Hello and welcome to my Animation Master tutorial about how
to model texture, rig, animate and finally render this tank.
I am Geralt Sunga and I will give you a
step by step instruction on how to do that.
My tutorial will be separated into several parts.
These parts are the first part modeling the head and
the body.
The second part connects the head to the body and
to model the muscles.
The third part on how to model the track and
the fourth part on how to model the wheels and
the brake.
And after that we will just finish up our model.
This will be the modeling section of this tutorial and
after that we will go on with the texture section.
Ok, so before we can start with the first part
of this tutorial, we have to have a look at
our file structure first.
So I provide a file structure to you which is
highly recommended to be used in this tutorial.
And you just have to copy this file structure to
anywhere on your hard drive.
One folder isn’t needed though.
It is a HXT folder here which contains a plugin
file of Animation Master.
The plugin file is a several plugin from Master Brickman
which can just bevel an edge.
And to install this plugin file we just have to
click on it, do a copy command and copy it
to your Animation Master install folder, wherever that is.
Go to the HXT folder and just paste it here.
After you pasted this you have to restart Animation Master
and after that you should be ready to go.
You just have to start Animation Master now and what
you can see here is the interface I am using.
If your interface isn’t looking like that, you should have
a look at my website again and download the tutorial
on how to set up the interface in the way
I have it here.
To start with, we have to create a new model
for this we have to go to the objects folder
and for example double click on it.
That will create a new model.
You could also have just right clicked on this folder
here.
Go to New Model.
Okay, I will now just rename it by right clicking
on it, choosing rename and rename it to Tank.
After that we are ready to go.
So the first thing we will have to do is
to create a Rotoscope I provided in my file structure
to you.
And to do that just right click on the name
of the model.
Go to New Rotoscope.
Now import both of the rotoscopes here to your file.
Ok, as you can see, both of the rotoscopes are
now shown in this front view, which isn’t what we
are looking for.
We are looking for the first rotoscope to be shown
in the front view and the second to be shown
in the left view.
I press the fourth key on my keypad and go
to the left view.
And as you can see, this one is empty.
So we have to tell animation master that it should
just show us the second rotoscope here in the left
view.
To do that, just open up the properties, go to
view front and click on left.
So you can see we now have our rotoscope here.
The second thing we will have to do is to
make this rotoscope not pickable again.
Because I can now just grab it by accident, for
example, and drag it around.
And that is not what we are looking for.
So just to make it not pickable, we can just
click on these two icons here.
And now I can’t select it anymore, as you can
see.
Okay, so let’s start to model this tank.
The first thing I will model is the head and
for that I will just draw a line.
As you can see, I am trying to give every
edge in my rotoscope here one point and connect it.
Ok, so I will select everything of that and just
peek it.
Peak means that the splint will have edges and is
not rounded.
Okay, so the second thing we will have to do
is to align this splint on the other axis.
To do that I will go to the front view
by pressing the 2 key on the keypad.
Okay, and now I will realign this splint here.
That can be done by just using your arrow keys.
And if that just takes too much time, you can
go and click on the shift key.
And using the arrow keys again, this will be a
bit faster.
Okay, so if you have a look at this now,
it’s not rendering.
So what we want to do is to give it
some kind of geometry informations.
And this information can be added by just extruding this
splint on one axis.
To do that, I go to the front view again
with the two key and extrude it.
I will realign the new splint here to a reasonable
position, for example, like that.
And if you now render it, you can see we
have some sort of geometry here.
What we have to do with this geometry is to
close the edges here.
So how to do that, we will just draw a
line from this point to this point and from this
point to this point.
And if you now render it, you can see that
there’s some kind of connection there.
And the geometry is now closed.
But it’s looking more or less wrong.
So what we will have to do is to just
add another splint at this point, for example, okay, and
the second one down here, for example, like this.
And if you now have a look at the rendered
image, you can see that this is looking much better
now.
So I will go to the front view again with
the two key and just realign these points to what
I want them to look.
For example, something like that.
I will peek this.
Okay, so we have closed one side of our object
here.
If you render again, you can see that.
Okay, so we have to do this for the second
side here too.
You could use a copy command which is called copied,
paste, attach.
But I think for just a few clicks I won’t
do that because it can create some side effect I
don’t want to risk here.
Okay, peek it again.
And as you can see, that was very fast.
I realign the points again to wherever I want them.
For example, like this.
And as you can see our head is getting in
shape.
Okay, so the second thing we will do is to
add some sort of a bevel line here.
And for that we will need the plugin we installed
earlier.
So I will just click on one of the splints
and as you can see there’s a BIOS handler.
If your bias handler isn’t showing up, you have to
activate it at this point this bias handler will just
indicate that we are we have selected the splint.
In Animation Master there is no way to select for
example just one point.
You always select a splint and this is reasonable because
we now can see which splin ring will be beveled
from saddle.
So the splint ring which will be beveled here will
be this one going around here.
So just select the splint you want to be beveled,
right click on it, go to plugins wizards and use
SAVL on it.
Savel will now ask for a distance.
That means at which distance should the new splint ring
be added to this one And I think I will
use a distance of null point 1.
Click on OK and as you can see there is
a new splint ring which was added.
I will have to peek it again to have a
better look.
And if I now render, you can see there is
some sort of a new line here or new geometry
which is added.
And now I will just do that for more or
less every splint here.
It’s a bit annoying, but several can’t do a whole
selection of splints but only one splint at a time.
So we’ll have to do that.
In reality it is often better to model this in
reality it is often better to model the bevel in
before you do anything else because it can just prevent
some problems here.
But for this model we can use it.
One more splint to go.
So, okay, I will pick it again and as you
can see, yes, we got every splint.
I go to the shaded view down here and you
can see we have more or less a nice looking
edge there.
Okay, this could be our head, but I will add
a little bit of curve to some of the surfaces
here to make it just a bit more nature, like
so I will go to the wireframe mode again and
I will go to this point and realign it.
Or better to say, I will realign the bias handler,
for example, like this.
And I will do that for both sides.
And down here I will do the same thing.
Okay, as you can see, some of the points here
are not aligned.
I will do that again by hand.
Something like that.
Okay, reasonably good.
And I will do that for the sides here to
it, for example, like this.
Ok, so we have our head ready.
Looks OK to me.
Now just have a look from the side view again.
And as you can see, the head is more or
less the same shape as the body.
So what I will do is to just select the
head, do a copy command, do a paste command, realign
the head, the copied head and just go to the
scale handlers here and rescale it.
I will have to align a few points, but in
the end it should save me some time here.
These ones here.
Ok, so what we have now is the head and
the body of our tank.
That would be the first part of the tutorial.
In the second part we will handle to connect the
head and the body and how to model the muzzles.
So see you later.