Best and Worst Bits

Best Bits of our Animation

• Representation of Storyline - I'm really impressed with how our group has stuck to the storyline when creating each individual animation scene. That was our main target so that it was easy to understand and identify the events taking place.
• Models created - I personally think our group has produced excellent models that are highly detailed and are brilliant replicas of the vehicles we wanted to produce. We each spent a good amount of time making sure they were of the highest standard and it is clear to see in the final animation. 

Worst Bits of our Animation

• Borders of Scenery - I think our scenery was well done, however looking back on the production I would personally make it so you cannot see the edges of the water which join up with the bottom of the sky dome. This does not look as realistic as I would have liked but this is a mistake that I will learn from. 

Module Evaluation

Voila!

Our animation is finally completed.
I am really pleased with the finished product our group has produced. The animation really portrays the storyline of the topic that we were given in week 1, which is due to the fact our group worked hard to replicate the plot.

I'm very satisfied with my own personal work that I contributed to the group and believe it was of the best possible standard. From the start I wanted to prove that I could produce work of a high quality and complete tasks that were given to me by the group or tasks created by myself.

There a few things that I would change if the opportunity arose again.

Firstly, I would have produced many more models to add to the scenery for that little extra touch, such as barrels or crates. I included these into the design processes in my sketchbook but decided against it because of the rendering time due to the size of the file.

Another part of my work that I'd change would have to be the sky. I would use a different process than what I used for this module. The 'Sky Dome' looks realistic but once all the scenes had been rendered, I came across better techniques to use that would have looked that much better. This is all part of a learning curve as any creator finds things to pick at in their own work once the process has been completed.

Finalising the Video Editing Process

Now our group began placing all the rendered videos in the order from our storyboard that we created in the first couple weeks of our module.

Rhys took control of this task with the rest of the group giving their input as we went. The video involves a few different transitions and effects that work really well with the genre of the animation.

Inspiration for Soundtrack

Once all the rendered videos had been placed together, I then began to look at existing soundtracks as inspiration for our own..

Here is an example of existing audio that I looked at to inspire our group:

From the film 'Inception', titled 'Time' created by Hans Zimmer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxabLA7UQ9k

Composing The Soundtrack

Our group wanted the animation's audio to flow well with the emotion of the events incorporated. We thought the best way to do this was to create a soundtrack ourselves using Logic Pro and the sound effects available through download or Apple Loops.

I started the process by choosing individual loops of Logic Pro that were needed. Firstly I watched the rendered videos we had of our animations and worked out what sound effects we wanted to include and the rest of the audio would be a backing track.

The sound effects that I chose were:
(Apple Loops)
'Airplane Prop Pass' - Airplane
'Airplane Prop Start and Stop' - Airplane
'Bow and Arrow' - Backing Track
'Explosion Blast 02' - Explosions
'Fire 1' - Fire Effect
'Motorcycle Harley Pass' - Motorbike
'Motorcycle Harley Pull Up' - Motorbike
'Vintage News Short' - Newspaper
'Whoosh 10' - Airplane
'Whoosh 19' - Airplane

Techniques Learnt Along The Way

Over the period of the Virtual Environments module, I have learnt many different techniques in 3D Studio Max that will stay with me for a long time and prove useful in my life career.

Super Spray
From much guided help of fellow group members, I was able to conquer the super spray technique for creating fire or smoke. As the animation topic was about the pearl harbor attack it was necessary that we included these two elements. Now that I understand the technique, I believe if I am given the task of creating something similar in the future I will have no trouble tackling the task.

PArray
This technique also proved useful to me when I was creating the explosion trailing the Jeep. It enabled me to destroy a particular object in an explosive fashion.

Now To Piece The Animation Together..

Now that all of the animations our group created have been rendered out, the task of piecing it all together in the perfect and sufficient order takes place. We will do this using Premiere Pro by importing all the files into a project and then moving each scene to the correct position.

The final process will be to create a soundtrack. This will be done once the animation has been pieced together so that it is easy for the group to workout what sound effects we want where and so forth.

Watch this space..

Rendered Animations - Motorbike from Wheel View

This was another scene of the motorbike travelling to the airplane hangar from a different perspective. I placed the camera low to the ground looking up at the motorbike and in particular the front wheel, so that the movement of the wheels was visible and added a different look to the view.

Rendered Animations - Motorbike from Handlebars

I wanted to capture the motorbike driving from exiting the gates of the city to the harbor with the plane in the hangar. However, I used a different camera perspective for this render and the next one (following post), so that they were different and unique to other camera positions.

I placed the camera facing forward with the handlebars of the motorbike in shot, so that it looked like the vision of the motorcyclist. I thought this rendered out really well and was exactly how I imagined.

Rendered Animations - Bomb Explosion

This scene was one of the more difficult to animate and took the most time to render because of every animation in the scene.

I wanted the Jeep to drive past the camera that was placed in the scene and for a bomb to drop behind it to then explode, producing debris, fire and a crater in the ground. I first began by creating the path for the Jeep to follow and individually animated the wheels so that the Jeep was animated.

I then began to tackle the explosion of the bomb.

I firstly started by using 'ProBoolean' on the ground to create a crater the same way I did in previous scenes. Once I had done this I also created a plane that would sit over the crater to cover it up until the bomb would make contact. Adding 'PArray' allowed me to create an explosion effect on this plane so that when the bomb was animated to hit the plane it would look like an explosion.

All that was left to do was add in the fire and smoke at the right keyframe, and the scene was complete.

I am really happy with the outcome as it is exactly as I imagined.

Rendered Animations - Pearl Harbor Pan

A rendered animation that is one of my personal favourites is the pan that I created of the harbor, showing off the details I incorporated into my Aircraft carrier.

The camera path starts with a close-up of the American flag that I created which sits at the stern of the carrier. I added a wave effect to the flag so that it moved in the render. As the camera pans round it shows how much time and effort I put into the model.

Rendered Animations - Pearl Harbor Fire Zoom

Our group wanted a render that showed the Harbor, after it had been attacked with all the destruction and flames.

So I simply drew a line for the path of the camera to follow and created a camera zoom on the harbor. It was easy to make and took very little time but it allows the audience to see everything in the scene.

Rendered Animations - Pearl Harbor Building

I wanted to create a short animation clip that panned across the buildings covered in flames and smoke along with the road covered in rubble. I used the 'Pearl Harbor' scene and took out the water, sky and boats so that the render was much faster. I then created a path for the camera to follow a birds eye view of the buildings.

I am happy with the result because it is a simple render than shows the destruction of the Japanese bombs on the populated area of the harbor.

Rendered Animations - Pearl Harbor Fire 1

This animation is showing the destruction of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I wanted the original scene to look bombarded with flames and destruction. To get this, I made a few changes to the existing scene and added the fire and smoke techniques I referred to before.

The aspects I changed were as follows:

• Rotated the boats so that they look destroyed and submerged in the water
• Used 'ProBoolean' on the concrete ground for the craters from the bombs
• Deleted a few buildings and create piles of rubble

Rendered Animations - Plane Takeoff

Here is a screenshot of the plane taking off the Japanese boat.

This scene was created by using the ocean plane that was created and the sky dome, then adding in the aircraft carrier of which I then added different coloured materials to it so that it resembled the Japanese.

I am pleased with the results of this animation, as I am so happy with the reflection I managed to produce for the water and the details of the boat and planes reflect brilliantly. It really brings the animation to life. 

Rendered Animations - Bike Scene 3

I wanted to animate a scene of the motorbike driving from the building scenery, through the gates of the outer walls and onto the harbor with the plane that eventually takes off.

This was simple because I could just transfer the existing path of the motorbike to corner the road and travel through the gates of the harbor, then all I had to do was animate the doors by rotating them through keyframes.

This scene was important because it links the events of the entire animation.

Rendered Animations - Bike Scene 2

This screenshot is taking from one of the bike scenes with the motorbike driving through the flaming buildings.

For this scene I altered the existing buildings and roads so that they look destroyed and on fire. I did this by using 'ProBoolean' on the floor object to create craters. The object that I used for the boolean was a simple sphere that I then altered certain vertex to create a 'rock-like' shape. This was then multiplied to produced piles of rubble on the surface to add that extra effect.

The smoke and fire was taken from Rhys, who created these himself for the group to use. I just multiplied these across the map.

Rendered Animations - Bike Scene 1

Here I started animated the scenes that I produced.

These screenshots are taken from an animation that I did of the motorbike driving through the populated part of the harbor. I had the scenery created from the first file I made of harbor. To save rendering time and the file size, I took out anything that you couldn't see from the camera's perspective, so the water and majority of the other buildings.

I then proceeded to animated the wheels of the motorbike. This was easy to do as I just created keyframes at the start and end of the scene, then rotated the wheel at the last point, so that when it played through the wheels would rotate.

Now that I had the wheels turning I just had to create a line for the path of the motorbike and connect the two. This then created the motion of the motorbike so that I could finish the render by adding a camera that followed it.