Golf Ball
The golf ball is obviously one of the most crucial parts of my animation seeing as it is going to be used in every scene in my part of the animation. It would also be used in the transition between Tom’s and my animations. I was adamant that I was going to spend a long time ensuring that the golf ball looked realistic and effective for my animations. Originally, I struggled to think of the best way to create the desired look o the golf ball so I used the Internet to find a tutorial of how to do it.
I was very surprised to see how simple this model was going to be to create. I started off by creating a “Geosphere”. I had never used one of these models so was eager to see the outcome from it. To this Geosphere, I selected all of the edges and used the “Chamfer” tool. To this I added a turbosmooth modifier to smooth out the edges. The chamfer tool allowed me to created the hexagon affect that is on the edge of the golf ball. To my surprise, this method worked perfectly first time and the result that I produced stunned me, in a good way.
Geosphere
Chamfered
TurboSmoothed
Golf Club
The animation that I wanted to create requires the golfer to hit the golf ball towards the hole. This meant that he was going to have to be holding a golf club. I created this as a separate model and then would add it into the scenes when it was required.
I started off with a Cylinder that would be the grip of the club. I increased the cap segments to 1 so that would be able to extrude the inner parts of the cylinder down. I did this a couple of times to create the metal shaft of the club. Once I had done this I then moved on to actually creating the head of the club.
Golf club shaft and grip + example
To create the head I started with a box model and made it into a cuboid, the shape that the head of a golf club is. I added some segmentation to this box to allow me to manipulate the shape of the head and the vertices within it. This made it easy for me to delete the back part of the club to create the sloped part at the back of the club.
I then added took the model of the club head and the shaft and placed them next to each other and attached them together to create 1 object. To this model I applied a Turbosmooth modifier to smooth the edges of the golf club to make it look more realistic.
To make the golf club look realistic I was going to need to add some colour to it. I knew that different sections of the club would need to be different colours without any very large parts being one colour. To achieve this affect I used the Material ID Settings. This allows you to select a group of Polygon’s and add a material to them therefore making it easier to apply a range of materials to one model.
I created a metallic material to be used on the shaft of the golf club. This was from a silver base colour and edited the specular levels and glossiness of the material. I darkened the specular level a bit and also applied this material to the front face of the club. I did this because the part where the golf club actually hits the ball is usually a silver colour and in many cases made from a different type of metal. I finished off by adding a dark colour to the head of the golf club and a red colour to the grip.
Golf Hole
I needed to create the golf hole for the ball to fall into after the golfer had hit it to the edge before having it fall in. To do this, I used the same method that I used to separate the green from the fringe. The ProBoolena tool allows me to select a shape and cut this out of a different object so I used this method by creating a cylinder and cutting it out of the golf green. I could decide the depth of the hole by changing the height of the cylinder that I created.
Golf Flag
Another model that I needed to create was the golf Flag. This would sit inside the Golf hole that I had just made and would be the target for the golfers and where they are aiming their ball to go. I started the model by created a cylinder and split it into a few sections. I created a separate plane that would be used as the cloth material for the flag.
I did some research into possible alternatives to the method that I had thought of using and found that there were some very effective ways of creating a cloth material. There were 2 that I used. Using a reactor modifier and also using a cloth modifier. Unfortunately I struggled with both of these methods and with my lack of experience in the program, I decided it would be more effective for me to continue with my method and then come back to it if I had time.
I converted the Plane that I had created to an Editable Poly. I was now becoming very familiar with this method and was starting to find it easier to work with than when I originally started using the program. I then rotated the plane so that it was the correct way up for my flag. I manipulated the flag so that it looked like the flag was waving in the wind whilst also giving it a more realistic look.
I moved the plane towards the flagpole and attached the plane to the cylinder to create one object. This now gave me the Flagpole with a cloth like material coming out of top of the pole creating the actual flag part. I added a yellow colour to the object as most flags are either yellow or orange to make them stand out. This is to make it easier for the golfer’s to see their targets. I also added an image on top of the yellow colour to the cloth part of the flag. This was an image of the Essex crest to re-iterate the idea that we are advertising Essex.
Golf Stand
At all of the big major events in professional golf, there is always some big seating areas for crowds to sit in and watch the sport. These are usually around the green as it is where a lot of the most important shots are made and very frequently the point where a golfer is hitting the winning shot. I decided I would create a stand that could sit on the grass in the background that would allow audience members to watch the sport. Once created, I would add some models to the seats in the stand to create some viewers of the golf. These characters would be able to have their own animations to react to what is going on in the current scenes.
I started off by creating the main part of the stand. To do this I created a box with a number of segments so that I could manipulate each section individually after turning the box into an editable poly. I then extruded out a second layer of the box to create the different layers in the stand. I repeated this until I got a stacked set of boxes, like the seats in a cinema.
The next step was to create the seats for the crowd members to sit on. As the stand would be outside, the makers would be more fussed about durability rather than comfort. This would mean the seats were not made out of decent material that costs a lot of money. I decided that I would create some metal seats for them to sit on. To do this I created a box with 3 length segments. This was going to be for the crowd members to sit on. I then selected the middle length section and extruded this down to create the stand for the seat. I then duplicated the Seats and placed them in rows on each level of the stand.
The next step was to create the safety barriers and Flags. The flags were created in the same method as the golf flag to sit in the golf hole but just on a larger scale. The material on the flags were also different because they were National Flags to represent the range of national golfers playing. The middle flag (Australian Flag) would also be used in the transition to the next scene.
I finished off the golf stand by creating some safety rails. These were very simple to create and are 3 Vertical and 1 Horizontal cylinders with a silver material added to them to look like metal. I placed these at the end of each row on both sides and along the back of the stand as a form of safety for the crowd.
Golfer
We decided as a group that we would use 1 model of a person and re-use this person throughout our animation sequence. This would give the affect of the same person undertaking the different roles/tasks/activities and giving the audience a view of what Essex has to offer. Dan was the man who offered to create this man and the rest of the group members imported and merged the man into our models.
In my scenes I re-used the man as another golfer and the members of the crowd watching the golfers playing. I changed the material colours that each of the men had to show that they were different people.
The Basic Model of our Man (created by Dan)
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