Staff Animation Post 3

Hello again and welcome to the third Staff Animation Post!
​This week a lot got done, and I think I'm going to follow in the same fashion as last week with the formulaic structure.

​Successes!
​A couple of these this week. Last week, I stated that I would be working on the UV mapping of the objects this week. Well, this went much better than expected. While it started off to its usual rocky self, my teacher Tim instructed me in some techniques for UVMapping splines, which came in VERY useful for the helix mentioned last week. Not only this helix however.

​After I had done the staff and the crystal, I needed some way to connect them, which would work logically. So, I came up with a sort of cage that the crystal sits in on top of the staff. The idea is that when the staff is animated, the cage opens and the crystal makes itself apparent. I will mention this more in the problems section. The success, however, was in the decoration on top of this cage. I have used to intertwining helix's that end in sharp points. It has a nice effect, especially if you spin them.

​Which I do! Animation has started and the cage is one of the main areas. The top of the cage levitates from the bottom, twisting as it goes. The crystal levitates at a slower pace and hangs between the two sections. I really like the effect, and with the twining decoration on the top, it looks awesome.

​Problems.
​THE CAGE! For some reason, it is being very annoying in its UV production, and vertex snapping is just kind of ignoring it. My teacher has no idea what is happening, but we are going to try installing 3DS Max 2017 (AutoDesk, 2016), as I am currently using the 2016 version, which may help.

​The above solution has had some problems however. Quixel (Quixel, 2016) uses a plugin called Color to integrate with Max, which makes the entire process easier. This plugin does not work with Max 2017, so now my UV process becomes just that much more complicated as I need to export the Material ID's required manually. It’s not particularly hard, just time consuming.

​What for next week?
​Well, I'm going to be continuing with my texturing and animation, and trying to get this cage to work properly. Then, working on my camera and lighting. Not long to go!
 
Thanks for reading. Last week’s photos seem to have worked so enjoy some more!
Peter Carey
Dracon Interactive.
 
References:
3DS Max (Version 2017). (2016).
Quixel (Version 2). (2016).​

Decoration

Decoration UV