Animation / Storyboard Comparison

Scene 1

The first part of my storyboard was of a star destroyer passing through the scene. In my animation I have captured this scene well, I've also added in extra star destroyers as they usually are in a fleet. I also decided to fill out the scene with planets and asteroids as it was too plain.

Scene 2

At this scene the star destroyer is meant to leave the scene as the x-wing enters.  At this point the animation slightly differs from the storyboard. In the animation, the camera pans away from the from the star destroyer, onto the x-wing.

Scene 3

In the storyboard, the camera focuses onto the x-wing as it's flying across. Since the x-wing is actually still in a long ranged shot, the camera quickly zooms into focus rather than pan towards it.

Scene 4

At this stage of the storyboard, the animation should be in first persons perspective of the x-wing as it is head on with the imperial shuttle. This is portrayed just as it should be in the animation. The two scenes are almost identical to one another.

Scene 5

This scene is a clear shot of the both the X-wing and Imperial Shuttle heading into each other. Once again this scene is portrayed exact in the animation, as it is on the storyboard

Scene 6

Finally, in the storyboard, the two ships scrape past each other. This is shown to be a straight shot. In the animation I decided to show this in a slight angle so the shot seems more seamless and doesn't have an awkward pan or cut.

There are a few extra bits of the comparison id like to point out. At the beginning I added an extra scene, which was the short establishing shot of the sun before the camera actually pans towards the Star Destroyers.
Also in the original order of the storyboard, scene 4 and scene 5 were swapped around. I changed the order because of the time I had. If it is was in it original order, the animation would look very clunky with both ships in the shot.

Animation - Post Production

Now that I have all of my scenes rendered, I have to string them all together. To do this I used Windows Movie Maker. Once I uploaded all of the images, I had to make sure I set them 0.03 seconds apart, which ensures that the animation runs at 30 frames per second. It turned out that my animation only runs for about 27 seconds. The problem with this is the 29 - 31 second time constraint I have. Luckily I had planned to have the collision of the x-wing and imperial shuttle in slow motion, which would add on the time I need. If I slow down the distance between the frames, it would be to static. To fix this, I went back onto Maya and exported those few frames as a .AVI file instead. Now the slow motion looks more natural and is a little over 29 seconds which is perfect.

The second software I used was FL studio, which I'm using for the sound and music production of my animation. Originally I had a mix of the Imperial March theme for when the Star Destroyers are in the scene. Following that is the new Star Wars: Rouge One theme, which is a more fast pace and dramatic track form when the x-wing enters. Unfortunately, these would not mix well with one another. Now the whole track consists of the Rouge One theme, however whilst the star destroyers are cruising through, the track has the signature star wars theme playing. Once this was in place, the music fits the animation more, and doesn't feel clunky and thrown together.
To top of the sounds I have a few sound effects added in such as the x-wing fly-by engine hum and a blaster noise for the imperial shuttle.

Animation - Part 4 (Final Render)

Finally, the last render of my animation is done. This scene proved to be the most difficult of all. The first part was to time the animation of the shuttle wings perfectly, just by moving its faces. Because of this the animation is slightly distorted, it is hard to spot because of the speed it moves in. If you were to slow down the animation, the bottom wing pushes itself into the body and then switches to the right place.

As mentioned in a previous post, as the two ships pass, a particle effect of sparks were meant to occur. This however didn't go to plan and that was purely due to the render settings.



Here is how the original render came up. I came to realise that in order to render out particle effects, you need to render using Mental Ray. However, I rendered out my whole animation using Maya Software, which doesn't render out particle effects. Now if you look at the two versions, you will notice that the final one (Maya Software) has an overall better look in terms of detail and lighting.
Essentially I had two options;

a) Have a fully vibrant and detailed looking animation without particle effects, or;
b) An animation that drops in quality randomly for a few particle effects.

I chose 'a' as I don't think that the particle effects wee critical to my animation. Below ill show you two still frames side by side of Maya software and Mental Ray.

 
As you can see, in this scenario there is a huge difference between the two and I feel my reason to ditch the particle effects are fully justified.

In conclusion, I am rather happy the way this part turned out in the end, I hope to take this part into post-production to add a slow motion effect as the two ships pass each other.

Animation - Part 4 (Props and Extras)

 Now that we have reached the last bits of the animation, I can start to add in the final bits and pieces to make it look better.
One of the things I was able to make, is some particle effects of the sparks which are caused by the collision of the x-wing and the imperial shuttle.

This was made using multi-streak particles which have been attached to the bottom left wing of the x-wing. You can see I added a slight spread to them. This was to make it more natural, as sparks don't flow perfectly straight, also I shortened the length of each particle. By doing that, as the x-wing moves it spawns new particles on its axis which make the sparks spread more naturally with the x-wing turning.


Unfortunately, these sparks, though rendered out, won't be a part of my final animation. This was due to render setting issues which I will address in more detail at a later post.

The next thing I have added is a the x-wing warping out in hyper-speed. To do this I just had to scale the x-wing by stretching it length wise, and translate it forwards until it is not seen in my scene, so essentially move it just past the sky dome.

As you can see, there is also a nice twinkle when the x-wing location. This is a nice touch to end the animation. It also gives a sense of speed and distance its travelling.

I made this using a point light, and added the same special effects as I did with the earlier lens flare, but without the lens flare turned on. I kept the colour blue as it matches the colour I set for the x-wing thrusters. Making the twinkle using key framing the intensity and rotation 

Animation - Part 4 (setup)

In part 4, the final part of my animation, the camera cuts from the first-person shot into mid-close range shot of the x-wing about to collide with the Imperial Shuttle. Thanks to the way I setup part 2, setting up part 4 was the simplest of all. Originally, I had setup the motion path for the x-wing which I had stretched out to last around 27 seconds of the animation. All I have to do is create a new camera which is once again tracking the x-wing, similar to the camera which was following the x-wing before the FPV shot.
In a previous post I talked about the imperial shuttle wing animation and talked about why I wasn't using it. However, things have changed. If I were to leave it unanimated, they would collide and cut through the x-wing. The problem with this is that I had made the imperial shuttle one mesh before I imported it into this new project. To fix this, I attempted to try and extract the faces of the two bottom wings and key frame them. This caused more issues then solved problems. The two wings would move independently from the body and were out of control. Eventfully I realised I could move faces and key frame, So I grabbed the faces and changed the pivot point to rotate it on the point I want.

  

Animation - Part 3 (Final Render)

Here is the rendered out version of part 3. It is a very quick and snappy scene, emphasising on the speed in which the events are occurring. At first glance, you can see an imperial shuttle dead on as the blaster passes by. When the camera pans toward the imperial shuttle on the right, you notices that the one that was dead on has drifted away to the left. This is the exact dynamic I was aiming for when making this part of the animation. It again justifies the quick sudden movements of the camera, as well as the movement of the imperial shuttles. Also I chose to keep this scene a lot emptier in terms of background. This way the attention stays where it needs to be and doesn't look like too much clunk.

The only thing I would have really like to improve, is the duration of this scene. Originally I wanted it to be much longer and have a progressive build-up. However, due to the time constraint of between 29-31 seconds, it had to be cut a lot shorter.

Animation - Part 3 (props / extras)

In part 3 of the animation I added three spot lights onto the Imperial Shuttle's wings. The spot lights are also the child of the Imperial shuttle so it can follow it's movement without moving out of place. At times it would move slightly out of place and to fix this I had too key every frame this occurred at.

I also added a little red blaster which goes past the x-wings view from the right, which gets the attention of the pilot to look right at the Imperial Shuttle.
Making the blaster was fairly simple, I used the same methods as the thrusters were the inside has a brighter tone with a higher set ambient light, whereas the outside is darker and slightly transparent. I just used a simple translate from one point to the other to animate it.