Officer Jones in Obama Street render

A simple render of Officer Jones after he was merged with the Obama Street environment.
To do this I went to File>Merge>Find Officer Jones file>Okay.
I scaled him down to the size of a door on one of the buildings. I then saved it as a different file name, incase it went wrong so I didn't lose the original files.
As it was taking a long time to render, I switched the lighting off. I will reinstate this later on.

Putting Officer Jones in my/an environment

I've been thinking about how I'm going to put Officer Jones in my environment. In the actual story, he is going to be standing outside the Police Station where he works, and talking to MBM when he runs into him. He then goes and walks over to some chairs with MBM and stands against a wall while he tells him about his wife. This is the last you see of him, because shortly after this, MBM then blows up the city with a nuclear bomb.

My environment will be used where the main story takes place; it is a little part of the city. Andrew's environment is the whole city, and is seen when the nuclear bomb is used.

Lighting the environment

This is a render of my environment, where I have lit the environment using a skylight. To create a skylight, I went to Create>Light>Skylight, and put the skylight in the environment. I then went to Rendering>Advanced Lighting>Light Tracer, set the Rays/Samples to 500, and Bounces to 2, then rendered the image out. It took a lot longer to render than usual, about 10 minutes.

The rendering made the environment more realistic, adding shadows and texture. One person said that it looked like a plastic city.

Officer Jones in 3DS Max

This is my complete 3D model of Officer Jones made in 3DS Max.

I started making him by importing the two pictures I made of him in Photoshop, and started making a model based around those images. I started with the body first, with a cylinder. I did this by simply selecting a cylinder in the Create menu, then drawing one, then modelling it to size. I then modelled it to make it into the shape it became, by extruding the lower half out, and the upper half in. Then, I made his head with a sphere. His legs were made with two cylinders and a sphere, and so were his arms. His feet are cubes that had to be extruded and shaped a lot. His hands are a sphere for a wrist, a cube for the main part of the hand, and fingers are very small and long cuboids.

The only real difficulties I encountered during this project was sometimes not knowing what I was doing. For example, I didn't know how to extrude the body at first. So I just asked the tutor or a fellow classmate when I had a problem. I also needed a bit of help with modelling the feet because I didn't know how to model them into real feet.

Overall, I am very pleased with this project. It was a lot of fun modelling the character, and I learned quite a few new things while making it.

3DS Max Environment

When I first started making this in 3DS Max, I found it a bit daunting at first, as I wasn't that skilled in 3DS Max. But once I got into it, the rest was a bit easier to do.

All the buildings are made up of standard primitives; i.e. boxes, cylinders, pyramids, etc. so they were easy to make. I decided to make all the buildings in different colours to make them stand out more. I initially planned to have a train track line running along infront of the buildings, but I scrapped this idea for a road instead, as it was alot easier to make.
Overall, I think this project was quite fun. I had quite a good time making the buildings in 3D Max. I also learned quite a lot more about 3D Max, so that helped alot.

Storyboard for Team Paradox

We chose this after a team meeting where we were going to choose a frame from everyone's storyboards, but in the end, we chose Andrews because we all agreed that it had the best story, and the fact that doing a frame from each persons storys would have taken far too long to make.

I think that the story is good because it is a simple and effective story. Also one that is easy to model and animate. Also, there are only two main characters and one supporting character.

Scene heading: Muscle bound Milkman finds out the truth!

Setting: Inside the Super City

Action description: MBM is running around the streets and through the buildings of the self contained super city, calling out for his wife, and waving his trusty 12-gauge around. Random characters walking around.

MBM: Wife! Wife! Where are you?

Random character: Wife? Which wife?

MBM: My wife! Have you seen her?

Random character: No. What does she looks like?

MBM: She is very thin, doesn’t have much personality, doesn’t smile much, and doesn’t move around much. But I love her!

Random character: Never seen someone like that. I tell you what, though, go and find Officer Jones. He might know where she is. I last saw him on the corner of Obama street.

MBM: Okay, thanks!

Transition: Pan following MBM down the street

Action description: MBM runs to Obama street, and sees Officer Jones standing outside the police station.

MBM: Hey! Officer Jones! Boy, am I glad to see you. Have you seen my wife? She went missing and someone said that you might know where she is?

Officer Jones: Okay, stop waving that gun around! Jesus! You’re gonna get someone killed!

MBM: Okay, sorry. I’m just in a bit of a panic at the moment.

Officer Jones: Okay, sit down here.

MBM: Okay.

Transition: Pan to seating

Action Script: MBM and Officer Jones go and sit down on some chairs.

Officer Jones. Son, I’ve got something to tell you; and I don’t know how; (pause) but someone has to tell you. Your wife… was a cardboard cut-out the entire time. I’m so truly sorry.

Transition: Fade out to next scene

This is my script of the chosen story for our game trailer. It was written by me and Chris Dewey. We looked at the storyboard that Andrew had done, and planned how it would all work. We made it so that the MBM (Muscle-Bound Milkman) would be searching around the SCSC (Self-Contained Super City) looking for his wife. He would then run into a random character who tells him to look for Officer Jones. OJ would then tell him the truth about his wife when MBM finds him.

I enjoyed making this; it was fun doing the voice acting. I did the voice of MBM and the Random Character. Chris did OJ. Overall, I think it was a good project.

Officer Jones production: Photoshop and 3DS Max

Here is Officer Jones in Photoshop (left), and what I've done on him so far in 3DS Max (right). I originally started by drawing him on paper. I thought it was quite difficult, but I got ideas from a cartoon police officer and some sort of cyborg police officer from a Star Trek film.
I didn't know how to begin drawing him, as I didn't feel very confident, but the tutor explained that it was just basic shapes.