Critical Evaluation

The final animation is a good reflection of my original storyboard, I did however make some changes to scene 3 as my original idea did not showcase the neon lights and I wanted the camera to move through the cage of the neons.

Scene 1, the explosions using the fire effect and superspray could have been manipulated further using the partical view and the path of the vehicle would have been better if I used a dummy to follow the path constraint, unfortunately I learnt this later on in the project.

The speed of the vehicle is a little fast and I did have problems with the two scenes matching together therefore I used the fade out to join the files together, the flashing of the yellow and lights on the vehicle do not work, the opacity that I used works very well in showing the background through the vehicle, unfortunately this was not the effect I wanted.  The sound works well with the explosions and fits with the original film.

Scene 2, I included another vehicle to add more interest to the scene, I was unable to add a shadow but this would have been a good effect to have.  The sound effects of the vehicle being close to the camera works well.

Scene 3, I think the camera angles of this scene and the glow on the building and neons work very well, although as anticipated there are some gaps in the building.  The words in the neon do not spin as smoothly as I would have liked but overall I am satisfied with this scene.  I did try to incorporate some smoke within this scene but this corrupted the file, so was not included within the final scene.

Overall I feel that the animation does reflect the opening scenes in the Bladerunner movie, and follow the storyboard. The models have a cartoon element about them that works well in this animation along with the colours and maps.  I feel I have incorporated some good techniques at my first attempt at 3d animation.

Final Output

The final settings for out put :

I have selected H.264 with a preset of HDTV 720p 23.976 High Quality, I changed the frame rate to equal the frame rate of the movie files (29.97) then changed the aspect ratio to square pixels.

Output to MP4

Camera Angles

I am finding playing with the camera angles more fun than I have the rest of this module.  It is difficult at first to get my mind around what I am viewing when moving the cameras, but now I have practised more I am finding it easier to manipulate them.

I have used the target camera and placed the target on a point that I need to be within the camera view at all times

Here are some view different camera angles I have tried:

 

 

 

This screen shot shows the two cameras and their views in the two left hand viewports

Rendering, Premier pro and editing the animations

This link show a montage of clips from the Bladerunner movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VgNoKc_Gdw

My final animation includes my attempts to replicate some of the scenes.

I imported the .avi files that have been rendered out of 3DSmax so that I can work with the scenes and add the sound effects, using .avi files adds a compressor so the quality in premier is not as high quality as I would have liked.

I had a one to one tutorial and was shown to render the files as image files, this takes longer but the quality is of a higher standard,

Settings I have selected :

3DS Max :  HDV 1280 x 720  25fps

render out as image files   
I am using targa and in the settings selecting 24 to include the background,
use 30 to have the background transparent.

Setting in Premier pro : the files imported easily and could be edited as normal.  Because I had smaller files of the same scene on different time spans I could match them and layer them together.

I included a title introduction using the text option in PremierPro selecting colour and effect to reflect a style similar to the bladerunner text in the movie.

I added the original sound track from the title scene in Bladerunner

Vangelis,2005, Bladerunner main titles (track1)[online] available at:
http://www.last.fm/music/Vangelis/Blade+Runner/Main+Titles+(From+%22Blade+Runner%22) published 5/7/2005, (accessed 2/5/2013)

This was edited to use the different sounds available to give parts of the video a stronger effect.  The sounds are layered, adding a diffuse when required to balance out the final soundtrack.

The sound of the explosions are edited to match the image explosions. 

Scene 3

To set up scene 3 I needed to create an animation with the neon lights befor I merged with the police building.

I have created a loop setting the a key frame at 0, then move to 10 on the timeline and rotated the text 180 degrees, then repeated this at 20.

Then by using the curve editor and selecting the param curve : relative repeat

 

this created a loop on the video

 

 

 

This was imported into the police building file, making sure I selected the merge option and group the elements of the light. once imported I made a copy and changed the text.

 

 

This screen shot shows the two neon and the imported vehicle.  I added two target cameras, placing the target onto the points that I wanted to be within the camera view at all times.  By placing one target inside the building I was able to move the camera and view the building where ever it was moved too.

 

I had problems with the vehicle attached to a spline on a constraints path, so I created a dummy and  attached that to the constraint path, then attached the vehicle to the dummy.  This meant that I could animate the vehicle within the keyframes without effecting the path.

 

I also decided to change the direction of the vehicle, so changing the story board,  I felt that the scene worked better with the vehicle coming in from above and moving out of shot lower down the building, this also meant that I could include the neon within the animation.

I created a dummy from the helpers toolbar drew a cuboid and named this.  Created a path constraint with the dummy and the spline. Then attached the vehicle to the dummy.  I was able to move the vehicle to where I wanted knowing that this will still follow the path.

To place the dummy (and vehicle) on to a selected point on the spline I selected the object with the path constraint in this case the dummy, then under the motion, path parameters changed the '% along path' option, once in place creating a key frame.  This works, moving the dummy with the move tool means it will jump back and forth when trying to animate.

As I have fine tuned the camera movement, selecting the best camera settings to give the view that I wanted, I have know created a scene show casing the building and the neons, now to include the vehicle within the scene.

I have decided to render smaller parts of this whole file this means that I can manipulate the vehicle within these smaller time spans. As I will not be changing the camera angles I should be able to bring the files together within PremierPro. I set up the vehicle and rendered these scenes and brought them together in PremierPro

For the background I tried various things using this bitmap image but they didn't work

 

Source of gif : milkshake.com,[online] available at : http://mlkshk.com/p/2IB1 accessed 30/4/2013

 

 

using the dome or plane but the bitmap would not fit did not give the right effect.

 

Therefore I decided to use an environment map on the background using the same bitmap as scene 1 and 2, I felt this worked better.