Final Video Submission

Storyboard Final

Final Narrative

The story begins at the end. A red architectural element struggles in a confined, artificial space. Struggles to design itself and form an identity to assume for its lifetime in the uninspiring world it now finds itself in, trying to remember what it was like in the outside world- when it was young and free, and exploring new things. It has a flashback, to when it first started life as an architectural element going out on its own to see the world. The viewer sees a distant memory of the element squeezing itself out of a brick wall to freedom. It is small and happy, jumping and traveling through what looks like a University campus. In time with the music's strong beat, the video flashes to the present time, where the viewer is confronted with the stressful sight of the struggling element, only recognisable by it's colour. It finds an empty street and tries to imitate the shapes it sees by growing boxes on its surface, but decides against it. The viewer is brought back to the present time where the object is in the fluorescent-lit room, struggling to find a shape to assume, and they are flashed back to another time in its life. It is a bit older, and has grown slightly, looking for more interesting forms to mimic, being particularly concerned their materials. On the University campus it finds a round element to mimic and appropriates the material accurately and in much detail. Again the viewer is flashed back to the present time as the music changes, and is quickly brought to another time in the element's life. It simply mimics the shape of The Louvre in Paris here, and after a reminder of the current situation the element finds itself in in that fluorescent-lit room it finds a sculpture, turns itself into a sphere, and grows an exoskeleton to match the sculpture it aspires to be. The music changes and there are 3 views of the struggling architectural element in quick succession, before the view is changed to the architectural element observing the Pyramids. Suddenly, the viewer can see a close up of the changed material on the element, mimicking the sand that the environment surrounding is made from, and the camera changes views to a long shot of the element's changed form- with pyramid shapes on all it's faces. The camera switches quickly to the stressed element when it is older in “the room” again where it is twisting and turning as it tries desperately to design itself as something worth being an architectural form. The music becomes more intense as the architectural element is obviously becoming more and more anxious about its time running out on making a design decision and forming an identity. Then suddenly the music comes to a climax and the architectural element becomes a box again, just the design that it started as.

Interesting and Useful Tip!

TO CHANGE A BOX INTO A SPHERE IN 3DS MAX!

We were trying in a tutorial for a while to cleanly morph a box into a sphere using the Morpher modifier. This did not work so I gave up until I found a tutorial on it. Turns out that a tutorial really should not have been needed, as the name of the modifier need is SPHERIFY.

How embarrassing. But anyway, its very easy.

It works like a percentage. So you take any object you want, and choose the Spherify modifier, and it is set to 100%, so that it automatically becomes a sphere when you add the modifier. Then you can animate this to go from 0 to 100 so that a box can smoothly change into a sphere.

Test Render for Material

More Render Examples

Better Test Renders

I figured out that the reason my box looked so fractal was because I forgot to give it more segments. This is much closer to the form I wanted to achieve in the first place: