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I wanted to divide my college and university work and so I created another blog.......Yeay


http://mastahelix.blogspot.com/

This blog is just for feedback, as my current one had to much text, this one I try to keep simple, sort of.

Back to Basics

So to get back into the whole 3D creation, I was tasked with making a simple but working animation of a rocket ship. Well, being at uni now I don't have much time to blog, not like I was dedicated any time before, but a more valid excuse than just being plan lazy.

This is the original version, as I didn't have enough time to render a more complex one, as I'm still using the same crappy laptop, even after receiving 1800 English pounds from student finance, if only I didn't need to consume food.


Another go at the same thing this time, with solid block colour textures, how nice of me to come this far, with only TWO YEARS of supposed experience with the software........worst thing is I tried.

Random Spam

Hello there,
Now to be honest this post doesn't really contain anything interesting, I just felt that if I don't post at least 1 thing a month the world will end, much like it nearly did a few months ago.

Well I tried to create Helix as a Minecraft skin, but because of certain limitations, this is the size a minecraft skin has to be if you weren't aware........
Well its not that bad, but I do prefer my current skin, which I didn't make and do not know the original creator, For all those that don't know from the uncanny similarities, it is

"小早川ゆたか, Kobayakawa Yutaka", from the slice of life Japanese Anime "Lucky Star".

So moving on, I actually don't build much in Minecraft these days, because I'm not very good, I prefer to just tunnel my way for hours with no real point, I have a feeling my mid-life crisis is going to come a little bit earlier than expected.

Although I have had a project on hold for a while that I am doing with a friend.

Yes that's right Starbug, and to be honest, most of the work was my friends, it's not really that big of a project that 2 of us can work independently, and will/might probably finish it before summers over.

The only other thing "Productive" that I have done that isn't watching anime or playing games is my new Email signature for my GMail account it has links and everything. Although I think Blogger is going to put boarders around each sliced image, so I don't think it will look right, but I'm not going to fix it.



Well goodbye and I'll see you next month.

Im Still Alive

OK now, the few that actually read my blog, if any...well done and this post is just to let you know that I have finished college and am on a longgggggggg holiday, so no more posts until I feel like it, but I am available on:

Also find me here: Myanimelist.net and here: Youtube.com
I almost always use Mastahelix as an ID, so look for that.

I might possibly upload some random stuff later on.

Music, yes not quite finished

Well I wasn't planning on doing a post on my musical experience as there wasn't much to write about, but to achieve a good grade I had to produce something.

I used the basic free music editing software Audacity to edit our voices and original music which where recorded at the colleges sound room using very expensive stuff and not free software CuBase.

And here it is hosted by Esnips, edited by yours truly with voices from Harrison, Keiron, Joe and Me, the music composed by someone and played by Joe and Robin.

The music and voice overs where recorded separately and edited, and finally pasted together, I used Audacity to reverse the original track for variety instead of titling the track and by changing sound levels, tempo and pitch I was able to get the voice overs to sound better.

Take 15 - My environment

Almost finished, and the hardest part, Rendering. Yes that's right rendering an animation with particle affects is hard as the render time for my computer was about 220 hours which is ridiculous and because the holidays where coming up I didn't have the time to render the scene at college so I had to work with it. I instead decided to f*ck that I own a laptop and you cant leave a laptop on for 10 days, so I had to edit the scenes slightly, and because of this the final render is a last minute rush, which is disappointing but I hopefully still got a distinction so it doesn't really matter.

This render is the same one I used in my previous post, it is just the camera following the line without the model trains particle effect. Time to render "5 Hours"


This render is only the beginning of the animation where the portal animation meets my computers CPU capabilities. Time to Render "6 Hours"


After watching the first render I found that the animated sky box was to fast, so I fixed it and re-rendered it. Time to Render "6 Hours"


This render is of a camera on a separate path constraint which has the train in shots, the particle effects are only in shot for about 5 seconds.Time to Render "7 Hours"


The final render is of the exit portal, I spent more time on this than any other part, and was able the get the animation to run smoother, to get it to render fast I deleted everything that wasn't in shot and it rendered a lot fast than the estimated times. Time to Render "8 Hours"

I also edited some train onomatopoeia but I didn't think that was enough to make a post about, the editing was done by Steven "Self proclaimed Genius" Dickinson, he did a wonderful job at editing all mine and the teams videos into a serviceable trailer. (See Below)



The sound used is "Zack Hemsey - Mind Heist" and Jupiter by Paul Collier

Take 14 - My environment

Hello there, the next documented part of my work, is the animation path for the model train.
I first had to group a light and camera to my model and attach that group to a line which is designed to go where I would want the train to.
I first had to change the alignment of the group to path contract through the motion tab in 3DS Max and add the line as the path.

To get the train to follow that path now the group was attached to the line, I just checked the option follow and realigned the group so it animated how I wanted it to.

The video is from the camera perspective following the line. The only problem with this method is that every time I ungrouped the selection I had to re-do the path constraint.