Chess Game
Our task was to produce an animation of two robots playing a game of chess within 3D Studio Max. I thought this was an exciting task to do as it would give me a change to use my creativity and incorporate it within my work.
First off I researched into the game of chess as I have never played the game before. Once I mastered the techniques I could put these skills to action by animation them. I started by sketching a story board of the moves that I was going to do and which player was going to win.
I attended Andy’s seminars so that I could learn how to build the robot arm in the lesson. I did this and also used his tutorials that he gave us that where extremely useful. I learnt how to build the arm and how to rig it and how to add fingers so that the hand can pick up objects.
Once I built the robot arm I created the chess board and the chess pieces. I researched online on how to do this and also used some of Andy’s tutorials. Once I had created all of the objects I merged all of the files together so that they are in one file. Once I had done his I started to look at different textures I had been looking on the internet and researched various once. I decided to go with an old dim warehouse theme for the environment with low lights, and a rusty texture on one of the robots and a futuristic chrome feel to the other. I think that these textures worked well together and gave the overall animation a great effect.
After I applied the textures I started to animate the robot arms and made them pick up the chess pieces to play the game. The robots complete the game of chess and the modern robot arm wins the game and boasts about it.
The final thing that I did in 3D Studio Max was placing the cameras. I decided to use one main camera alongside two other ones which I would use to focus on an important scene. I done this because I didn’t want to confuse the audience with many camera angles as the animation isn’t very long
I had enjoyed this project because it gave me a chance to learn new techniques and explore further into 3D Studio Max. Also this task has helped me get my head around the actual animation side of the program. Using such things as rigging, key frames, attachments.
