Scene 9

In this scene, the tree gives the branch to the lumberjack. He thanks the tree then walks away. Again, I didnt feel the need to include a specific camera shot, so I used the angle from the perspective view as I felt it fitted the scene well.

Now in this scene, I reused the ear-less tree model in order to save some time. Unfortunately, this meant that the ear was still attached to his hand. This was fine for the first half of the scene, but it caused me some trouble when he passes the branch to the lumberjack. I couldnt figure out how to de-attach it from its hand. So to get around this I had to set several key frames of the branch in the lumberjacks hand. However as it was still technically attached to the tree, whenever the tree's arm moved, so did the branch. So I had to constantly play the animation and every time the branch jumped out of the lumberjack's hand to follow the tree, I had to move it back in his hand and set a key frame. As a result, the animation is a little jumpy. But it was the best that I could do.

On a side note, this is the first scene where the ground and background blend into each other very nicely! This is how I tried to get it for all of the scenes, but had no luck as I couldnt get the lighting in a position to do so.

Also, I found out that I could not use footsteps mode, and then continue to animate the model once it has stopped walking. I had originaly intnded to have the lumberjack walk up to the tree and take the branch, but I had to skip this. In order to get him to leave the scene, I justy set a key frame of him away. This is why when he leaves, the animation makes it seem almost as if he is floating.

Scene 8

In this scene, the tree pulls off his ear, looks at it then stretches out to give it to the lumberjack. I didnt feel the need to use a camera in this scene. However, thinking about it, maybe it would have been more dramatic to have a close up of his face as he pulls off his ear, then pan out to show the results.

Now this scene caused quite a bit of trouble for me. In 3DS Max, if you try to edit a model that has a skin applied to it, the model messes up. So if I wanted to remove the ear from the model, I had to delete the skin, remove the ear, and then reapply the skin to the model. This was very annoying and took me a while to realise. I was very detremined to save myself some time and find a way to get around it, but i couldnt. I had to do this again in a later scene...

I then made the ear attach to the tree's hand. This wasnt as hard as i was expecting. Not attaching the ear to his hand anyway...To do this, I had to create a dummy and attach it to the hand. Then I made the ear attach to the hand too, and then whenever I moved the ear, the arm would follow it! The downside of this is that the arm literally follows the ear wherever it moves. So if I were to move the ear behind the tree, the arm would bend at an awkward angle. So I had to be extra careful when animating the arm.

Scene 7

This scene is simply a reaction scene to the stand alone tree pulling off his own ear. Most of the trees stare at him blankly, while 1 tree cant bare to look and covers his eyes.

Not much animation in this scene. Just blinking and minimal arm movement. There was also no need to use a camera as it is just a reaction shot, so a fixed camera suited the scene well enough.

Nothing else worth mentioning for this scene.

Scene 6

In this scene, the tree attempts to pull off his left ear in order to give it to the lumberjack. Its a very simple scene, as it focuses on the face of the tree. All I had to do was once again use the morpher and Auto Key tools.

As the tree closes his eyes I did want to change the mouth to make it look as though it was a little painful, but I was unable to come up with a mouth to express this, as I only wanted it to be a single line and felt that a sad face would give the wrong impression.

Thankfully the ground is not showing in this scene, so I did not have to worry about the blend between the ground and background. And as usual, the Omni light is in the sky above the trees face.

Scene 5

This scene is very much like scene 3. It's almost exactly the same, the only difference being the pose of the lumberjack. In this scene he simply looks towards the camera (which incidently is coming from the same angle as the stand alone tree) and gives the tree a thumbs up. This was done the same way as before, simply by creating key frames in the Auto Key bar.

Scene 4

In this scene, the trees respond to the lumberjack with suspicion. They all react differently to his request. It is clear that none of them want to give him a branch, but before they know it, another tree says that the lumberjack is welcome to have one of his.

As I mentioned, each one of the trees react differently. In order to do this, I had to use the morpher tool to morph the expressions of each tree. I also used the Auto Key to set key frames of each movement. For example, having the standard pose in te first frame, then having an arm moved to the head in the next key frame. Then when the animation is played, the movement will be automatic. This was nto hard, but tedious. VERY tedious...but worth it in the end.

In this scene, the camera starts off low, as it did in the previous tree scene, then slowly rises to create the impression of them losing their confidence. When the other tree shouts out, the camera shifts to face the stand alone tree. I believe this is an effective shot, as once again it is as if we are seeing it all from the perspective of the lumberjack.

I usd 3 lights in this scene. 2 Omni lights and 1 target light. The first Omni light is in the same position as the previous scenes. In this scene it becomes clear why I placed it there. It is so that there is light on the face of the stand alone tree. I didnt want to the audience to not be able to see his face, so I made sure to keep this paryicular light consistent throuout the animation. The other Omni light is next to the trees in order to lighten their faces. The target light is behind the stand alone tree. The aim of the light was to try and blend the seam between the 2 background planes together. Unfortunately, I dont believe that I was sucessful in doing so. I still decided to keep it though as it does improve the seam very slightly.

Scene 3

This scene was very simple to do. The lumberjack is asking the trees for a small branch. So I made his arms and head rise, as well as his eyebrows and mustache move in such a way to make it seem as though he is smiling. This was all done simply by adding key frames in the Auto Key mode.

It seems as though I forgot to add light to this scene. luckily, the scene isnt really in need of it, as the model can be made out very clearly. The only annoyance is the lack of consistancy between lighting with the previous scenes.

I also felt that there was no need to add a camera as I just wanted a fixed shot of the lumberjack's face. So I just rendered it in the perspective view.




I came across one consistant annoyance with my 3DS files. Every time I open a file with my lumberjack in it, his right eyebrow would not be on his face, but rather floating in front of it. I have no idea why this happens. I am guessing it has something to do with the way that it is linked to the model. The only way to get around this was to create a new instance of the left eyebrow each time I opened the file. Veeeeeeeery annoying.....