Introduction 
The purpose of this project is to apply ideas learnt in Computer
Graphics course at Brock Univesrity. It was a very challanging experience to
work on this project for several continuous days and nights in computer lab
at Brock University Computer science Department. The tool used in this
animation is called Bryce. Initially, the limitations of Bryce caused alot
of frustartion but eventually, I was able to get my desired results. The
project helped me alot in learning the fundamentals of animation such as
setting up motion paths, key frames, camera control, light and other core
techniques.
The basic idea of this animation is based on "Dog Fight"
between two helicopters. The entire animation is created in Bryce 4.I spent
most of my time in designing and animating the helicopter particularly its
blades to get the real graphic effects. After considerable amount of time
and effort, I was able to get the effects close to reality. There are
certain things which might seem quite simple to human eye but it is not as
simple as one think.
The poor camera movement compeled me to render
certain scenes in this animation. I hope you enjoy viewing it and expect
your prompt feed back.
Modeling
I started my
project with learning Bruce4 by playing with it for few days. The most time
consuming and difficult part of this animation was to model a helicopter
involved in the project. I realized that it is so difficult to model
helicopter specially its body in Bryce4. Therefore I download the egg shaped
body and texture from the web.
The helicoptor model consists of several different parts which are
being designed over a long period of time. It includes top blades, tail,
tail blade, missiles, wings, stand of the helicopter etc. Finally I group
them together.
Blades:
Designing blades was really simple and straight forward. I used
sphere, cylinder and brickoid that were given in the Bryce4 to create
blades. Finally I put them on top of each other and group them.
Waterfall:
Creating waterfall was also
fun. It took so long to figure out how to design such graphics in Bryce4. I
created terrain first and edited it by creating new on my own. Then I made a
concave shape object to create the edges of the fall. I clicked on eroded
button on different times to get some vertical effects to show the water
flow of the falls. Finally, I used one of the water texture which was
already given in Bryce4. On viewing the scene, you will observe that I have
put three terrains on all three sides and tried to get real waterfall
effect. After producing this waterfall, I firmly believe that with an
appropriate knowledge of tools anyone can produce his or her own waterfall
successfully. Hope you would like it.
Missiles:
At the end of the animation, I
realized that I have forgotten to close the backside of missiles. It was too
late to fix everything but on analysing the front and rear view you will
find them real. The hardest part was desiging outer missiles and their
racks. The reason of producing different types of missiles was to show a
real airel war combat where aircrafts use different missiles for different
situations.
Helicopter Base:
The base of the
helicopter was made in bryce using brickoid and cylender that you will see
in one of the scene. You will also see small outlets or boxes on the
platform. The main concept of having those on helicopter platform was for
putting tools or outlets for gas supply.
Wings:
Wings have been made by using
streteched cylinder,strteched cube and brickoid given in Bryce4. The boolean
effect has also been used to create the real effect of the wings and racks
which carry missiles.
Tail:
The tail is made by using Bryce4
and Corel Paint6. The tail itself is divided into two parts. The major long
part of the tail is designed by using stretched cone. The second narrow
elevated part of the tail is made by both using brickoid and stretched cone.
Stands:
Stands are created by using
cylinders , 2D disc horizontal and brickoids. Initially, I wanted to create
wheels as a support but since wheels were difficult to design so I made
stands which were easy to create in brickoid.
Final Model:
After grouping together all
the above described tools and objects, the following helicopter was created.
Tools
Following
tools are used to create this animation.
- Bryce4.0
- Corel Painter6
- MovieMaker
Sounds
Sound clips used in this animation are extracted from movies "Top
Gun" and "Speed". All sound files were origionally in wav format and finally
embedded in the animation using "Movie Maker" in SGI Lab.
Textures
Almost all textures were used from Bryce except few which were
downloaded from the web.
Favorite Screen
Shots
Click on thumbs to enlarge the picture
Click on thumbs to enlarge the
picture
Comments
I do not know what should I say about Bryce4. Bryce4 interface is
really good and interactive. I really liked working with it. It is one of
the PC based software which has really nice and cool interface. But it has
many limitations as well. In the begining it seemed too complex but after
few days effort and going through different tutorials, it turned out really
simple. There are so many thing in Bryce4 that I don't even know yet. The
lack of experience with Bryce4 and design I had in my mind resulted in
spending days and nights to accomplish this animation. But still I am not
totally satisfied with my final output. I could have done better if I know
Bryce really well. But I did not have enough time to explore it's
capabilities. One thing that I would like to mentioned while working with
Bryce4 is that it takes so long to render. First seven second animation took
more than 6 days to render. It is just unbeleivable. Rendering time totally
depends on the scene. If you have really complex scenes then it will takes
forever. By complex scenes I mean if you have so many
polygons.
Overall project was really challenging and I had alot of
fun while working on it. I learnt alot from this computer animation. Now I
realize that realistic animations require lots of work and resources all
together. I tried my level best to make realistic animation but still there
are some flaws that I couldn't fix because of time limitations. If you have
any comments please do not hesitate. Hope you will enjoy it.
Designer/Architect
Designed and built by: Umair Tariq Bajwa
Any comments? Umair
Bajwa
Copyright © 2002 Umair Tariq Bajwa
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