Ident 3

Week 8 - Ident 3:



We are now heading to my last and final ident this month. The idea for this ident is to animate the balloon floating into the sky and then the logo will appear. The location/ the background is going to be near the seaside. But now there have been some changes to this ident. I’ve decided that I will include extra animation to this, so basically the balloon will continue to float to the sky but then floats right towards the sea in which it will then land on the water and that’s where the logo will appear.

To begin with, I create my little character of a young boy. The whole body structures are used from spheres and cones.




For the textures, I basically use bitmap images to apply the body including his hair. As you can see its not quite in detailed but modelling characters is still a challenge for me.







I then try and make the clothing more realistic as I can, using convertible poly I drag how I want the clothing to be such as the jumper with some creases.





Now I need some ground/ pavement. Here I start off with a plane, and then convert it to a polygon I drag it to create the surface with some bumps because most solid grounds aren’t straight surfaces.






Creating 3 boxes is for the concrete wall that is for the safety measures incise the dangers of people falling to the sea.

Ok so we now have a character, a surface and a short wall. The next step is to create the sea. Starting of with a plane, I select map, reflection and raytrace for the water effect. By selecting Bump then Noise, I can go to Noise Parameters and set its size by 8.0, setting it to Fractal that will then create a more realistic water effect.

Increasing the Specular and Glossiness to a high level, it sets the water to a lighter form.

Here is how the water looks like.

For the sky I need to it to surround the whole scenery. Applying a cylinder, and placing it to around sea, character, the wall and the surface it allows better view when rendering it.

I need some light to boost the effects for the water. Again almost using the same method for my earth ident for the effects of the sun, I position an Omni light to the sky and setting the effects to glow.

And there you have it a nice beautiful looking sea.
Now animation:

Now animation:

One of the most important features to this is the water. This is my first attempt to animate the sea and literally it isn’t as hard as I thought. To begin animating, I need the Material Editor opened. If I go back to Maps and select Bump and back to Noise Parameters again, I can set the Phase level to its right effect for the water but to animate, I must first set a key to the beginning of the Time Slider and make sure that the phase level is 0. Then I set another key to the right end of the Time Slider so basically I then set the Phase level to about 15.

Here is a short animation of the sea.

Animating the scene. The scene starts of with camera to view the sky and then views the surface slowly almost similar to ident 2.

This is where my little character will move his head to look towards the balloon.

Using the Time Slider, I can move along the balloon to the specific destination where I want it to land.





The next scene is where we follow the balloon until it lands. It is quite simple, using the same camera it will follow the balloon.

At the end of the scene it will look like this. I rotate the balloon while set to Auto key.

You will see the water is still animated making the shorts waves more realistic while the balloon is floating. Also I animate the balloon up and down so that it looks like the waves are affecting it.

Now I need sound to finish off my last ident. I’ve decided to use an ocean sound effect than music as it makes this ident very calm especially my water animation, which I feel it needs some sound to fit the scene.

This ident that I find is probably the best one that I’ve done. Normally my last 3D model never as good as my first ones but this time I feel very pleased with the effort that I have made into this. Animating the water wasn’t’ as difficult as I would have thought. It merely knew each step, how to use the effects and animating. The possible improvement that I would suggest is the shadows on my little character. I have used an Omni light and setting it to raytrace shadow but it never seem to work.

The most disppointment was the string. I found it quite difficult to animate the swirl but using other methods, I tried to morph it using two objects to manipulate the realism of the string but that didnt accomplish. This was quite challenging but I could not animate it instead I've only animated the balloon itself. I have now animated the balloon to swirl almost having the affects from the wind so that it does not float so calm.

This is my final animation BBC 1 ident 3.