Filming - Shot 6 (Headhunter Flying)

I now wanted to have a shot of the Headhunter flying above the lava. I made sure that my Headhunter was in the right starting position, at the beginning of the timeline. I then created a 'Free' camera by going to the 'Create' menu.

Once I had both the camera and the ship in the position I wanted, so the ship was just off the screen to start with, I began to animate the ship.

Originally, I kept setting key points on the timeline and moving the ship accordingly, using the 'Rotate' and 'Move' tools. However, When I did this and rendered the animation, it was terrible. The ship didn't move realistically at all and it's movement was very jumpy. I could've altered the ships movement so it was more steady by using the 'Curve Editor' at this point, but instead I thought I would restart the entire animation process again using a different method to animate the ship.

In the end I decided I would create a path for the ship to fly on, which was a much better and easier way of animating the ship as it meant I could pre-determine the flight path of my ship and then animate it further later on.

In order to get my ship to fly on a path, I first has to create a line which was going to be the flight path. I did this by going to the 'Create' menu at the top and selecting 'Shapes' then 'Line'. 

Now that I had the line selected, I drew on the viewport, out the way of the sky dome because it was clearer, I roughly created the flight path. I then repositioned the line using the 'Move' tool, and rescaled it slightly as it was a bit big to begin with. 

I placed the start of the line where the ship was already positioned so that when I made it into a path, it wouldn't alter the ships position too much so I wouldn't have to move it again.

After the line was in place, I wanted to adjust it so that the ship would fly exactly where I wanted it to go, taking note of where the lava was on the scene. I thought it would look better if the ship flew around some of the less detailed points of the lava so that it looks a bit more pleasing to the eye.
In order to alter the shape of the line, I went to the 'Modifier' panel which allowed me to look at the different parts of the line when I expanded it.

I clicked on the 'Vertex' level which then showed me all the different vertex's on the line that I could now adjust.

I used the 'Move' tool to adjust the different points on the line. When I'd created the line I'd accidentally not made all the points curved which will cause the ship to turn quite abruptly when it's animated. However, the first few points of the line were curved so to try to hide this, I pulled the bottom pointed vertex off the screen so that you would only be able to see the ship move slightly. The next couple of vertex's were curved so I would be able to curve the ship off the screen ok.

Now that I had my desired line, I wanted to create it into a path. To do this, I went to the 'Motion' panel on the right.

Under the 'Assign Controller' section, I selected the 'Position' level. I thne clicked on the small icon above the panel in order to bright up the 'Assign Position Controller' window.

In the new window I selected the 'Path Constraint' option and selected 'OK'. By doing this it meant that I would be able to use the line I had created as a path contraint to move the ship.

As soon as I had done this, I was now able to select the 'Add Path' option from under the 'path Parameters' section. 

This allowed me to select the line I'd created. My timeline had automatically set key points at the beginning and at the end so that when I moved the bar along the timeline, my ship would now fly along the line. 

However, this wasn't all the animating I needed to do to get the ship to fly. When the ship moved along the line, it's position didn't move at all so it still didn't look realistic. 

To get the ship to look natural, I went through my timeline and changed it's angle and direction by using the 'Move' and 'Rotate' tools.

I set numerous points on the timeline in order to try and get the transition as smooth and natural as poissible. 

Here is what the clip looks like:

I am not entirely pleased with this video and would do things differently if I was to shoot it again. I'm still not entirely pleased with the way the ship moves because in some places it still judders slightly and doesn't look so natural. However, I decided I wouldn't use all of this clip and would cut some out in Premiere to save time instead of waiting for ages for it to render in 3ds Max. I wouldn't keep the beginning or the end of the clip as this is where the ship judders most when turning.

Furthermore, after taking some time to reflect on the clip, if I was to shoot it again I would move the camera as well. I don't think having a still shot necessarily does the shot justice. Perhaps making the camera move with the ship would've made it a bit more interesting.