COSC #260 Assignment 2

To start with, I'm not sure why my rendered image turned out so rough, I tried tweaking several settings and could not get it to render as smooth as the image in my project file. The pink object was made using lathing, just from a simple curved line to suit my fancy. The blueish object I made by playing with boolean compounds, I first subtracted a knot object from a pyramid, then I took the intersection of the resulting pyramid with yet another knot object, subtracting more small shapes from the edges of it to keep it to the three simple geometric shapes that it is now; I was actually able to manipulate it with precision instead of hit and miss, the object is as I intended it to turn out. The green shape was made from extruding many polygons off of a sphere, and extruding more from those to segment the ends so that they could be resized. I then used turboSmooth on the resulting object to round it out. I'm very happy with how the boolean object turned out, and with the lighting effects on the features of the objects, even though I couldn't get a ground shadow from the extruded object to give it more weight. Lighting wasn't quite covered well enough in class, and the book doesn't use omni lights to demonstrate shadows, so I couldn't manipulate the settings for omnis in the same way that the book said to for spot light.
My project file is here

COSC #260 Assignment 1

edit:: 02/09/09 everything is up and linked correctly now

02/08/09 - IAT servers down??? Ah well: in the meantime, thou shalt be plagued with pictures of my red bull impersonation as placeholders.

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The product of exercises 1 and 2 is below:



In exercises 3-6 I encountered a few problems or shortcomings:

• I have no Mtl Library, and no libraries to load, so I used another pattern to map to the sign post sphere.


• I found it very disappointing that the book left out the step of mapping an imported image to an object. Therefore, I figured out how to do it myself, and continued working with my own file all the way through.

my result of exercises 3-6 is this:




As for exercises 7 and 8:

• The center of rotation was at the center of the object, should be able to tweak that as in adobe products. I ended up having to rotate and then move the object to animate it.


• The exercise didn't tell you how to add frames to the default 100. I googled the problem and used this to figure it out.


• I found out that the specific keyframes I edited don't seem to save upon closing the .max project


• Disappointed again that the project files had a camera object that the exercises didn't cover. I ended up looking up how to use it anyway.

Nonetheless, I completed all exercises with various tweaks of my own. I photoshopped my own sign face and mapped it to the sign, also keeping the frame as a separate design element. I changed the light type of the Sign Post Light to a spot light and dimmed it's effect area to the sign alone, while adding two light sources to the lamp post between the gas pumps. I rendered a cheap cloud effect in photoshop, and mapped it to the background; however, it did not show up in the final rendering.

As for the final rendering - I made the sign fall and spin. I also played around with the camera provided, and used its view for the final rendering:



For further detail on my thought/action process throughout see this page. The .max project file is available for download here.