The Chess player

 ‘The Chess player’ a project that involved an animation of a self defeating Chess player robot, the animation had to be at least 30 seconds, to do this I started of by producing a robot arm where I rigged and animated using IK chains (inverse kinematics) and reaction manager. From there I started to make the chess pieces and the chessboard. My chess pieces started of by using a modifier called lathe however I soon learnt that lathe modifier had a lot of triangular polygons which makes the model hard to render therefore I started modeling each chess pieces form standard objects which is called quad modeling.

To start my animation I had to learn how to play chess, as a result I immediately learnt the basics and produced an animation approximate of 52 seconds.  Since my robot was an arm it didn’t have any eyes or mouth to show any gestures as a result I used the fingers and the head to show the robots disappointments. My animation theme was to keep it very dark and dull and give the robots a very aged look.

During this project I learnt how important lighting can be, as it gives the final touches to your animation, there are many types of lights however I kept it simple and used lighting such as Omni and MR Omni, In addition to lighting I have also learnt a lot more modeling techniques within 3DS max, such as quad modeling, the lathe modifier and attaching shapes objects with the editable poly modifier, Again I had little knowledge of character modeling but after this project I feel positive in creating different types of characters.

After Completing this project I have learnt a variety of skills such as inverse kinematics as well as constraints and reaction manager, these skills are essential for character modeling in the world of 3d animation, I feel confident in animating characters whilst using these assists. After rendering the animation I imported it to Adobe after effects where I added sound effects for most of the movement and camera angles.

Throughout this project I faced some problems that I soon had to take them as a challenge, problems occurred such as animating one chess piece at a time, all the chess pieces animated together until I learnt how to used link constraints, which helped me move each chess piece separately, I also had difficulty using the camera where it followed the animation from their I learnt different types of cameras such as free camera and target camera and how the angles and lenses work.

This was my first 3d animation project, I thoroughly enjoyed making the robot and the chess set, after learning all the skills I am excited to start on my second project, I am really looking forward to it as I can use all the skills that I have learnt from this project and carry on the learning process where I can use these skills to become a part in the animation and character modeling industry.