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.

Animation - Part 3 (setup)

The third part of my animation Is the first camera cut of the whole animation. It cuts from the x-wing tracking shot, into a first-person view shot from the x-wing pilots perspective. This isn't a conventional shot you would see in star wars, I actually got the inspiration from the music video 'False Alarm' by The Weeknd. This is a music video of a bank robbery from the first persons perspective. This gives a whole different dimension to the video and I wanted to apply the same effect to my animation.

False Alarm music video

Also I setup the Imperial Shuttles towards the right of the x-wing. First you can see a laser blast in front of the x-wing, which brings the attention to the shuttle. When the camera turns around it looks like a natural head movement. Before you the camera sees the shuttle on the side, it can see the shuttle in front. As the camera turns to the right and turns back centre the shuttle in the front is off screen until the camera turns to the left and sees the imperial shuttle closing in fast.

Animation - Part 2 (Final Render)

The final render of part 2 came out exactly how I would want it to. As mentioned before I implemented a motion blur effect. This proved to be a very useful tool as it replicated the Man of Steel flight scene very well. I also managed to add my own spin on it by making it swerve towards the x-wing to match its movement rather than just zooming in. This is a tool that could be used in many future animations, especially in fast paced action scenes.

Overall I am extremely happy with the way this part has turned out, I didn't face any real struggles when making this scene. The only alteration I had to make was to stretch out the motion path the x-wing followed. That way it could start and stop at the right time.
There are a couple of things I would have liked too incorporate into the animation. The smaller one of the two involves the thrusters. Even though they look great the way the are, at the end of the day, they are just meshes attached to the x-wing. Naturally, the flames would bend in accordance to where the x-wing turns and because they are just meshes, they don't. If I wanted to make this effect, I could. It would have been very time consuming if I chose to do so. At each turn of the x-wing, I would have to bend the objects by selecting the vertices and moving them. This would be very time consuming considering I have a deadline.
The other thing I would have liked to add is the x-wing, wing animation. In star wars the x-wings actually have an cruise stance, where the two wings flatten into one. The way I modelled my x-wing, it is in the famous X stance, which is its attacking stance. Prior to making my models, I was not aware of this mechanic and only came to realise when trying to replicate the way the x-wing flies.
It is something that would be great to add in if I got the chance to make this animation again.

Animation - Part 2 (Props / Extras - new tool)

In the last setup post I talked you through the x-wing tracking scene. As you saw in the print screen from that post, The scene is entirely empty other than the x-wing at the top left. So to fill this out I created another planet in the background, as well as asteroids which actually fill up the majority of the whole animation, Especially where the x-wing flies past.

I also made the thrusters for the x-wing using the same materials as I did for the Star Destroyers. Even though I used the same materials, I made the objects I made a slightly different way. Since the x-wing moves, wanted it to have more of a natural flame at the back. I used the same cone method I did for the Star Destroyer, however I converted it using the Smooth mesh preview to polygons tool. This makes the flames more curved and natural. The material also has a special glow on them to give it more life.

In this Image, not only can you see the thrusters at back, but if you pay closer attention and look at the surroundings. The planet in the background is the same from the Star Destroyer scene. If you look even closer at the top left, you can see the back of the Star Destroyer itself. This again gives you a sense of environment, is shows that everything is happening in the same area.

Moving on to the 'new tool' part of things, using the Man of Steel reference, I was able to implement it to much greater affect. Whilst experimenting on render settings, I came across a nice sections called Motion Blur. It is rather obvious what it does, gives and illusion of speed by making everything blurry. This was the exact same thing that was used in the Man of Steel clip from earlier.

Also using the Top Gear racetrack reference, I was able to recreate the scene to demonstrate the speed of the x-wing.

As mentioned before, all the scenery from scenes are still in this shot which fills up the space nicely.

Animation - Part 2 (setup)

Part 2 of my animation is a pan from the back of the star destroyers into the long ranged shot of the x-wing entering the scene. The x-wing enters from the top left of the screen, I chose to enter from that angle as the viewers eyes, by nature starts at the left of the screen.

In terms of the movement of the x-wing, since it is not a smooth flying ship as well as agile, I had to create a motion path for it to follow. On top of this motion path, I have a quick zoom into a closer ranged shot of the x-wing which is inspired from the famous flight scene from 'Man of Steel'. This demonstrates the quick suddenness of the x-wing entering the scene and also showing the audience that it is now the focus.

Flight Scene from Superman: Man of Steel Trailer 3

The camera then follows the x-wing in a dynamic shot, following the flight path of the x-wing. At on point the camera stops in front of the x-wing which leaves the screen empty for a split second before the x-wing zooms past again. This is inspired by the Top Gear race track. In Top Gear, any time someone went passed the straighter part of the track, the camera would stay still until the car speeds past. This demonstrates the speed in which the x-wing is currently flying at.

Still shot of track

Same shot with the car driving past

My Camera setup (Extra Tool)

As seen in previous posts, I had already started running into problems from the first moment with my camera. To start managing my project more efficiently, I realised I will need multiple cameras. This would be easier to fix if any problems occurred as you know what camera you are looking through / rendering out.
One issue with this is the cameras translation attributes. Most of my animation is meant to be seamless, however, three different cameras have been used for this seamless shot. Making a new camera, by default. is placed at 0, 0, 0. As well as its rotation which is also 0, 0, 0. This is when I cam across the 'Create camera from view' tool. This makes a copy of the selected camera you are on with the same attributes. This allows me more control over my animation and allows me to organise it better.
Later in the animation there is a first person view shot. To get the camera at the same position of my x-wing, I simply made the x-wing the parent of the camera. Once the camera is the child of the object, I can set the translate to 0, 0, 0 and it will position in line with the x-wing.

Animation - Part 1 (Final Render)

Part 1.1

The first part of my animation is now fully rendered. In this section of the animation, incorporated the use of lens flares. The lens flare bring some more life to the scene, as it is emitting from the sun. Lens flares are generally a reflection of light on to the camera, and there is nothing brighter than the sun. 

Part 1.2

You can also get a little glance of a lens flare at the end of the animation, It is much clearer in the full 1080p Production Quality hand in. This time the lens flare emits towards the back of the Star Destroyers. Bringing more focus to them before the camera abruptly pans away.
The ability to apply lens flares directly from Maya has proven to be a useful tool, as I now won't have to invest in a high-end post-production software.



There are a few things I would like to touch up, assuming I don't have a deadline. Firstly, I feel that the lens flare could have been better placed. To a more professional eye, you can notice that the light doesn't specifically emit from the sun. When I created the initial point light, it wouldn't emit from inside the sun. I had to move the point light until it is outside the sun's sphere. However, now it looked like an orange ball with a light behind it. To fix this, I added a light glow to the suns material. This gives the illusion, that the sun itself is emitting the light. This proved to be a difficult part of the animation. It was all based on trial and error and got rather frustrating changing the attributes and rendering it every time you want to test it.
Another small thing I could have done better on is adding an effect for the Star Destroyer as it enters the scene. Especially as it warps in.

Animation - Part 1 (Props / Extras)

In order for my scene to look more lively, I have added different bits and bobs to make things stand out more. The first of which are the thrusters lighting on the back of the Star Destroyer.

These thrusters are made of polygon cones. Each thruster has two cones coming out. One is the outer light and the other is the inner light. The outer light is a basic blue lambert with a slight transparency. The inner light is a lighter shade of blue, however its ambient colour is pushed to max which gives it that vibrant and rich glow. It is easy to add a normal glow affect, however this disorientates the visuals of the star destroyer so I chose to not use that.
At the moment the full affect of the light is not shown as the image is not a render, it is a print screen from my viewport.


I've also created a couple of planets, as well as a sun to fill out the background space. This is to show the environment around the star destroyers, as realistically they wouldn't be in pure blank space with no surroundings.

You can instantly see compared to previous posts that the scene already has more life to it than before. These planets not only fills up the space, but it demonstrates the sense of location. Having these planets can justify that battles are taking place, however, if it was blank space, why would ships be battling?

Here we also have the sun, which again does a fine job of filling the scene out. If you look carefully you may notice that the sun is slightly lumpy. This is because I didn't boost up the divisions like I did with the planets. I chose to have it like this because the sun usually has lumps of flame which burst out. In this shot you aren't close enough to see the burst, but you have the illusion of what its doing from far away.




Finally, the first render of my animation. This shot is a short establishing shot with the sun in the shot. You will notice that there is also a lens flare that I implemented to give the shot some life. This clip is just before the star destroyers enter the scene.

The last thing I was originally going to add was an asteroid belt, however I feel that it could be used more affectively later in my animation.

Lighting

Whilst I was working on my animation, I noticed there was an odd issue with the lighting. Everything in the viewport was lit appropriately and rendering single frames where fine. The issue popped up when I would actually render out an animation. Here is a quick example;

At the start of this clip you can clearly see the star filled background, however towards the end of it they all seem to disappear and you can barely see the Star destroyers themselves.











In order to fix this I had to do a couple of tests. The first test was to put the camera dead in centre and render out a 360 spin of just the background. This was to confirm if the lighting is the issue. The next thing I did was add an ambient light in the centre of the scene and repeat the process of the camera.

Without Ambient Light

With Ambient Light

As you can see, In the render without ambient light, once again the stars fade out and then come back towards the end. The render with ambient light seamlessly spins around keeping everything in the scene visible which seems to have fixed the issue at hand.

Animation - Part 1 (first render)

From the get go I have already started running into problems where the camera I have set up interferes with the movement of the Star Destroyer. Here is a short clip which demonstrates the issue.

Here you can notice, as the camera pans around the Star Destroyer, it creates the illusion that the Star Destroyer isn't moving at all until the camera finishes its pan. At first the suspicion was that the pan was actually interfering with the movement, however after some tests, I came to realise that the timing of the pan was matching the speed of the Star Destroyer, which caused this illusion. After Careful consideration, I have decided to make some slight alterations to the scene.

Animation - Part 1 (setup)

Now that I have reached the final parts of my module, I have started working on the actual animation part of my project. Referring to the first scene of my storyboard, it is a simple scene of the start destroyer cruising through space. When looking at certain references I noticed that the star destroyers, or even bigger ships in general fly in groups.

Scene from The Empire Strikes Back

Shot from my scene

This is something that I could easily implement within my own animation, therefore I have duplicated my Star Destroyer into three. This shows strength and dominance as it signifies the march of army troops.

Class Practical - Skydome

After looking through different skydome's during the practical, I decided to set up the skydome I plan to use for my own animation. Since my I have planned my animations around space, I need a simple black starry background. Here is the background I used:

All you have to do to make a sphere which surrounds the majority of your scene. Naturally, the faces will display facing out, however, we want them facing in to display the texture surrounding the scene, this can be done by reversing the normal of the sphere. You need to make sure that under the attribute editor, cast and receive shadows are both deselected since light shouldn't interfere with this. Finally, with most skydome's, people usually delete the bottom half of faces. I prefer to keep the whole sphere as my animation will consist of shots from higher angles.

Class Practical - Relationships

In this weeks practical we looked at relationships between objects. This can be as basic as parenting an object, however, Maya offers a variety of different relationships that can be implemented to your objects.

The first thing I implemented was the Point Constraint. This allows me to move any of the spheres wherever I want and allows having the cube follow it. Wherever I move the sphere, the cube will be sure to keep an average distance between them.





The next one I used was Aim constraint. Essentially this makes the target abject allowing aim itself towards the master object. In this case you can see the cylinder is always aiming at the sphere, regardless of where the sphere is.

Moving away from constraint types, I had a go with Set Driven Keys (SDK). Essentially, SDK's allow you to scale, rotate or translate your object, only if it is triggered by an event. In the example I made on the left, The cube spins 1800 degrees, only when I move my sphere away. This works similar to key frames, considering the cube spins only when the sphere is moved to a certain point, However with SDK's that cube will only spin when the sphere is moved.
This would be ideal for a gun trigger, when the trigger is pulled, the barrel would kick back.


These tools would come in handy for my final star wars animations, especially SDK's.  A great example would be the Imperial Shuttle, as when it is idle the wings are up, however when in flight it opens up. So in terms using these skills I learnt in the practical, every time the Imperial Shuttle is on route, the wings open up.

t-65 x-wing (Textured)

Here is the my final textured model, the x-wing. Once again, there weren't great angled source images for this model. I could find some, thought they were to small and would look stretched out. For the orange stripes I just used the standard Blinn material with an orange like colour. For the body I found a grey dirt material on textures.com, which I found close to the actual body of the t-65. For the rims of the window I used a scratched steel texture. The windows itself are just a standard Blinn with high transparency. Finally the insides of the engines are made of a rusted metal material, which gives the illusion they are slightly run down.

Imperial Shuttle Wing Animation

Today I decided that none of the ships I have made, will be animated within themselves. Originally I intended to have the wings of the imperial shuttle open up as it enters the scene. After doing research on the mechanisms of the way the imperial shuttle works, I realised that it only opens up whilst taking off, This wouldn't make sense in terms of my animation since it is based in space already. Although this animation wont be in the final animation, I still wanted to demonstrate that it was possible to achieve. Below is a rendered out animation of the wings of the shuttle closing and opening.