Week 8 - Setting the Scene

For Week 8, I began work on my animation. The first step was importing my three models into Maya and attaching them to handles, allowing me to manipulate them easier. Here I ran into two problems. The first was that the chassis of the TIE Phantom, which I had shaped using the Boolean - Difference tool, would not move in tandem with the rest of the model; to fix this I deleted the history of all objects in the scene, meaning the chassis was now treated as a simple object rather than the product of a Boolean operation. This also reduced the file size of the scene.

The second problem was that the Y-Wing model had been built to a different scale to the TIE fighters and was thus much smaller than it should have been. This was fixed simply by scaling the Y-Wing to double the size.

Next, I created the skydome and the terrain. The skydome has "double-sided" turned off, allowing me to see inside it, and is textured on the interior rather than the exterior; this was accomplished by inverting the normals. The terrain is also textured, and significantly larger than the skydome, allowing me to scroll it to create the illusion of movement. The texture used for the terrain is freely available from www.yoyogames.com; the skydome texture was provided by the university.

Fig.1: The scene as it looks so far.

Presently the skydome is very small, and so the horizon curves very visibly, which will not do at all for long shots. I can not eliminate the curve, as of course the interior of the skydome is circular, but I can minimize it by simply expanding it (and then the terrain to match). When making the actual animation, I will have to be careful to keep the ships near the centre of the skydome, or the join between it and the terrain will become obvious.

Fig.2: The skydome and terrain have been expanded, and the textures scaled to match.

The next step in preparing the scene is to add lighting. This will take the form of a directional light, placed somewhat near the edge of the skydome to simulate an afternoon sun; as can be seen in Fig.4, this creates a stark effect where one half of the ships are strongly lit and the other half are strongly in shadow, adding to the drama of the scene and enhancing the sinister look of the TIE fighters. The skydome will not cast or receive shadows, so I do not need to worry about it interfering with the lighting.

Fig.3: The scene with the added directional light.

The ships do not appear to cast shadows at the moment; this may be because the directional light is too far away. I will investigate this further. For now, however, there is one last thing to do: add the camera. Having done that, the scene is now ready to begin animating.

Fig.4: The camera, shown in green, positioned above the Y-Wing, ready to film the first scene of my animation as described in the storyboard.