Tank Animation Progress

I've made a lot of progress with my modelling since I last blogged. I came up with a new idea for my Army Advert and I have finished my TANK! As the target audience is GCSE school leavers, I decided to try and capture this in my video so i've gone with a school theme. I've been modelling a desk and various bits of stationary etc, the idea being the tank drives around the table and goes through different stages such as being at school, GCSE's, joining the army, and also life in the army. Ambitious!
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Here are a few screens of the progress I have made so far.

-The Finished Tank, decided to give it a wireframe look
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The Tank and a few stationary items

Tank Tracks Animation

I've animated the tracks and worked a bit on the back of the tank. It looks okay, the animation works quite well. Its been rendered using mental ray, but the quality has been reduced to upload on here.
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I've finished the lower half of the tank and uploaded some pics of it below. The next stage is to model the barrels on the back, and create the top part of the tank including the turret and add any lil bits of detail here and there. Hopefully it will be finished soon! Then I can start blowing stuff up. cool beans!

-The finished bottom with tank wheels and tracks.
-Zoomed in to see detail of the wheels.
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The Army - Tank Design

My army advert is going to focus around one thing. A Tank. So I thought I would show some progress I've been making with modelling my tank. It's 'loosely' based on the British tank Challenger II, but i've made up bits here and there. Next stage is finish the shell, then model the back and finally the turret and gun.
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I've got the tank tracks and wheels to animate, the wheels spin round and the track moves. Unfortunately they aren't working together in Max (the wheels don't make the tracks move), but it looks like they do lol and that's good enough for me! I imagine getting the wheels and tracks to connect together and both move would be done in reactor (not even gonna try!).
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Also have been playing around with different rendering techniques, mental ray and light tracers etc. Not having much luck with mental ray because its a bit hard. Perhaps I will give up before I start.
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The Army Mood Board

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The Army Research Board

A Modern, Professional Army
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The British Army is a forward looking organisation founded on the bedrock of strong leadership. It depends on obtaining, sustaining and retaining soldiers of the highest quality, ensuring they are equipped to the highest possible standard
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The British army is a huge organisation with many different jobs and opportunities for those wishing to get involved and join up. There are many different views on the army, some positive, while some negative. For this project it is looking at army recruitment therefore a positive message is going to be portrayed. The following is research carried out on different army advertising campaigns and sources of this advertising material.
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The Army on TV
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More recently the army has made a lot more effort in advertising itself to an audience, and the quality of this advertising is of a high standard. The adverts found on the television normally consist of acting out a real life situation you could find yourself in if you where to join.
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This advertising normally asks you to check out the internet to find out what happens next in the video, and this is a great way of getting people to look at the army website.
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The Army on the Internet
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http://www.armyjobs.mod.uk/
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The army jobs website has all the information you would need about joining the army and what type of work the army would demand. The website goes into detail on all the different aspects of army life and offers stacks of information that someone considering joining up would need to know.
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The brief for the project states that it is aimed at 16 year olds who are carrying on education and might want to consider the army as an alternative, or an option to take after. Here is what the website has to say about education in the army.
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Education
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The British Army - one of the most respected military organisations in the world. And who are the brains behind the whole operation? The truth is, it's every soldier and officer who makes up its ranks. We believe your education is fundamental to making the Army the best it can be, so we take your learning and development very seriously. From university degrees, to trade skills, to the financial incentives which help you get there, you'll find Army education integral to your career, and the doorway to achieving things in life you never thought possible.
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Are You 15-18 Years Old?
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As you near the end of compulsory school, you'll be thinking about your GCSEs/SCEs, and also what to do after them. If you're considering a career in the Army but also want to further your education at college or university, joining one of the Army's Further Education Colleges might be just what you are after.
The Army has three colleges: the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, the Army Training Regiment at Bassingbourn and Welbeck - The Defence Sixth Form College. Apart from Welbeck, you'll be paid from the start and whichever college you attend, you'll gain the confidence needed to lead others in one of the most challenging careers there is.
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At University or Going Soon?
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If you're heading off to university soon or are already there, you'll be eligible to apply for financial sponsorship through the Army. And because university is such a social place, we also run the University Officers Training Corps (UOTC) - an ideal way to get stuck into some real adventure with friends while getting paid for the privilege.
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Modelling my Mug (step by step)

MODELLING MY FACE PART 2 - you NOSE it!
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The hardest thing I have encountered so far with modelling my mug is the nose and the mouth. This has taken literally hours of fiddling and tweaking, changing lines, moving vertexes, and with all this nearly falling off my chair laughing at the way it turns out.
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I've decided that in order to make progress with my face and get all my other coursework done as well i'm going to have to settle with something, so what i have done i wouldn't say i'm 100% happy with, but it's good enough to continue to the next stage without starting again completely from scratch (something i have seriously contemplated)
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Stay tuned for my eyes and ears and the rest of the head - bleh!
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MODELLING MY FACE PART 2 - symmetry
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The next stages of the face modelling is in 3D studio max. The image of the topographical lines were imported into max so I could create lines over the image to build up a mesh of my face. Once this was done (and with a LOT of tweaking), the face can be made symmetrical allowing the next stage of the face to be completed.
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This is what turned out.
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Moving the vertexes sideways was tricky to begin with but it comes together in the end.


MODELLING MY FACE PART 1 - topology
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I thought it might be a good idea to upload some images of my attempts at modelling my face in 3D max.
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The first stage was getting a suitable image of my face front and side on and making sure that key areas lined up okay (eyes, nose and mouth) - This was VERY annoying, but I got there in the end (still not exactly lined up like that guy in the tutorial, what a complete symmetrical freak). to make my face more symmetrical I mirrored one side of it.
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Here are images of my face lined up with the topographical lines drawn on. (excuse the dodgey hair)
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Army Recruitment

First blog of the new semester (sorry it's been a while).

I've decided to join the army! The design brief I have chosen is the Army Recruitment Campaign. After contemplating all the different design briefs, I came to the conclusion that the army would be an interesting subject to cover.
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Why? Because it's teaching the young generation how they can improve their life skills in the army... and because you get to blow stuff up!
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It's important to come up with an original idea, and also important to expand on my 3D max skills that I developed in the first semester. I'm going to pursue using reactor because it's such a fantastic physics engine it would seem silly not to make use of its destructive capabilities. I'll be implementing other elements also (these undecided, perhaps particles for explosions etc). Watch this space for research and mood boards.
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On other notes, the 3D model of my face is coming along horribly. I'll get up some more on this when I can.
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Dismissed!