This was just a simple eCard I put together. I wanted to give it a vintage feel, and the first thing I found was the clip art of Santa Claus. It seemed perfect, except for the fact that his beard was cut off on the right side along with the snowflake pattern in the background. Using Photoshop CS3 I completed his beard and modified & extended the snowflake pattern. The Merry Christmas text was also done in Photoshop, along with the red background. The holly was done in Illustrator CS3, with some finishing touches done in Photoshop.
This week focused on what are referred to as Constraints. There were two lab exercises that I did that covered three of these constraints: The Path Constraint, the Look-at Constraint, and the Link Constraint.
The Path Constraint, and the Look-at Constraint
The first exercise covered two of the three constraints. In it we follow a roller coaster (and if I do say so myself, it looks to be a rather dull ride indeed!).
So the first thing I had to do was to put the car on the track. Fortunately nearly everything was already pre-constructed, including a path around the tracks, so placing the car on the tracks was a fairly simple task.
Constraining the car to the path causes it to be placed on the tracks and follow the path. This is Path Constraint.
After using the Path Constraint for the car, next I had to do a Look-at Constraint with the scene's camera. What the Look-at Constraint does is allows the camera to follow the car as it moves around the track while keeping it centered onscreen.
Keep in mind that these exercises were only concerned with getting us familiar with Constraints not the physics of roller coasters.
The Link Constraint
For the second exercise I had to animate a crane with a claw moving a teapot.
By connecting the teapot and the claw with a Link Constraint, both are in sync as I rotate the claw.
These are the first two projects for my Animation I class. In these exercises I learned basic animation in 3dsMax.
For the first exercise I had to animate a ball falling down a flight of stairs.
The quickness of the animation, and it's short bounces on the ground gives the impression that the ball is heavy. I also have the ball bounce off of the corner of the last step that it hits, which is why it appears that the ball is thrown out farther than its other bounces. And then, when it hits the ground, I have it roll off-screen and gave it a couple short bounces rather than just have it come to a stop.
In the next exercise I had to animate another ball, but this time through an obstacle course.
This Lab exercise only gave instruction up until the ball came out of the pipe, so that's all I have done. However, I am currently working on finishing the animation so that the ball completes the course. When the animation begins, rather than hug the ramp during its decent, I have the ball fly out just a bit. This approach looked better to me because I was able to make it look like a more natural bounce when it hits the track as opposed to having the ball hug the ramp and then all of a sudden leap up before the first tire. Then after it is finished with its jumps, I gave it a small bounce on its approach to the curve. Also, in addition, I added a camera to follow the ball rather than having just one stationary view.
