) at university and go on to get a job in the field.

Word count: 427