Recently, we were asked to create a container for a fake product, render it, and animate it. So I knew exactly what I wanted to make: a bottle of Falcon Punch! The first thing we were supposed to do is render the bottle, and I sculpted it from a rotated curve and textured it using a translucent Phong E and a blue Blinn. Then, we were asked to make the label for the product, so I made this:
After creating that, I added a new texture to the yet-untextured portion where I would put the label, and added a picture- this picture- to that texture. After that, I added a brown floor, made the background blue, and added 3-point lighting. Then I rendered an image.
After this, I animated it spinning using keyframes. Then I was done!
From this project, I learned how to add separate textures to separate faces of the same shape and how to put a picture on a texture.
In Video Production, we were asked to recreate a movie trailer (more or less) shot-for-shot. We could only really use movies that were grounded in reality, since we didn't have the budget for stunts or enhanced CGI effects. So, my group did Napoleon Dynamite.
Making storyboards was a far quicker process this time, since it was all online and using screenshots from the trailer as opposed to having it all be drawn out by hand. However, I wasn't the one making the storyboards- I was the director. The three people in my group (myself included) played all the parts ourselves- Seth was Napoleon, I was Trisha, and Tate was everyone else. (I was also Pedro's stunt double, as Tate was Napoleon's stunt double.) I also provided the picture of the liger and filmed all shots with both Napoleon and Pedro.
Filming was a very fun process. We first filmed the scenes at school, which is where I did all of my acting, including me judgementally eating Goldfish crackers and asking Napoleon what a liger is. Then we had to film at Tate's house, and that was really fun. The first time we filmed at Tate's, we broke our microphone and could only film scenes with no dialogue for the rest of the day, but the second time, we had a new microphone and didn't break ours.
After all was said and done, we all had to edit our own trailers. Editing my trailer was pretty easy, and there were no major obstacles I had to overcome.
I learned how to make a movie trailer, how to judgementally eat Goldfish, how to draw an anime liger, and what to do when you break a microphone. Overall, I would say my trailer turned out great!
This has been something we have been working on all month. Ironically, it took way longer than it was supposed to due to snow days. But, it's completed, and I am very proud of it. So, allow me to explain the process that went into this.
Step 1: Creating the Snowflakes
The first thing I did was create the snowflakes themselves. I used the Create Polygon tool in Front View to create one half of each individual arm, then mirrored it to create the other half. Then, using Duplicate Special, I created 5 clones of each arm, rotated 60 degrees around, then joined them all together with the Combine tool and deleted their history.
Step 2: Modeling the Snowflakes
The next thing I did was, well, make the snowflakes actually look like snowflakes. First of all, I used the Extrude Face tool to give each snowflake some depth. After this, I hardened the faces using the Soften/Harden Faces tool and smoothed them out with the Smooth tool. By that point, they were fully modeled, so I moved on to...
Step 3: Shading the Snowflakes
After that, I added color, shading, and texture to the snowflakes. I created a Phong E, colored it white, and named it SnowShader. Then I assigned it to all the snowflakes. After that, I added bump mapping (specifically the Rock texture) to make the snowflakes look more like they are made of tiny crystals. Finally, I added white and blue 3-point lighting with a white key light, a blue fill light, and a white back light.
Step 4: Creating the Room
For the room in the animation, I created a polygon plane, then extruded part of it for the window. Then I shaded everything, using a transparent Phong E for the window and Lamberts for everything else. Then, I created a lamp using a point light.
Step 5: Actually Animating the Snowflakes
First of all, I made the snowflakes smaller, then created 2 sets of smaller, farther-away copies. After that, I dragged them up above the window. Then, I used keyframing to set a unique path for each one. Finally, once it was all done, I batch rendered it all, exported it all into After Effects, and arranged it all there. After all this, I was finally done.
What I Learned
I learned how to take a flat object and use the Extrude, Harden Edges, and Smooth tool to make it look realistically 3D. I also learned how to make things look like ice, how to use blue lights to make pure-white things have a slight bluish tint, and how to animate multiple things each going down their own path. This was a very fun project, and I'm especially proud of it.
