Unit 67 – 3D Animation Production Log

Sam Gregory-Haigh

Ideas Generation• First we were put into teams, I was put into a team with Cassie, Jordan Nixon and Connor Tilly, we were

tasked into coming up with a 3d ident animation for the new Eccles E6 Radio Station. We first had to research into radio station idents. We then had to generate some ideas, we were each given an a3 piece of paper and told to make a moodboard. Here are the moodboards:

Cassies Idea

Connors IdeaMy Idea

Jordans Idea

Final Idea Choice and Storyboard• After we had all generated our ideas and pooled them together we had to choose which one we were

going to use as a final idea. So we all decided on choosing Cassies idea for a flipbook and a boombox. We then had to assign tasks to people, I was assigned with making the boombox in Lightwave, Jordan was tasked with making the E6 logo and Cassie was tasked with making the flipbook animation. We first had to get the storyboard done though, so we all got to work on helping create it, here are the frames:

• This was then put together and made into our final storyboard:

3D Models and Flipbook Animation• We all then had to get to work on our assigned tasks. (Me – Boombox, Cassie – Flipbook and Jordan – E6

Logo). I was going to be using Newtek Lightwave to create a boombox.

First day Second day Final day

Making changes to the boombox• I then went into layout and changed all of the surfaces to some nicer, glossier colours. It took a while, but

the renders looked good. Here is one of the first renders:

I then played around with some other textures and colours, then decided on a final design.

Animating the boombox• After I had chose my final design for the boombox I had to animate it. The storyboard said it had to look as

if the speakers were pulsing due to the music. Once I had re-centred the pivot point on the speakers and boombox I had to make them pulse, I did this by repeatedly making them gain size and then return to their original size. It gave the desired effect, so I then thought about the camera movements and placing.

This is the guide for the cameras movements.

Here is an example of the pulsing of the speakers.

Rendering the animation• Now that I had finished the animation and movement I had to render my scene. First of all I had

to change my render settings to one that fit the brief, to do this I had to go to render-render globals. Once clicked a new box will come up with some options and settings.

• Once I had this open I had to change my frame rate to 25fps. This is so the video would run smoother. I also had to change the output to photoshop images as when you import the into premiere they are recognised as a sequence and made into a video.

• I also had to change the name so that it ended in _000 so that the premiere would recognise it as a sequence of images that could be converted into a movie file.

Beginning the editing• Once it had finished rendering I had to import the sequence into Adobe Premiere Pro, to do this I had to

open up Premiere and go to file>import and then choose my sequence, and as it is a photoshop sequence I can click the first image and then check the checkbox labelled ‘numbered stills’ and it will select all of the sequence and import it as a movie file. This is why I had to name the files with _000 before rendering.

• Once I had imported the sequence I could then add it to my timeline and begin to edit to footage into and advert.

Finishing the editing• Now that I had my sequence rendered and imported it was time to edit the footage and make an advert,

but first I had to choose a background track from the supplied soundbed. I knew I wanted something that stood out and had loud notes at key points in the song so that I could edit the footage to the song. So after listening to each of them several times I chose the one called ‘tuff cookie’ and began editing. After the first day it looked like this:

• Then after a proper full day of working on it I had it finished it and the final timeline looked like this:

It was created using a masking ofCassies flipbook animation and thenadding my 3d work to the background. I also edited the video to fit with the background music.

Rendering the Final video• Now that the video was done I just had to render it and get it uploaded to youtube. First I had to change

some of my render settings to that it would render in a good resolution. To do this I had to go to file>export>media then a popup appeared and these are the settings I used:

Now I just had to wait for the video to click render and then upload to youtube.