Scene 4 creation

In order to create scene four, I used the same basic stage that was used to create scenes two and three. For this scene I only used one model of the siege engine and I grouped the whole model together, apart from the wheels that I kept separate. The wheels were kept separate in order to animate them spinning.

In order to animate the wheels spinning and the model moving, I selected all the wheels and the grouped siege engine and moved them together using auto key. Once the siege engine was moved forwards using auto key, I then focused on making the wheels spin. This was simply done by using auto key again and setting the frames to the end of the timeline. Next all I had to do was rotate the wheels a few times and then play the animation. After playing the animation I decided that the wheels needed to rotate a bit fast in order to look like they were keeping up with the animation and the movement of the siege engine. After playing back the animation a number of times and making alterations to the wheels spinning, I was happy that the wheels looked as if they were spinning at the correct speed.

Once I was happy with the animation of the wheels spinning, I then focused my attention on the camera. I started by drawing and positioning the line in which I wanted the camera to follow (parallel to the siege engine and the wheels spinning). Once I was happy with the positioning of the line, I drew the free camera and attached the line as its path constraint. I then played the animation through the view of the camera and decided I needed to make a number of changes to the animation. I started by adjusting the stock lens of the camera to get the correct view I wanted for the animation. I also rotated the camera a little to ensure the wheels were the main focal point of the scene.

The main problem I encountered with this scene was that the camera was initially a lot quicker that the siege engine. This meant that for a large portion of the animation the camera just pointed at the ground and not the wheels on the siege engine. After a lot of tweaking, I managed to get my siege engine and the camera both moving at the speeds I wanted them too. This then made the scene seem as if the siege engine was having a close race with the camera and in the process, showing that all the wheels were spinning on the siege engine and showing off the detail of the model.

Once the camera was set up the lighting was added. A daylight system was added to the animation. The daylight system was angled with the direction and tilt to cast a realistic shadow for a scene set in the evening. This was consistent with all the other scenes. Once I was happy with the animation I created my finally uncompressed render of the scene in 1280 by 720. But after I had rendered the animation I notice that there was nothing in the background of the image. In order to solve this problem I raised the grass in the far background. This then made the animation shows just grass in the background instead of nothing.

The images bellow show scene 4 of my animation: