Week 6-Creating ident 1 part 5

After the successful outcome of the first animation I decided to have a go at a more challenging animation. To start I imported the bear into the playground scene. I then scaled the bear down so that it was in proportion to the rest of the scene.

Next I drew out a spline for a path for Ted to follow. Originally I used a helix spline, but this did not allow me to create the exact path I wanted. Instead I used the line tool and drew out a path around the helter-skelter. This was created with many vertex points which I edited to get the shape I wanted. Then I added the bear to the path and selected it to follow the path. Finally I moved the spline upwards so the bear sat on the slide rather than intersecting it.

Then I drew out another spline with the start and end points a bit further down the slide than teds path. Next I created a free camera and attached it to the path. Once again I made the object follow the path and used the rotate tool to make the camera face up the slide and look towards the bear.

Lastly I moved the spline which the camera travels along upwards so it does not intersect the slide and it is at the right position for the bear to be in shot. The start and end points were also altered to try to keep the bear in shot.

Despite already positioning the two splines the bear was not always in the camera shot. Due to this I used auto key to align the bear in the shot and the camera facing the bears direction by rotating the objects.

After watching the animation so far I found that the beginning did not look quite right as teds’ body was rigid and there would be no transition from his position in the previous part of the animation. So, using auto key I made his legs hang down while he was in the air and as he landed he would change into a sitting position. I was careful not to let his legs intersect the slide whilst he did this.

The final step was to produce the lighting in the background of the scene. I started this by placing an omni light in the scene above the subject matter and set the intensity to 1. The purpose of this was to act as the main light in the scene and act as the sun, lighting the whole of the scene. This was appropriate for most of the scene, however there was a lot of shadows behind the helter sketler where the light source did not reach and so I added additional lights in this area. For this I used two target spot lights and directed them down towards the slide. So the light was not too powerful I reduced their intensities to 0.55.

Now this section of animation is also complete. I am really pleased with the way this turned out as it is more complex than what I have done before. I will now go on to another part of the ident.