Week 12 Pt.3 - What Would I Do Differently

In this final blog post, I will list a few things that I could have done differently in my animation, ways I could have improved it, and so on.

• The TIE Phantom was made facing the Z-axis, while my other ships were made facing the X-axis; this created a problem when animating in Maya as I had to rotate the Phantom 90 degrees. Next time, I will ensure that all my models are made facing the same way, to make it easier to animate them.
• Even with the rocks, the terrain is noticeably flat and featureless; this could be solved using bump-mapping to create more rugged-looking surface terrain. I also feel that I could have modelled the rocks more realistically, had I had the time.
• I had initially wanted to animate a scene with the TIE Fighters shooting at the Y-Wing, but felt this was too complex and removed it. However, I feel that the animation is too slow-paced, and that the addition of the shooting scene could have increased the amount of action and tension in the scene. I also feel that, given the skills I have learned while creating this animation, I would have been able to incorporate this scene into the animation.
• I never actually got around to adding the motion blend in Scene 3, so the TIE fighters do not bank as they perform their respective U-turns. This, however, makes their movement seem more unnatural, and thus more threatening, so is not entirely a bad omission.