ACSS InfoTech 2014-15 Day: 12

In today's class, I focused on making the transition from 3D logos to creating 3D text. I found it much more simpler because there are lesser steps in importing/creating text. I looked at a few tutorials in making 3D text and worked with adding different layers to the text by duplicating the MoText function. It is important to also add materials to all the text to do so. Going to MoText - Caps - Fillet Caps on all the layers will add depth to the objects. Basically, when adding layers to text, you should have the same materials, settings, etc.

ACSS InfoTech 2014-15 Day: 11

Today I was able to work with the Target Camera tool. I feel like this is a useful object to work with in the future and definitely simple enough to use. Basically, the target camera tool focuses on one object and follows it where ever it goes. In today's class, I used a sphere (with gold material) on the HDRI map I have been using recently and added a target camera that followed the sphere:

The tutorials I used were these videos below which I found quite helpful:

ACSS InfoTech 2014-15 Day: 10

Today I tested out the new render settings with a more advanced animation. Again, the render itself was really quick and also smooth in movement despite the frames being more "occupied". This will help me in the future when rendering projects and I will probably be using this animation and adding more to it for my final project with Cinema 4D. I found out that disabling all the things I didn't need (such as blurriness and reflection) also helps reduce the render time.

ACSS InfoTech 2014-15 Day: 9

As of today, I tested out the new render settings using my basic camera movement skills and an HDRI map file. Fortunately for me, the render time of the animation was a lot faster than usual which saves me a ton of time and makes things a lot simpler. Each frame took about 30 seconds to render and the quality of them were not affected by the new render settings. Tomorrow I will hopefully look more into advanced camera movements with these new render changes.

ACSS InfoTech 2014-15 Day: 8

As I mentioned on the post of the previous day, the render time for an animation is an issue I wanted to focus on reducing. A simple 5 second animation would take 30+ minutes to render. What I wanted to do was change up the render settings on Cinema 4D without it affecting the quality of the animations.

The two tutorials I encourage to checking out are these two videos that are quick and easy to follow.

What I found out was that when rendering the file, it is recommended to animate the project into either a PNG or JPEG sequence for the best quality. Quicktime Movie is also acceptable for animations and is the format I set it to (just to make things simpler). I also worked with the Anti- Aliasing, Global Illumination settings and disabled the auto-save option. Basically, I took off the things I didn't need. I'm hoping the changes I made will reduce the amount of render time.

ACSS InfoTech 2014-15 Day: 7

Currently, I am learning how to do basic camera movements on Cinema 4D. For right now, I am using the basic camera tool but hope I will eventually have the ability to work with the more advanced camera tools (Target & Stereo Camera). 

What I found was really useful is that I am able to add different angles to the same animation by adding multiple cameras. Using the stage tool will combine all the cameras used.

Something to remember when adding cameras is to set two key frames (one for the beginning of the animation and one after it) otherwise, the animation won't function properly. This was one problem I came across while dealing with this project. I also found that the waiting time for the render of the animation was much longer than I thought it should have been, which stood out to be really the only issue I am currently dealing with, as of right now. Other than that, I feel like I'm making really good progress so far.

                               

ACSS InfoTech 2014-15 Day: 6

Something I've been really interested in wanting to learn is to do camera animations/movements. I was able to find plenty of youtube videos that I figured could assist me in doing so. Though, before doing that, I needed a background to prevent it from looking plain. Upon some researching, I came across material textures that I found on OpenFootage (called HDRI's). These are really useful as they cover up the whole 360 degrees of the scene. In order to add it onto the project file, I needed to make it into a material that I could place onto the ACSS Totem logo itself. This was the tutorial I used to do just that:

Tomorrow, hopefully I will be able to work around with the camera function and make a basic camera animation/movement.