Project I: A Lunar Expedition

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Chapter List

Lesson 1: The Script

Lesson 2: Spaceship Modeling

Lesson 3: Modeling the Lunar Module and Rover

Lesson 4: Modeling and Animating an Astronaut

Lesson 5: Modeling Space and Animating the Flight of the Spaceship

Lesson 6: Modeling and Animating the Landing on the Moon

Lesson 7: Animating the Astronaut and Lunar Rover

Lesson 8: Rendering the Scene and Assemling the Movie

Part Overview

We began working on this book on the eve of the 40^th anniversary of the first manned flight into outer space. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a citizen of the former U.S.S.R., became the first man in history to defy gravity and complete an orbit around the Earth in the Vostok 1 spacecraft. It is therefore perfectly natural that the first series of lessons in this book are dedicated to cosmic flight. When you successfully complete these lessons, you should end up with something akin to the Project-1.avi file on the accompanying CD-ROM.

Here's what you'll need to do:

• Lesson 1: The Script. In this first lesson, we'll make a quick draft of the script, estimate the work time, and decide which events to include and their order.

• Lesson 2: Spaceship Modeling. In this lesson, we'll create the model of an interplanetary spaceship from scratch, mostly using primitives that will need to be touched up later. Although advanced users of 3ds max might shun this method, simple modeling with "blocks" and "balls" is very effective.

• Lesson 3: Modeling the Lunar Module and Rover. Here, you will learn more interesting methods of modeling and texturing. In addition, you will learn how to create and configure inter-object hierarchical links, and connect animation parameters using the Wire system.

• Lesson 4: Modeling and Animating an Astronaut. In this lesson, we will model an astronaut in a spacesuit, create a skeleton, and prepare it for further animation. We will also teach him how to walk.

• Lesson 5: Modeling Space and Animating the Flight of the Spaceship. In this lesson, you will create the Earth, the Moon, the Sun and the stars, as well as animate the flight of the interplanetary spaceship. At first glance, you might think there is nothing too complicated in this type of animation. However, it will help us understand how to solve a number of interesting problems, such as combining objects with significantly different sizes (actually, by several orders of magnitude).

• Lesson 6: Animating and Modeling the Landing on the Moon. This lesson consists of two parts. The first part shows the approach to the surface of the Moon, as seen from a "TV monitor" camera on the lunar module. The second part shows the actual landing of the module, as seen from a camera on the Moon. It will show you interesting methods for animating objects, and elements and properties of materials used with Wires.

• Lesson 7: Animating the Astronaut and Lunar Rover. In this lesson, our astronaut will take his first steps on the Moon, climb in to take the controls of the Moon research vehicle, and start on his way.

• Lesson 8: Rendering the Scene and Assembling the Movie. In this last lesson, we will use Batch methods to render the scene in 3ds max. We will then compile the clip using the Video Post module.

All the work in this project is aimed at one goal - creating the illusion that what happens appears real, even if it lacks pizzazz. You should also note that this project was created for teaching purposes, so we tried to put as much of 3ds max's capabilities in it as we could. That is why our model is relatively simple, and why the modeling, texturing, and animating methods we used might, in contrast to the model, seem more complex than necessary.

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