TIE Zoom Out Test

I made a quick clip in After Effects today, testing 2 image sequences.  One of them rendered normally, the other the rendered with ambient occlusion.  The ambient occlusion object makes shadows much richer, so it gives a much better depth to object.

Here is the final outcome:

As this is a test, I only rendered it at 640 x 480, so that it would render quicker.  When it comes to the final video, it will be rendered at 1920 x 1080. 800 x 600.

With the ambient occlusion render, I won't do that on all clips, due to the rendering time as I would have to render each sequence twice, and with only 2 weeks remaining there isn't the time to render double the amount sequences.  Another point to note, is that due to being set in space, a lot of the shots will be at quite a distant so that if there was an ambient occlusion image sequence rendered, the viewer wouldn't notice the depth of the shadows, so the quality lost wouldn't be noticed.

This is an image with the ambient occlusion texture applied to all polygons.  In the video, I just turned the windscreen off.

This is an image with a plain grey blinn on, not an ambient occlusion map.  This is a white TIE with a skylight that will create an ambient occlusion map, using the scanline renderer.

Spline Paths

To animate objects moving in 3d space so that when I take them into After Effects, I would render them moving so that they don't appear flat.

I have an animation of the TIE Interceptor chasing the X-Wing:

There is a pink line coming from both the TIE Interceptor, and the X-Wing, which the both travel along, respectively.

To do this, I created a spline and then constrained each object to their respective path.

The picture above shows, the red circle on the left is the TIE Interceptor's spline path.  When the TIE Interceptor is selected on the motion tab (4th tab) and that the TIE is constrained to the spline.  When the timeline is moved further along you can see that the TIE has moved further down the spline.  The same is true for the X-Wing (on it's own spline).

Here is an animated GIF of the TOP view of the 2 chasing each other.

This shows from another angle how the 2 will move.













Berzina. M, 2015. How to Export an Animated GIF using Adobe Photoshop and After Effects (Part 3). [online] Available at: < http://designmodo.com/export-animated-gif/> [Accessed 06 December 2015]

Animation Test

I made a quick animation test to try using an image sequence and edited using After Effects.  Here is the result:

And here are the things I changed:

There is the image sequence, a star background, and 3 adjustment layers.

The Tie image sequence has no effects upon it.

The starfield has a Gaussian blur so that it doesn't look too busy, and not distract the viewer.

The first adjustment layer handles the brightness and contrast, to bring the colours out.

The second has another Gaussian blur, and mask, to give an impression of the heat from the engine.  And also to hide the sharp edges of the engine glow.

The final adjustment layer holds the lens flare, just a little bit of extra detail I wanted to try.

As this is the first time I have used After Effects in years, it all came back very quickly, and I'm happy with the quick test.

Camera Work Ideas

An idea I have had since starting the project is to use a point of view shot from the cockpit of the TIE Interceptor, I just hope I can make sure it doesn't look flat, otherwise it'll spoil the immersion for the audience.

I need to make sure that when doing an over the shoulder shot of the TIE Interceptor from behind, and the same to the X-Wing except from the front, not to break the 180 degree rule, as this can be very jarring for the audience as it may appear the TIE and X-Wing have changed directions.

With a wide shot, it would be hard to make sure that the space behind the TIE and the X-Wing doesn't looks flat, I thin I could overcome this if I were to have some other objects there, such as a planet, or some asteroids.

Final Models and Evaluation

Here are my final models for this assessment.

I am pleased with the overall outcome of all three.  But I feel the TIE cockpit could have been made cleaner.  I moved too many edges, which in turn, distorted a lot of polygons.  There were times when I was clicking edges to connect and had an edge from another face, due to bad placement and too much tinkering.  I am quite pleased using the glass material for the screen in my TIE cockpit, I feel this makes the look of the cockpit much more convincing as it has different materials used.  Brushed metal for the chair, and flat metal for the console unit, and glass for the screen, and circular dials.

I remade the wings of my TIE Interceptor, as when I had made them originally I used a spline and then extruded.  The was very messy and gave my quite a few problems.  I also found out when working in 3ds Max, having an object tilted at an angle that is not 90, 180, or 360 degrees can lead to problems with manipulation and moving, as the axis generally move, up, down, or in (X, Y, and Z respectively).

As mentioned above, I think once I started texturing using materials from the architectural menu, the models started to look much more convincing, the little details such as reflections on glass.

In conclusion, I have enjoyed the model creation and learning new skills in a new program.  I feel I have developed to being able to make a variety of different models, but I do feel I haven't the skills yet to to make convincing organic models due to currently only working with squarer objects,

Poly Count

I thought that now I've finished 2 models, I would look into their polygon count to see if they are very high, or not.

The TIE Interceptor's poly count is 10,181.  According to jsprogg [Simply Maya, 2008] that games, in 2008, would average between 7k and 12k poly count.  Mine is roughly in between those, plus being 7 years the technology we are using has leapt ahead by quite a lot.  I think if I were to use this model in a game, I would be ok.

The X-Wing's poly count is 5,623, which is considerably lower than the TIE Interceptor, I think a lot of this is due to the sphere making up the TIE's cockpit adding a lot of polygons.

Finally, the cockpit's poly count is 19,365.  The highest of the lot!  I believe this to be due to the amount of different objects used in the scene.  The chair has quite a few on it alone.  Then the console has many extruded, beveled, and inset faces this will also attribute to the high poly count.




Even if the cockpit has the highest poly count of the three, I don't feel any of my models exceeded an extortionate amount.  The console could have been made so that I didn't have so many polygons, it would be interesting to see whether in time I could recreate the console to dry and drop the number of polygons used.













References:

jsprogg, 2008. Polygon count whats high /Whats low? [simplymaya.com] http://simplymaya.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28963

TIE Chair Update

I have updated (Read: changed completely) the chair in the TIE cockpit.  This chair is looking infinitely better.  A lot more detail has been added, a decent texture, so it looks metal as opposed to plastic, and generally suits the cock pit more.  I thought I'd use a render rather than the viewport so that the materials show up better.

Testing Materials

Using the material editor, I have been testing out materials and what effects these have on the models, and their rendered look.

 This first render here has the shininess of the metal set to 10, it still seems nice and shiny with the bright panels, but not showing any reflections.

And then here the shininess is set to 100.  It now has a mirror finish to it.  There are reflections of everything on everything.  This makes it quite hard to read, a bit like the end of Enter the Dragon with the mirrored chamber...

Neither of these settings we appropriate, but I thought I would experiment with them to see how the looked.

I feel I want a matte look to the desk, as opposed to a shiny one.