I am getting close to being happy with the animation now, but i still feel i could do with a bit more action and urgency towards the end of the scene when all the ships meet. I am going to add some lasers to one of the X-Wings for the scene when it is chasing the Tie-fighter.
NOTE: In hindsight now i wish i had made all the X-Wings in the scene instances and not copies, as then these laser gun modifications i made would exist on all X-Wings. As now i am running low on time and cant modify each X-Wing individually. But still the X-Wing will only be shooting at the Tie-Fighter anyway. as they are capturing the shuttle.
Firstly i had to create the lasers themselves. This felt fairly straight forward now, i simply used a capsule and added a glow effect in the render effects. I played with the different settings until i found a reasonable representation that i was happy with.
Laser with glow render effects
I then needed a method of firing the lasers. I could just animate them using key frames but i found a better way might be to use splines and path constraint like how the ships move. I can then line up and link the splines perfectly at the gun barrels which is much more accurate representation. I then used the splines from the gun barrels as the path for the laser capsules, they will then always shoot forward relative to the ship orientation.
Lining up and linking the lasers
I made the animation faster by moving the key frames closer together so they will shoot a lot quicker than the ship will be travelling. By utilizing the same techniques i used on the flame output, i looped the animation in the curve editor so the lasers will constantly fire. This also eliminates the need for me to destroy the lasers as they will just stop moving and repeat when the path ends.
I also took this time to add a glow render effect to the X-Wing flames output. I just used a different material ID to the lasers, this will now effect all the flames on all the X-Wings in the scene as they all use the same material.
Practice animation with one working laser
Lasers on all guns and added glow to engine flames
Now when i shoot the scene with the X-Wing chasing the Tie-Fighter it will shoots lasers toward it. This will bring the scene to more of a climax and give the scene more of a hostile nature and just generally more action.
New Scene with lasers shooting at Tie-Fighter
I had to re-shoot the X-Wings scenes so they include the glow on the new engine flames.
I wanted to add a quick shot of when all the ships come together too as they all seem to be really far apart then suddenly all together. This will link the first few scenes and the chase sequence together more organically. And i don't have many shots that incorporate all the ships.
All the ships heading into the chase
also i changed the camera angle and position during the shuttle escape scene so you can more of the shuttle but also by moving the X-Wing path slightly we see more of what is going on in the background.
New shuttle escape scene
Final animation edit
I am much happier with the final animation now. There is more action, more build up, and all the scenes link together and flow a lot better. I still think it could be improved though. I shot a lot of scenes separately, ie in different scene files, because i was happy with some but not others, and didn't want (nor have the time ) to re shoot the first ones i was happy with. This lead to the lines i used for movement not being one continuous line, but several broken and smaller ones. Having lots of small scenes and then having to match them up in the editing software proved quite tricky, and i felt a continuous scene would also have a better flow to it. My animation can look slightly broken up at times. Just because this was my first animation and my organisation and ability to plan ahead can improve. I would have liked to have time to add lasers to all the X-Wings too. I did feel quite restricted by the 30 second time limit too.
I am going to continue working with these models and im eager to improve upon my work this far. I want to make a new longer scene and incorporate the improvements i have discussed. It might be nice to introduce a planet surface too so not all of the scene is in space, the chase could maybe accumulate on the surface of the planet. I would also like to inculde some more effcets like sparks flying when the ships get hit and maybe some explosions.
Keep posted for further improvements and updates......................
No comments:
Post a Comment