Filming - Shot 3 (Lava)

For my next shot, I wanted the camera to move along the lava, which was the last shot I wanted of just the setting. 

I moved the camera into position using the 'Move' and 'Rotate' tools. I made sure that the camera was quite low to the lava, so you could get a real close up view of it. 

This was quite an easy shot as I only used two key frames on the timeline. I set the beginning one at the position I wanted the camera to start and then moved the end to 100 frames and set this at where I wanted the camera to finish. Although this was quite a simply shot, I wanted to keep it to this number of frames so that the camera would move steadily across the scene rather than looking rushed. 

Once I'd finished my animation, I played it back using the Play controls and the video looked exactly how I wanted it. I went on to render the video at this point to save time having to render all my video files at the end. I went to the 'Render' menu at the top to get up the 'Render Setup' window again.

I adjusted the settings accordingly, like I had been doing previously. 

Here is what the clip looks like:

Filming - Shot 2 (Tops of Volcanoes)

For my next shot, I wanted to continue setting the scene by taking some shots of the tops of the volcanoes. 

To do this, I used the 'Move' and 'Rotate' tools to reposition my camera above some of the volcanoes. I made sure that I was doing this at the first key frame on the timeline. 

I then dragged the bar on the timeline along in order to make another key frame. I basically took key frames at certain camera positions. I only made a couple of key frames for this clip because I only wanted it to be a short clip, and all the camera did was basically move forward along the volcanoes. 

Once I'd finished adding my animation, I wanted to render the clip because like before, the Play controls next to the timeline weren't very successful in giving me an actual feel for what the clip looked like because it lagged too much. I went to the 'Render' menu at the top and got up the 'Render Setup' window. 

I adjusted the settings correctly, making sure I had the right frames and view selected as well as an appropriate file name and clicked it to render.

The clip happened quite fast which is how I wanted it to be as I didn't want the shot to get boring if it became too long. However, for this clip I did have the returning problem of the lava moving.

Here is the clip:

The lava continued to animate for this clip because I had created it in an older version of the file, which I had forgotten to adjust the 'Noise' modifier for the lava in. Despite this however, I decided to use this clip anyway. I decided this because I only wanted to use the first bit of the clip where the lava was barely visible so it didn't have much of an impact. The small part at the end where the lava is clearly visible and animating, I did not want to use as it wasn't such a great shot of the volcanoes anyway. Instead of wasting time re-rendering the clip in 3ds Max, which would've taken a while, I decided I would just quickly chop the end of the video off in Premier. 

FIlming - Shot 1 (Setting the Scene)

In order to start filming, I first had to create a camera. I went to the top menu and clicked the 'Create' option, then 'Cameras' and 'Free Camera'. 

I chose a free camera to begin with because I wanted to be able to move it around and shoot different objects freely without having a fixed target. 

For my first shot, I wanted to build up a sense of surroundings to establish the setting. I original wanted to have the camera coming up from behind one of the volcanoes and peering out across the lava. 

I placed my camera in it's starting position by using the 'Move' tool. I also made sure that the 'Auto Key' box, next to the Timeline at the bottom, was selected and highlighted red too. By doing this it meant that it would automatically put in a key on the timeline whenever I changed something on the set. I gradually dragged by timeline along to a different point and moved the camera into a different position. I set several different key points on the timeline and used the 'Move' and 'Rotate' tools to get my desired camera angles.

I played through my animation using the play controls along the bottom, next to the timeline. However, due to the number of polygons I had in my scene, when I played it the animation was very slow so it was hard to get a proper idea of how the actual animation looked. Because of this, I decided to render the scene so I could see what it actually looked like properly.

To render the scene I simply went to the 'Rendering' option on the top menu, and clicked 'Render Setup'.

This opened up a new window which gave me the ability to choose the exact key frames I wanted. I chose to select the 'Range' option from the 'Time Output' section, and selected the frames from 0 - 100. I also selected the location of my file output and gave it an appropriate name. Once I'd done all of this, as well as making sure I had the camera view selected, I pressed 'Render' at the bottom right corner. 

Rendering didn't take so long for this as I had only made a very short clip. When I looked back at the clip however, I wasn't pleased with it. Firstly, the clip was far too short and the camera moved far too quickly into its next position. Secondly, the lava was animated too and was moving outrageously which I did not want to be happening at all. 

To solve the first problem of the clip being too short and the camera moving too fast, I added in more frames. I clicked the small icon next to the timeline, which opened the 'Time Configuration' window. Under the 'Animation' section I altered the 'Length' of the clip from 100 frames to 600 and clicked the 'Re-scale Time' option and clicked 'OK'.

 By doing this it gave me many more frames that would draw out the scene and make it longer, instead of looking so rushed. Back on the timeline I also moved some of my key frames along to make some scenes longer and so that they filled out the whole of the timeline.

For my next problem of my lava animating, I was slightly puzzled at first because I hadn't added any animation to the lava so I wasn't quite sure why it was doing this. I then realised the reason why it was animating was due to the 'Noise' modifier I had added previously. When altering the different aspects of the noise modifier, there is a small section of 'Animation' within it. At the time I must've seen no effect as I hadn't rendered it, so I must've forgotten about it and left it. So to alter this I simply went back to the Noise modifier and changed it so there was no animation, because it didn't work at all. 

Now that I had changed my timeline accordingly, I rendered the clip once again. This time it took much longer to render due to the amount of new frames added. I still wasn't entirely happy with the final clip, but I decided that I would be able to use some of it. 

Here is the clip:

As you can see, once the camera pops out from behind the volcano at the start, the lava still begins to move violently. This is because when I altered the effect of the 'Noise' modifier on the lava, I must've changed it at another point in the timeline rather than at the very beginning, so you only notice the effect later on in the clip. Additionally, the clip does go on for too long towards the end and starts to become slightly tedious due to the lack of change. However, I really wanted to avoid re-rendering the clip again because it took so long. So, I decided that I had enough footage in this clip to use as the opening, at the point were the lava stops moving. I would then just cut the end of the clip off in Premier so that it didn't go on for so long. 

Ideas For Animation

• I'm going to start my animation with some slow shots of the volcanic scenery. I will start by having the camera coming out from behind a volcano and then looking across the landscape.

•  I will have individual shots of the volcanoes and the lava to set the scene. These will most likely be quite close up so you can see the detail of each.

• I will then introduce the Headhunter to the scene by getting the camera turning and looking up into the sky.

• I will have a distant shot of the Headhunter moving around the lava and then some closer shots of the ship coming towards the camera.

• I will then have the camera turn with the ship to look up to the sky in order to introduce the Tie Fighter into the scene.

• I will then have a moving camera shot of the Tie Fighter which will be quite close up to show off the detail on the ship.

• I will then have a long shot looking across the lava and will make each ship fly into the shot from opposite sides. At this point I will make it look like they're about to fight. This will be where I will end my scene.

Possible Music

I was looking into ideas for the music I could have playing in the background of my scene. I wanted it to be Star Wars related obviously. I searched YouTube for related clips and also to do with the planet 'Mustafar' as that was the planet my scene was based around.

I eventually managed to come across this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=799I3-jCWtI

Accessed [12/12/2011]

I thought this music would fit quite appropriately. It was roughly about 3 minutes long in total so it was more than enough for the 30 second clip I needed to create. 

Lasers Tutorial

Here is a clip I found of a laser tutorial. If I get time, I will try to incorporate it into my video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwrAIqwTCNY

Accessed [12/12/2011]

Filming Tutorial

Before I started to film my animation, I wanted to practice the tutorial to make sure I knew how to film properly. I opened up a completely blank file just so I didn't accidentally mess anything up on my volcanic scene.

To start off with, I drew a line by going to the 'Create' menu, then down to 'Shapes' and chose 'Line'.

I then drew a line in one of the viewpoints. This line was going to be the camera path.

Once I had drawn the line, I wanted to create an object to film. I went to the 'Create' menu again and this time chose a 'Cone' from the 'Standard Primitives'. 

I then created a small cone in one of the viewpoints, which was positioned round about in the centre of the line I'd just drawn. 

Now that I had both my camera path and my object created, it was time to create a camera. To do this, I went to the 'Create' menu again and chose 'Cameras' and then 'Target Camera'.

I was now able to draw my camera onto the viewpoint on the line path I'd made, making sure to direct the camera directly towards the cone. 

I then went to the 'Motion' on the right in order to set the camera up completely.

 I expanded the 'Assign Controller' and clicked on 'Position' and the small icon just above it to open a the new position window.

When the new window opened, I selected the 'Path Constraint' option and pressed 'OK'. 

Back in the 'Motion' panel, I scrolled down to where it said 'Add Path'. I clicked on this, and then selected the line I drew earlier. 

As soon as I had selected the line, the camera immediately repositioned itself to the very beginning of the line. I could now press the 'Play' button and press 'C' to see the camera view.

I did play around with the Timeline slightly, just be adding more frames in etc. to draw the scene out a bit.