Sources

Background music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqdlXtTIjE

Footsteps: http://www.danshost.com/rm2k/Sound/s12_sfx_barrel.wav

Water drop: http://ricostardeluxe.free.fr/goutte.wav

Drinking: http://www.lettersnstuff.com/sounds/animals/dog_drinks.wav

Wing flapping: http://toxicbag.com/sounds/fire_whoosh_dual.aif

Pitcher texture: http://free-textures.got3d.com/architectural/free-rusty-metal-textures/images/free-rusty-metal-texture-002.jpg

Pebble texture: http://www.johnsusek.com/projects/textures/lawdogs/sand_2.jpg

Ground texture: http://lh6.ggpht.com/_s_L4k72MVl4/SVaV2G2rIDI/AAAAAAAAAIY/DfVa56aYMUg/Picture798

Sky texture: http://www.smemon.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/bluesky1.jpg

Sunset texture: http://mayang.com/textures/Nature/images/Clouds/varied_clouds_sunset_281795.JPG

Conclusion

Now that my animation is completed, I would say that it was a success. It presents Aesop's fable of the crow and the pitcher well, and isn't boring. The music really makes it come to life, and makes it enjoyable to watch. It kept true to it's cartoon style most of the way though as well.

The animation itself, I am quite proud of and the result was better than I thought possible at the start of the year. I am most please with the pebble-drop scene, the penultimate scene and the final scene. I am also pleased with the scene where the crow discovers the pitcher, as the camera motion is different from the rest.

I would have liked to use morpher to animate facial expressions, but as there is very little a crow can do, and there is no lip syncing, it wasn't needed. Although I would have also liked to include voices, it wouldn't go with the style I was trying to achieve.

After rendering the last scene, I realised there was a mistake in the model itself, and that the tail wasn't capped. This wasn't obvious in the other scenes as the model was black and 2-side. However, it is visible for about half a second in the final few frames of the animation.

I think that the lighting I used worked well for the scene, although I would have liked to have used skylight more to make it seem brighter (The render time is much too long) . Increasing the intensity of the target light didn't have the same effect. Also, the transition is the end makes the point of "cooling" the scene.

The main problems I had with the creation of the model came from weighting the vertices. It became easier once I realised how weighting worked, and that each one had to add up to 1. I used mirror mode to complete the process in half the time it would have taken manually though. being able to move the bones successfully was a challenging task as well. However I found that if you move a bone, then fix the weights, the bone will be able to move freely without problems.

I am happy with my use of camera shots, I believe they convey each scene very well and are not completely static all the time. I have made use of the environment to maximise the effectiveness of each shot. From the footprint in the sand, to the reflection in the water, to the flight through the clouds.

If I were to change the project, I'd probably keep most of it. Although I'd fix the problems I've listed previously, maybe put more detail in the crow's texture and add a wider range of movements. I'd probably make it longer and add more scenes in between, including better scene transition.

Personally, I have enjoyed the assignment and feel like I have learnt a great deal about 3DS Max and 3D animation in general. However, it is probably not the primary area I wish to pursue after my studies are over. Although I may continue to use the program for model design and simple animations.

Editing

Using Adobe Premier Pro, I assembled the clips from each scene. All of which had been rendered using the Microsoft video 1 compression. When all of the clips were assembled, I added sound to the timeline. This includes the crow's footsteps, the drop of the pebble into the water, the flapping of the wings, the crow drinking and the background music.

I believe the transition between each clip worked out well, and there are no large unexplainable jumps.

I had a problem in that I didn't realise the resolution had to be 800 x 600, and all of my renders were in 680x420. Thankfully, Premier Pro allowed me to scale my work up to 800x600 post-render without any noticeable loss in quality.

Scene 17

The final scene took the longest to do, despite it being the only one created using an external tutorial. You see the crow flying through clouds in the sky. The camera follows it, panning side to side in places, until the end, at which point the camera stops and the bird continues on.

I followed the tutorial at http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/jussing_clouds/creating_clouds_3dsmax01.php, then changed a few part to make it my own.

I created a particle generator and used the above image as the material. I also used it as part of a mask for an opacity map, the actual map being smoke.

I created a path for the crow and camera to travel on and assigned the controller to the path constraint. The camera itself follows a dummy node, this is so the target can be moved for more effect. The camera pans as it goes along.

I created a cylinder, and used the PathDeform (WSM) tool to shape it around the path and made it unrenderable . I made the cylinder the source of the particles and directed a red light at it. I increased the particle count and changed the colour of the light, as well as the camera angle and shots. There is a slight pause in between the flight movements, this is unintentional but can be used to simulate gliding.

I believe this scene is a very good ending to the animation, as you see the crow flying off into the distance, representing the crow escaping the harsh terrain and returning home.

Scene 16

In the penultimate scene, the crow can be see taking off from the ground and flying off, with the pitcher in the foreground. The colour of the scene fades to a deep red, symbolising the heat of the scene has reduced as the crow is no longer parched. This is done by altering the colour of the target light. The background has changed also to a sunset, to match the colour change.

As the crow takes off, it tucks it's legs beneath it and flaps it's wings. This is the first time you see the crow flying in the animation, so it is a big scene. The take off and flight is a .bip file.

I though of making it longer and having this as the final scene, but I decided to make one of it flying through clouds.

Scene 15

In this scene you can see the crow drinking the water. There is a slight ripple on the water although it is barely visible. This scene is identical to scene 7, with the water level raised.

It shows that the crow achieved it's goal of getting the water from the pitcher.

I did attempt to add ripples to the water, although it proved more difficult than the previous scene, and decided to be content with what there was.

Scene 14

In this scene, you can see the pebbles going into the water repeatedly. As this happens, the water ripples and raises. This occurs 3 times in the scene. The animation is created by there being 3 pebbles waiting to fall. They are set as unyielding, meaning they aren't affected by the gravity. When they are needed, the unyielding checkbox is unchecked, and an animation is created for the next 100 frames. The camera and the pitcher are the moving objects, rather than the water.

I had alot of problems with this scene, the first of which being finding a way to get the pebbles to drop one at a time. I tried setting them up one above another, but the gravity caused them to accelerate and have too much force. This was solved as stated above. The next problem was the water would go wildly out of control after 4 pebbles for some reason, to fix this I kept the number to 3 maximum. The next problem was the lack of ripples from the drops. This was caused by the plane moving when raising the water. I fixed this by removing the pitcher from the rigid body collection, and moving it and the camera instead.

The raising of the water isn't supposed to be realistic, as it's just to make it obvious that the water level is rising. However, I could have done drop->raise->drop->raise, but I prefer this motion.