Week 12! Final Review!

The Final Animation (Without Sound)

Overall, I'm really happy with how it all turned out. As I edited it together in premier pro I took out quite a chunk of scene one and two, and a small bit from scene 3 at the end.

After all this I've noticed the way the tie fighter in scene 3 slows as it nearly hits the other tie fighter. That does annoy me every time I watch the video now but it's too late to change it.

The good parts

• Scene Two's overall feel of being very ominous and forboding. I feel that I really hit that mark. On that scene.
• The crosshair in scene 3 I really love, and the camera angle from inside the cockpit. I'm glad I deviated from my plan to make that scene as it was a lot of work to have all the moving pieces come together, and it was also my first time animating the laser shots.
• That I made too much, making too much and having the part-luxury and part-tough-decision to cut parts out to bring it down to 30 seconds was great. It was a lot easier to cut parts out than it would be to make more afterwards.
• Scene 4's explosion and camera angle. It really creates an epic feel of 'cool guys don't look at explosions'
• The exhaust lights, I just really love the look of them. It may be difficult to notice but in scene 3 the lights flare up just as the lambda shuttle kicks into a higher gear and shoots off to safety.
• Figuring out the visibility track so the lasers and ships could disappear. While it didn't help for scene three's ships as Max kept crashing for that, it worked perfectly for Scene 4's ships and lasers.

The improvements and bad parts plus what I learned from them

• As I mentioned above, the Tie Fighter in scene three really bugs me and I wish I had time to change it. 
• Scene 1, it doesn't feel as full of wonder or give the vast feel it should when it's together with all the other scenes. I think if I had remade this Scene I would make the camera's arc a lot longer out to the side, so you really get that feeling of the vastness of space. 
• The crosshair in scene 3. I had no good ideas on how to get rid of the crosshair once the shots were fired and everything started to happen, so it just seems to sit there in the middle and obscure the action. I really feel as though there could be simple solution to that but I can't visualise it.
• Number of Tie Fighters. When doing the original storyboard I think I underestimated how long a scene would take, especially while having to have it slow enough for the viewer to see whats going on. I think I could have minimised it to 3 tie fighters if I had enough time to go back and edit everything.
• Positions of tie fighters when transitioning from scene 3 to 4. If I again had some more time and more patience with 3DS Max's crashes I would have attempted to have it line up properly for a more seamless transition. 
• I feel like Scene 3 really has no feeling to it, and it might be slightly boring but while building it I imagined it to be a lot better. It may just be me, but while I'm still really proud of it as a collection of effects and hard work, I really don't think it hits the mark on how exciting it should be, compared to how long the scene actually is. Perhaps if I remade it, I'd have the X-Wing fire really quickly at first, and then swoop around a bit more, since the cause may be that the X-Wing is fairly static and it just sits there and watches.
• After watching the finished project I would have liked to have some planets etc. in the background, but by that point it was simply too late. I should have made a simple version of my final animation, perhaps with just grey blocks first to see the space I used.

Week 11 - Workaholic Week

Scene Three Begins!

For scene three, I reused the file from number two (and I did the same for scene four too!)
I removed all the path constraints from the scene as I could have the ships not be moving, and it would look nearly the same since they'd all be going at the same speed. To give the illusion of movement though, I added a new animation layer (not without several crashes) just as Mario had showed us, and used the noise XYZ tool to create a slight rumble on the X-wing.

Also, to make the viewer feel like they're more in the position of the pilot, I've added a crosshair made of two planes that are self-illuminated and have a nice red glow.

Then when I dragged the scene around to see how it would look, I found there was something missing, so I added two circles that would close in to show the targeting more clearly. Originally I had them close in at the same time, but by accident when I was trying it out I dragged the bigger ring in quicker so it overtook the smaller one, and it looked really good, so I ended up sticking with that. In addition, when I was creating the lasers again (as they lost the glow I made for them back in scene 1 as a practice) I realised the X-Wing lasers' were red, so this would be camouflaged with the red crosshair. I decided to make the crosshair self illuminated neon green from that point, as that's a fairly common colour for a HUD or aiming system.

I didn't know at this point how to make the opacity change with keyframes so I had the lasers start at 1% on their paths, so they'd ping back out of view as soon as they reached the end. This worked fine for the scene, but as you'll see in the next scene I had to learn how to change opacity quickly.

A feature I really liked when I was doing the path constraints was the ability to pull them around one point at a time just like the editable polys. This made planning paths so much easier as I could align the Tie's path to the very tips of the X-Wing lasers.

As you can see here in the faint blue square there's a path leading from the tie fighter of the screen. As I couldn't do opacity yet this was the method by which the Tie Fighter left the screen in an instant. I keyframed one end at one frame, then keyframed it at the off-screen other end on the next frame. This appeared to work perfectly too!

At this point there were no explosions as I hadn't looked into them yet, and when I asked Chris if he knew a solution he said that they could be done in premier pro. (Though as you'll see further down, I did learn how to do them in 3DS max, and that will be how they are in the final version.)


Scene 4 - Final Scene

After loading in my finished first 3 scenes into Prem Pro and cutting out 100% useless parts to make myself some time I was left with about 8 seconds. Which completely derailed my storyboard even further, there would be no epic battles and swoops and weaving and dodging lasers. I was then looking at doing side-on shots from the distance showing the ships firing at each other, and then the Tie's exploding as they went past. All this would be on the diagonal like a Dutch angle to make it look uneasy and replicate something similar to the single stroke battle. However, this really didn't look good from the side, so I tried seeing things from the Tie-Fighter's point of view and I had the idea that both Tie's could be shot, and then career into each other, exploding as the X-Wing flew 'into' the camera, which would give a cut to black easily.

 While I was still on the diagonal single stroke battle concept  I made up the above scene, but then I thought: Why not just make the camera diagonal? It would make the laser placement so much easier.
So I made everything relatively flat, and I think that helped a lot even after I changed the idea slightly.

You can see in the shot above the paths of the lasers in green. At this point I'd made the X-Wing rotate (in one failed attempt I accidentally made it do two barrel rolls, and it was spinning like crazy!) I just had to make the lasers disappear again. So I HAD to learn how to do the opacity, and after a LOT of crashing (every time I'd open the dope sheet or try to assign controller, or add keys)

Eventually after many many tries it worked, and it was so much easier than I realised, and for such a good effect!

Now, with all the scenes complete I had to add explosions. And really there isn't much to say that this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRyFJ9kK1ko doesn't cover. I simply used the tutorial on the explosion in the second half of the video to create all the explosions you'll see in next week's post, and in under 15 minutes I'd added explosions to both scene 3 and scene 4, and they looked amazing. It was annoying that they only showed up at render time, but I could simply render single scenes or groups of 5 etc. To see the effect. I think they work really well, and they're so effective.

I'll have to learn after-effects in premier pro another day!

Week 10

Finishing Scene 1

At the start of this week I completed my scene 1, not without a couple of problems. Whenever I'd exit a file, 3DS Max would return a null reference exception. Opening a file would cause it to crash instantly about 6/10 times, and also the random crashes would still happen. As it would also crash whenever I clicked render, Chris let me put the file onto his computer to render, but it still crashed even on his installation so I thought there may be a problem with the file. Which leads onto my next solution:

On the left in the hierarchy, you can see I've started to group things into a 'stuff' group to merge them into a new file easily. So I tried to do that, and thankfully I was able to get it to render.

On a brighter note, I changed the arc of the camera and shortened the paths of the ships so the camera swoops out of the way of the ships as they move towards it faster than they did previously, plus as it moves back into the ships' paths at the end, it gives a nice effect which I really like. When I edit it, I'll make sure to keep that movement in, as it gives the viewer a chance to take it all in for a second before the X-Wing comes to ruin the empire's day.

Scene 2

To save time I repurposed my first scene's file to make the second scene's file. This was to keep the lighting in similar places and ships on the same scale, along with the sky sphere. The tracks that the empire ships move along is basically the same. I simply moved the camera, and added in the X-Wing in their places.

Originally I tried just the empire ships and the camera moving. This didn't give a very good effect, as you could really notice the X-Wing wasn't making any progress.

Secondly I tried the camera moving backwards, the X-Wing moving forwards slowly, and the empire ships (of course) moving forwards still. This meant the camera would change angle really fast, and it took any tension or surprise out of the scene when the X-Wing's nose first peeks into the frame. It also gave the shot a more lively feel, when really it should be slow and methodical as the X-Wing is sneaking up on these unsuspecting ships below.

Finally, I went for having the camera static, but following the Lambda shuttle's position. I did have to adjust the X-wing's position slightly to get it in the centre but I'm so happy with that feeling it has as the X-Wing moves in with the relatively tiny empire forces down below:

And the X-Wing just keeps coming (almost filling up the screen) and seemingly has no end until you see the exhaust lights:

And it also gives the effect that the camera is pulling away smoothly, and intensifying the size difference between the X-Wing and the empire ships:

Side View:

Also while experimenting with this, I tried putting a camera into the cockpit of the X-Wing and it came out looking pretty nice, so I might change my plans for scene 3 to incorporate a shot similar to this experiment.

While it would deviate from my storyboard but I think it would be worth it to get a really good shot with a LOT of polish. I could even try to add in a HUD or aiming target. I also need to make the window frame and the side windows 2 sided materials so they show up in the render.