Sleigh Animation Task.
Dev Diary #13
For the Christmas 3d modelling assignment, we were tasked with modelling and animating a sleigh in 3ds max. Using tools such as swift loop, chamfer, boolean and lofting, I modelled a sleigh based off of a silhouette image found on Google. This was good practice for newer tools I had learnt such as lofting as I will be required to use them for my artefact. After modelling the sleigh, I decided to add some extra details such as presents and a big present bag.
After finishing the model, I was thinking of creative ways I could animate it and decided upon creating a set of reindeer and animating them as a part of it.
To animate the sleigh, I started with making it simply go forward for 200 frames. Using the bouncy train tutorial from the previous class, I applied the techniques to individual sets of reindeer so that they would bounce up and down in a pattern. Additionally, I felt that Rudolph should have a separate animation so I kept it simple and had him rotate along an axis simply because I thought it was kind of funny. For the camera movement, I continued to follow the tutorials from class and made the camera follow the sleigh along a path I drew in an oval shape.
When it came to rendering this animation, I had some difficulty as the first export only appeared to have the bouncy reindeer animations and no camera, or sleigh movement. As well as this, the quality was really bad and it also made me realise it had no lighting in the scene.
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After fixing some settings, adding lighting and altering the rendering quality, this is what I ended up with.
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Overall, I'm happy with what I created as it was good practice for animation and modelling tools I'll need to use in my artefact. If I were to create this again however, I think I would practice animating the sleigh to move along a curved path instead of simply using the transform tool to have it slide along one axis. Additionally, I would make the camera path smoother and make the scene brighter and less shiny.
