The Da Vinci Project

For our project we have to create an animation about one of Da Vinci's machines using Autodesk 3DS Max. The machine that we use is our own choice and there is no set time length on the animation. We have to pick a machine, model it, animate it, and present it in a 15th century Italian environment.


Research

Da Vinci was an interesting person; he is described as a true renaissance man and he specialised in many professions such as painter, inventer, architect, sculptor, mathematician, engineer and writer. There were more fields that he delved in, however he was most known for his paintings and inventions. His most famous painting is the Mona Lisa, and perhaps his most famous invention is the flying machine. His inventions are so amazing because they are well ahead of the time that they were made in; many of his plans and inventions were the basis of some creations in todays world, and some are still being studied.

 Among his inventions are the giant crossbow, the machine gun and the flying machine. For my project I want to use one of these devices as I find them the most interesting, and can think of the most ideas for. Although I will only be using one for my animation, it would be good practice and experience to have a go at modelling all three.


Decision

I have decided to choose the crossbow as my final design, as I think it will be a good challenge to model and animate, and I have a good idea for the basis of my animation. That idea is basically to show the crossbow firing different objects at different targets, showing the effect it has with the physics and density of the models. I believe this will be a difficult animation as I have never animated in 3DS Max before and it will require me to learn how to use reactor or MassFX, which gives objects a mass and allows them to adhere to gravity and the likes. The environment it will be set in is a 15th century Italian countryside, perhaps in the courtyard of a castle, surrounded by trees and castle walls. Whether or not I have human models in my animation is yet undecided, as I'm not sure how plausable it will be to model people and have them move around loading the crossbow and learning how to use MassFX in my animation.