In the recent weeks, I’ve been focusing on George’s movements and spending a lot of time with the curve editor in 3dsMax.
Although I can’t show anything of George at the moment because he’s still a work progress, I can show you the different subtle animations I will be applying, more specifically in the plants around the house.
Because I have two different types of wind (subtle breeze & strong wind), I isolated the plants into their own files so I could animate them freely and import them back into the appropriate scenes.
The plants were all animated with various Stretch and Twist modifiers on the X, Y, Z axis.
You can check out some of the plant animations below:





On a side note, I am working with the mental ray renderer in 3dsMax. I wrote wrote down the settings and last minute adjustments for future reference:
- BEFORE RENDERING!
- Set Motion Blur!
- Set Advanced Lighting Effects
- Set 1280 x 720 Resolution
- New Folder + Render Name
- Mental Ray Values:
- Image Precision: 1.0
- Soft Shadows: Default
- Glossy Reflections: Default
- Glossy Refractions: Default
- Final Gather: Medium
- Trace Bounce Limits:
- Reflections: 4
- Refractions: 6
- FG Bounces: 0
A few of these values were slightly adjusted for render time. For example, a few scenes do not have any geometry that have glossy reflections or refractions, so I turn them off.
In the next update, I’ll be going through each scene and sharing each experience with animating, editing, trial, and errors. Keep in mind that a few renders will not be complete, but I’ll be willing to share what I have.