Post - Advanced Prototype Presentation.

My advanced prototype presentation went well and the examiners seemed to like the 10 seconds of footage I showed during the presentation. The feedback I received was more advice than anything. The advice was to reuse my fluid effects because once you cache them the output fluid stays the same and can be reused. It was also advised to reduce the brightness and contrast of the animation in Adobe After Effects as the gamma level in Maya produced bright rendered out images so I will take this into account when putting the final trailer together.

Final Animation - Render Quality Changes.

Following on from my test shots and the first 10 seconds of my 3D animation I have had to make some adjustments related to the render quality of the final animation frames. When I rendered out in HD1080 with mental ray set to 1.00 my render time per frame was around the 10 minute mark. However when I rendered out in HD720 with mental ray set to 2.00 my render time per frame was around the 5 minute mark so around half the original render time per frame. As a result of this I have decided to go with HD720 as my render quality just to save time with rendering as I have a lot of frames to render with many of them including nfluid animations. Comprising is worthwhile because I would rather render at HD720 with a completed animation over rendering at HD1080 and have a half completed animation.

Advanced Prototype Show-reel.

The link below is for my advanced prototype show-reel which shows the first 10 seconds of my game trailer for 'Era's Of Conflict' in the form of a 3D animation. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1cZMs0Sj2E

Advanced Prototype Presentation Planning.

Today I put together the PowerPoint presentation for the advanced prototype. At this point I have the first part of the game trailer complete with 12 seconds of footage rendered. I am yet to include sound in this part but I thought it would be more convenient to add in all the sound effects once I have the entire animation rendered.

To sum up my idea is a game trailer in the form of a 3D animation show-reel, I will also include a breakdown of the trailer in the final video. The title of the game in which the trailer is representing is called 'Era's Of Conflict', a first person shooter game. 

Within the presentation I will be talking about if my idea has changed direction, what the prototype footage is showing, how I produced it, my gantt chart and my project completion plan. My idea has not changed direction so it will still be a game trailer representing 'Era's Of Conflict' but the duration of the trailer will be cut to around the 1 minute mark simply because most game trailers are around 1 minute in length. All that needs to be done now is to check over my PowerPoint and the footage I will be showing and then I will be all set for the advanced prototype presentation.

Final Animation Scene - Test Shot - (nfluid fire).

The screenshot below shows a rendered test shot of my animation with one of my nfluid simulations. The simulation is the burning fire for the destroyed tank on the street. It took me a lot of time to get the desired look for the fire and to make sure it was detailed enough in terms of quality to reflect the detail in the overall scene. To start with the simulation kept causing Maya to crash, I then found that I did not cache the simulation using ncache but this was not the problem. The problem was that my base resolution for the nfluid simulation was too high which was causing Maya to crash when I tried to batch render. The highest I could get the resolution was 70, any higher and Maya would crash when I tried to render. For the most part the simulation looks very good and I am happy with the level of detail it has, it also has good shadow casting and is reflecting well in the windows in the building at the end of the street.

The next stage is to add more nfluid simulations including the tank firing, turret explosions and helicopter rockets firing, all will occur throughout the rest of the animation.

Final Animation Scene - Test Shot - (Textured, Lighting, Shadows).

The screenshot below shows my final animation scene with the desired lighting and shadows I wanted with the help of physical sun and sky. I wanted to give a desert ambience and feel to the scene to make it feel more like a war-zone. The lighting effect also gives a sunset feel to the scene which I also like. 

Final Animation Scene - Test Shot - Textured.

So the image below is a test render of the entire scene together completely textured. As you can see everything has come together quite well. The windows on the buildings are reflecting quite nicely. The bump maps on the smaller houses and the tanks have come out very well and show a good level of detail. The next stage is to sort out the physical sun and sky lighting so that the gamma and lighting reflects the scene better to make it more realistic. I will also lower the horizon line in accordance to the camera height because for the sake of the animation I only want the sky visible in the background. I am also going to add some haze to the sky and change the colour contrast to give more of a desert war setting as that is the look that I am after for the final animation.