Introduction

All the things in the nature have their own rhythm: sunshine, wind and fallen leaves ...
This movie intends to catch the movement of the nature: the falling leaves in the autumn. At this moment, you can feel a kind of melody when leaves falling to the ground.
I designed the whole scene to simulate a stage. With the movement of camera, spotlight to the scene, I tried to make a kind of drama effect.

At first, there are only two spotlights on the stage, one points toward background and the other one points to ground. Under the light, some leaves lay on the ground. All these stuffs create the autumn's atmosphere. Then the camera moves closer and closer. At mean time, one of spotlight moves towards the wall, on which there is a violin lays. As soon as the violin is focused, the music starts. During the music, the leaves keep flying slowly in the air. About 15 second later, all leaves are fallen to the ground and music stops.

The following are tools that have been used for the creation of the movie.

3D studio MAx 1.0.

3D studio MAX 1.0 was the main tool for my movie making. I use this software to create model, render scene and animate object.

Antechinus media editor.

Antechinus media editor was used to cut the music to be what I needed and then convert it to a wave file. Finally, it is used to combine music and movie together.

quick time player.

Quick time player for viewing the movie.

violin



I spend most of time to create the violin by using the standard primitives and some modifying method.
The violin consists of several parts: belly, back, neck, scroll, tailpiece, fingerboard and chord etc. The chords are made up of some cylinders. For violin belly, back and neck, scroll, and tailpiece, fingerboard, I first draw the outline of these parts using some curves, and then I extrude the curves into the geometry I wanted. Then I assigned different colors on them.
Finally, tailpiece, fingerboard and scroll and neck were detached into belly and back, and I grouped those parts together.

leaf



The leaves were done with curve draw too.
First I drew the outline of the leaf. Then I extrude the outline to make the leaf thicker. I used modifying method such as 'edit mesh' and 'edit patch' to get shape and make this model more leaf-like.

All textures used in this project are created using materials in 3D Studio MAX.

leaf textures



The texture is used to make the leaf's surface more leaf-like. I assigned the leaf's surface with two kinds of textures: 'morocco' and 'sunshine'.
'morocco' for leaf's original colour, and 'sunshine' for some leaves under sunshine.

background Textures



This beautiful background is a texture from 3D MAX material library too.

violin texture



I assigned the violin's surface with textures: 'red-wood.jpg'. This texture made violin more real.

You can click the following link to view my animation.

The following are some involved movement in my animation:

• Lighting

in order to emphasize the scene , I didn't use "ambient light". There are two "spot lights" used in the animation, without them, entire scene will be totally dark.
spot light 1: is a directional light, points towards one of the walls, so that the wall will have special lighting effect and the violin, fallen leaves will always be focused.
sport light 2: is a directional light, points towards another walls. The difference between spot light1 and spot light2 is that the spot light 2 used for the effect ion of lanternslide, so the beautiful background can be seen.

• Camera

There is only one camera in my movie.
At first the camera was set far from the scene, then it gets closer and closer, so the scene can be seen more clearly.

• Key frames

The camera and light and leaves are animated throughout the scene by using key frame animation. At first, key framing is used to animate the movement of the camera and light, then the camera cut to the part of scene where the leaves are falling. Each leaf moves along a predefined path.

I add music effects to my movie for simulating the rhythm of leaves faded and fallen in the autumn. The music is taken from a CD, I used "Antechinus media editor" to cut the music to be desired duration and then convert it to a wave file. Finally, mix music and movie together.

After spending time to do this project, I did learn a lot about computer 3D animation art.
3D studio Max is a good tool to do computer animation, but it is different to be familiar with. I have to spend a lot of time on learning how to use this software. After that, the process of creating the animation was very interesting.
This project includes huge amount of work: creating models, choosing texture, and adjusting animation, and so on. But it is such a fun, and I thinking that I would like choose computer 3d graphic as my career in the future.