Strength Weakness Opportunity Threats

Strengths

I think i have shown strengths in developing my modelling techniques. When i look at the models i created in the first week and compare them now to the models im using in my animation i feel a decent sense of accomplishment, and have surprised my self with, in my opinion the quality of work i could create in only a Couple of months. I feel that i have a good eye for animation and am able to create visually pleasing scenes regarding camera angles and composition I think having a background in Studying Film and media productions previously has helped me here. 

Weakness

I feel that Sometimes my lack of work file organisation can let me down i often tend to just get stuck into the work im doing with little regard to object and workfile names. As a result of this my work folders are are quite disorganised. I feel That in a professional setting this would be a huge failing. As other animators need to understand your scene. It may be a good and well if i know what object is where or which random name correlates to the correct work file but my colleges would need to understand to.

Opportunity

I think that having Maya for free for three years is a great opportunity and I really want to develop my skills further. I would also like to learn how to use after effects to apply some effects to my animation but I think that must be considered a after thought only.

Threats

One of the main threats to my work is corruption of data, im aware that some of my fellow students had problems with there files getting corrupted from being opened on multiple machines. Although im not sure if was there own fault or a error with their files i decide not to risk it and only work on my Home desktop. Although this meant that i was able to render faster(as i have a rather powerful Pc with multiple GPUs) it prevented me from being able to directly get advice there and then. 

Animation Update: Tiefighter Follow curve

Tie Fighter Follow curve and reveal Slave I model

I used the same method i previously i used when getting the xwing to follow the motion path, to get my tiefighter to fly around the asteroids i created a CV curve and bent in around the asteroids using the attach to motion path tool, This time though i had the camera focus on the back of the Tiefighter as it chase the xwing. i wanted the glow effect of the engines to be a main focus of the shot so I tried to align the model according to the rule of thirds, the wing is framed quite well by the wings of the tiefighter and i used keyframe animations to animate the xwing infront of the Tiefighter

Ii wanted the Xwing to always be in front of the Tiefighter to give the illusion of them chasing each other, this proved quite difficult though as the path of the Tifighter bends back on its self quite alot it was hard to get a smooth animation for the xwing whilst using as few key frames as possible. the xwing kept jumping around. Eventually i was able to get it to a point that i was happy with, and i think the fact that the xwing keeps flying out of shot then works well.

The Tiefighter and Camera Group as it follows the Xwing

I  also applied the anticipation principle here, before the Tiefighter does a barrel roll in one direction it moves in the opposite direction first.

Staging for slave Reveal

The way i staged this shot is that i wanted the Tiefigeter and Xwing to fly out of shot and then the camera focus in on the Slave I ship as it is revealed from behind asteroid. I tried to use the rule of thirds rule again to direct attention to the slave I model and this combined with a slight camera zoom in defiantly draws the views attention to it.  I then render frames 1 to 200, i will edit it down later i need be.

Animation update: Xwing following curve

X wing Following A curve Shot

I wanted to have a shot of the x wing from the front whilst it was flying around the asteroid. To do this i created a camera and aimed it facing the front of the xwing, I then grouped this camera with the Xwing.

I then created a CV curve and drew the path i wanted the Xwing + camera group to follow, I drew the path  around the asteroids and from the Top View perspective as it was really difficult to do it in perspective view.

I then used the control vertex to bend the curve so its path looped round the asteroids better, this also made the curve have some quite steep, parts and some more gradual slopes which i think will work well in the animation.

By then selecting the camera and Xwing group and then selecting animate and the motion paths, and attaching the group to the motion path, I made the length of the curve last from frame one to frame 200 as this created the right sort of speed i was after, also using the bank option meant the group turned with the curvature of the motion path which made the group bank left or right depending on the curve.

The motion path setting i used.

The scene still wasnt looking that great after this the x wing send quite rigid and didn't look like it was flying as the front of the xwing wasnt always dead straight on the curve, so what i was able to do was use key frame animation to animate the xwing as it travelled along the curve so that it turned as sideways as it flew round asteroids, i exaggerated the movements to try and incorporate the exaggeration principle  of animation .It also enabled me to have the xwing squeeze through gaps in the asteroids which looked really good

Again this method combined with the motion blur effect in the maya software shader worked really well, you defiantly get a sense of the speed and agility i was trying to portray

Planning and starting the Animation

Planning  and starting the Animation

The way i plan to make my animation is to  create scenes for ach of the different shot, im then going to only render the  frames that the shots out to avi and use window movie maker to pievce them together, this allows for me to be fairly flexible with the animation lengths as i can edit down the final project to thirty seconds later. My animation will though run at 30fps.

Setting up the render settings,and shader

The render setting i use will be unform across the board as i dont want any of the shots to look different, interms of shading. i have decided to use the Maya software shader as this seems to be the only way to get the glow effect i have on the engines of my ships to work. Also within the maya Software shader setting, i was able to switch motion blur on and increase the antialiasing which imporoved the overal quality of my animation greatly. Motion blur really helps to smooth out the movements of the crafts and generally make the animation look more realistic.

Render setting used 

First scene

In  the first scene i wanted to show off the star and the asteroids so i created a camera that pans in from left to right revealing all the asteroids, I Did this using key-frames. All of the asteroids in the for ground are animated using key frames to give the scene a bit more realism.

 I then had the xwing fly in from behind the views perspective suddenly which i think works really well.the Tie fighter follows quickly in behind  xwing and they fly behind an asteroid.Again the use of motion blur really improved the look of this first scene. Both of the ships in this first scene are animated using the keyframe method, I found that using fewr keyframes  created a smoother animation it was just a bit tricky trying to get the ships to follow the path you want in as fewer keyframes as possible but i think this scene looks really good and sets the overall pace for the whole aniomation

Use of motion blur 

I also rendered this scene from a few different angles as I though  I could use the same animation clip from a different angle later on in the animation.

Setting up my scene

Setting Up my scene

I started to create the Environment for my scene, It in space and set in an asteroid field so i used the technique i had previously worked out to create my Asteroid, by creating a cube and pressing smooth geometry i could create some really cool looking asteroids, For asteroids that i want fairly high detail on i smoothed the objects several time, for asteroids that were going to be in the background they were only smoothed once, this was because i didnt want to face too many polys when it came to rendering

Low poly asteroid

Higher Poly asteroid

I then Positioned the asteroids in the scene to create an asteroid field, Some of the asteroids are grouped together and duplicated and just rotated around, hopefully this wont be too evident in the final animation.

Adding the sky dome

I created a sphere  and applied a space texture that I got from the internet the source is here : http://taketo-take-to-stock.deviantart.com/art/Classified-Triplet-Starfield-CGCASF-352643598
I then reversed the normals so that they were facing on the inside,and applied the texture. By using the x ray function i was able to make it so that you could see inside the sphere this proved really useful when trying to arrange my asteroids but i kept selecting the sphere by mistake to combat this I put it on a separate layer so that i could toggle it on or off.

Creating the lights

by creating a sphere and adjusting its transparency in the attribute editor. Then placing a point light inside that sphere I was able to create some really cool looking stars. The effect looks really realistic and am really pleased.

Light Inside sphere

Final result

The Scene in Now complete i just need to import my Models and start the animation Process

The Finished environment