#48 - Animation - Scene 1 Motion

In this post I will describe how I set the models to move for the first scene, based on the storyboard. This first scene lasts approximately six seconds, and is quite simple to animate because it involves a camera staying in one place while a ship move in a straight line beneath it. This may sound too simple, however the purpose of this scene is to give the viewer a sense of scale. It achieves this by showing the full length of the Invisible Hand model, before the camera turns to show the Venator off in the distance.

The process of animating this was very easy. I placed a camera, facing down, in the space dome, looking at the path the Invisible Hand follows. I tried to use the bezier curve tool to create a motion path for the Invisible Hand, however I decided that for now, as the ship is only moving in a straight line, it would be just as easy to animate it without a motion path and move it forwards with each frame. This could be a problem later on if I need to attach it to a motion path but generally the story board tells me that there won't be much movement from the Invisible Hand itself. The Jedi Star Fighter will definitely need a motion path.



The first six seconds of the animation now consist of a close up shot of the Invisible Hand moving underneath the camera. I intend to add real Star Wars music to this bit to really give the viewer a sense of scale when the scene opens.

So far, the animation is turning out promising. It's always difficult to begin a project, but now that it is started I can see how the rest will fall into place. Seeing the first few seconds properly rendered really improves your confidence. One problem I do have is that the first scene is currently very boring, but hopefully proper lighting, texturing and music, followed by a nice camera pan will fix this. The next step is to swing the camera around so that the Venator comes into view, before it launches the EMP blast at the Invisible Hand.

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