Ident Two - Reactor

I've been trying my best to get to grips with reactor. It's tricky stuff, but so far I have been able to get a few things out of it. My idea for the second ident is to use the cube in a different way other than it just turning into place. A crane will knock into the cube causing the parts to fly about in different directions.
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I've had a play around in reactor with rigid body collections and have managed to come up with the following video. This is just a small test I have done to give the general idea as to what I would like to achieve.
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I would like to have the ball attatched to the crane so i've been playing around with reactor rope also. This is quite ambitious but i'm hoping everything will join up and work together!
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This is a test video I have created using reactor rope.

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The Cube Faces (detail)

It may seem like an easy thing, applying a few images onto cube faces. But I found with most things, it isn't as easy it might appear to be.
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I obtained a selection of images i believed suited the channel, and themes from my mood board design. The images ranges from underwater, moantains to construction plans etc.
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The images had to be split up into 6 seperate images so each part could be applied to the surfaces of the cube. Easy peasy. I split up the images into 6 sections using Photoshop, imported them into 3D max, applied them onto the cube face, hit render and VOILA! it's wrong! Take a look at the rendered picture.

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The images are all wonky and do not align properly. Just look at the pencil! I realised that i hadnt compensated for the black dividing grid lines on the cube. I had to put all my images back into Photoshop and I created a template with black lines already on. This was a long shot. I put the image on this and using layers, I copied each individual square and saved it as a new file.

<-- So I went from this...Put it onto this -->

Then copied each section the square and made lots of little these.. Some of the image was lost, but it's ok, honest :) You don't notice anyway.

The final result..

Cube Re-Design

Thought i would update my blog to show how i'm getting along with the idents. With it being so close to the end of the semester, my idents are really shaping up and should be ready to be handed in on time! Well they have to be i spose :-)
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I'll start off with the Cube itself. This was actually done very early on in the project, i just didn't do a blog about it. Thought i better had as it's a big change in the design.
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I had problems with my original cube using planes and chamfer boxes, and being able to rotate them like a proper rubiks cube. Although my cube was good as it was, I had to think of another way around it. I decided to remove the planes and place the images I was using directly onto the chamfer boxes surface vertex. This simplified the cube and removed the annoying planes I was using. I dont know why I didnt think of this before :-/

Applying the materials onto the cube sides took a lot of time as each one had to be rotated accordingly. Also I had to make use of the multi-material function, something I didn't know existed. The material viewer seems to be limited to only 24 materials, and I wasn't sure how I could add more. The multi layers got around this problem. I'll explain more on this in my write up.

Although there is not much difference in appearance, the new method of making the cube sorted out all my problems with rotating it.

<-- Original Cube - Re-Design Cube -->

Rotate Woes and Pivoting (Reflections Too!)

Spent most of the morning trying to solve my rotating the cube problem. Max didn't like me animating each grouped cube when I selected them all. Instead of animating the entire selection it would rotate each piece individually. You can see what I mean from the video..


Animating all parts of the cube (annoying!!!):

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So if I grouped all of the cubes I wanted to move, this would solve the problem! Brilliant? er NO! Because certain parts of the cube are grouped, this restricted me to what parts I could actually rotate. So I had the idea of grouping certain parts, rotating them, then un-grouping them to allow me to group other sections. The idea was good but Max decided he didn't like it and decided to remove the animation I had done for the group I had just un-grouped!

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Confusing?........................ yep!

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So the next steps where to understand how things rotate and this lead me on to Pivot Points. Each individual square has its own Pivot Point, which is the source of it's own rotation. Look at the image and it shows the Pivot Points for each individual square.

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The next step was to move all the Pivot Points for the squares to the middle. Under Hierarchy you can select the pivots, so I clicked the effect pivot only tab, selected them all and moved them to the middle. Went back to animate the cube and it worked. Also a nice helpful feature is the Angle Snap Toggle which snaps all the cubes together so none will be out of alignment.

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After this I am going to play around with reflecting the cube onto the surface, so here is a small preview of how it rotates properly, and a nice reflection underneath.

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Rotate and Reflection:

Re-Design Cube and Animation

Before I begin I got bored and looked up the Rubix cube, and realised i've been making the common mistake of calling it a Rubix cube, when it's actually a Rubiks cube!! (it was originally called the "Magic Cube", how very interesting-ish).

Anyway, i've spent all afternoon working with the cube (can u believe putting a bunch of squares together can be so time consuming?!). I moved away from the blocky simple squares done in my original play around and I found that using the chamfer box gives a much nicer shape with nice rounded edges.

For each side of the cube I'm using planes, and I've removed all the unnecessary ones to make it true to a real 3x3 rubiks cube. i.e. I only have 54 faces on the cube.

CONSTRUCTING THE CUBE:

Also I have made a quick animation showing how the cube moves. Haven't figured out an effective way of moving all the rows and blocks yet. Max doesnt like it when I rotate and animate, hard to explain and slightly confused at this but hopefully I will figure it out :-/

ANIMATING THE CUBE:

Early Design Ideas

I've had a quick play around in 3D Max and have rendered a few images to show the sort of approach i'm making with the idents.

*NOTE* This are some very early work and will change, but thought i'd upload it to show the general idea.

Storyboarding

Sorry for delay in posting blogs.

These are some early storyboards I have sketched for an idea I've had for the idents. The theme is a rubix cube, which I came up with randomly (don't know how I got the idea, it just popped into my head). Luckily the word DISCOVERY fits along a complete side of the cube. Too bad CHANNEL doesn't.

The rubix cube fits nicely with the discovery channel. I will rotate my three idents on this idea and have a diffrerent approach for each one. Hoping I can turn each one into something thats good (oops sorry about all the bad puns! will I lose marks?)

STORYBOARDS:



*BLOG EDIT* Have added the other storyboard ideas I have had for my other idents. One is a crane bashing the cube into tiny pieces, and the other is a space scene with the blocks floating away with gravity.

IDENT TWO:

IDENT THREE:-