Week 8-Continuing with ident 3 part 1

Now the box has been created I can start to animate this part. To begin I opened the file where I built the box and imported the robot. Next I scaled the body down so it was proportional to the rest of the scene. So that the objects were the same scale throughout the idents I set the scale coordinates as they were for as in part 2.

Next I imported the bag and Ted and scaled then so they were proportional to the parts already in the scene. This took some time as I had to make sure the bag was still big enough to fit the bear in. To help the bear fit in without it being too small and obviously a different scale from the other idents I used the bones to position the legs and arms.

I then grouped the robot, bear and bag before placing them in front of the box.

Afterwards I decided to add the materials to the box as I had forgotten to do this while making it. For the main part of the box I wanted to give the impression it is made of wood so selected the wood preset which I felt was most suitable. For the hinges I wanted to create a metal material and so used the anisotropic shader.

Next I added lighting to the scene. Firstly I selected an omni light and placed it in the sky to act as the sun. I set the intensity of this light to 1. To highlight the subject in the scene I used a target spot light and targeted it at the robot. I changed the intensity for this to 0.3 as I wanted the sun to act as the main light. For both of these lights I turned the shadow on.

The next step was to rescale the timeline to 30 frames in length as this part of the animation will only be one second long.

Afterwards I went on to animate the scene. Firstly I got the box lid to open and did this using the auto key. Once selected I moved to the last frame and rotated the lid upwards.

I was pleased with the lid opening and so added the camera to the scene. When planning this animation I wanted the ident to begin from darkness inside the box and gradually see more of the scene when the box is opened. I chose to use a target camera as the camera does not need to move. Then I positioned the camera inside the box. I found this quite difficult as I struggled to get the target of the shot correct.

I was unable to solve this problem by just moving the camera, and so decided to try the shot with the robot kneeling. To do this I used the bones to create a bend at the knee so the leg was at right angles. So that the feet did not disappear into the ground I also repositioned these.

I then made some slight alterations to the camera position and the shot was how I wanted it.

I was happy with the animation so far so decided to go on to create the robots arm movements. Firstly I positioned his left arm and placed it on the side of the box so it appeared he was holding it still. Next at the first frame of animation I positioned the right arm on top of the box. Then I took each bone one by one and used the auto key and repositioned them at frame 30. In previous animations this semester I found it was easier to animate the limbs closer to the body first so used this method again.

When I watched the animation I found that the hand slid across the box as it opened and so I had to make some slight alterations to the positioning of the bones. I found it very difficult to keep the hand still throughout and there is still some slight movement which I am disappointed with.

Next I rendered one frame in the scene.

I feel the lighting is not suitable as too much of the subject is in shadow. Due to this I repositioned the spot light so it highlighted the majority of the subject.

Next I went on to render the scene. When I watched it I was disappointed that the material inside the box could be seen from the beginning, even though there was no light inside.

I tried lighting inside the box with a low intensity to try to make it all in shadow. For this I selected an omni light as it would light the whole of the inside of the box evenly. I set the intensity to 0.1 so it was quite dark and turned on the shadow. This worked much better.

Finally I turned off the omni light in the sky as since the addition of the new light the robot is lit slightly too much. I felt the other lights were the most important and so this is why I selected to turn this one off.

I am quite pleased with this part of the animation and so I will go on to another part.