*******Very Important Render Info*******

Make sure when you render in 3D Max that you use Microsoft Video 1 as your compression type. If you render as MJPEG you will find that Premiere Pro does not play the AVI file.

Also the size of your render should be 800x600. You can choose a larger size, but beware it will take longer to render.

25/4 Click here for my tutorial on Premiere Pro.

29/4 Hand in details added as a new post


Storyboard & Sketching

The first stage is often the one that people skip, heading blindly into modelling. Planning is an essential part of the process. Before you start using Max you should have a very good idea of what it is you want to achieve.

By Friday of week 3 you will all need to hand in your story boards. I'm not looking for a work of art, simple sketches will suffice.

This is to include:
  • What character/s you will be modelling.
  • An idea of textures / materials i.e fur, wood, metal etc...
  • The environment and any props or objects that will be used for interaction
  • What you will be doing for audio.
Your story board must be uploaded as a large image to your blog (It should open up a new link when it is clicked on). The story board must be at a large enough resolution / size, so that it is easy to see and read! The size of example 1 below is fine but example 2 is too small!

Here are a couple of example story boards:

Example 1:

Example 2:

You can see the finished animation from this storyboard by clicking on the link below. Proof that a very simple story board can turn into a fantastic animation! Yannick's animation.

Click here for a storyboard template.

Model Sketches and Elevation Drawings:

If you adopt a box modelling approach you will want to create elevation drawings of your character. These can be imported into max and used as a template to model to.

A simple cartoon elevation drawing:
A more detailed solider elevation drawing:


Click here for a site with some pretty cool concept art.