#49 - Animation - Scene 2 Motion

Now I will explain how I created the ship's motion for scene two of my animation. This scene lasts about 3 seconds, and it will show the Venator coming into view from a distance, hopefully creating a sinister atmosphere, before the camera backs up to fit both the Venator and the Invisible Hand in the shot ready for the third scene.

I began by ensuring that the Invisible Hand had enough time to move out of the camera's view before rotating the camera back up and towards the right, where the newly imported Venator model was positioned. I moved the Venator back a bit and set it to be moving even while it isn't in the shot, as I think this could make it feel more realistic, rather than having the model suddenly start when the camera has finished rotating. Once the camera has rotated, the Venator moves across the screen towards the left, in a long shot, before the camera turns back to the left and moves back. Like with the Invisible Hand, I have not used a motion path because a this point it is not necessary at all. The Venator simply moves in a straight line, parallel to the Invisible Hand in the opposite direction.




At one point, I struggled to get the rotation of the Invisible Hand correct because when I rotated it and set the key, it rotated it for the first frame as well, and totally ruined the positioning of the Invisible Hand from that point on. I fixed this by undoing all the changes, going back to when the Invisible Hand began on the right path, and set a key specifically for the rotation attribute on both the first and latest frames. Another issue I had was with the camera at frame 420 (yes this is fourteen seconds, I will speed it up soon otherwise it will be far too long). It went way too far down and when I rendered it only the bottom of the Venator was visible. Fixing this wasn't difficult, but it is an example of one of many occasions where I rendered the animation and the position of an object was off. After a good few tries I finally had the objects in the right positions. Only the speed needs to be adjusted and then the camera angles will be near-perfect for now.



Admittedly, to get the Venator from a long shot straight into a mid-range shot with the Invisible Hand, I had to simply move it sharply to the left in the space of about a second. In the image above you can see they are suddenly much closer together. This is unrealistic, but the viewer cannot tell that the ship has been moved this way as the distance between the two ships is not measurable in any of the shots. There will be no indication of this motion, and it creates the sense that the camera has become wider. This is possibly not the best way to achieve this type of shot but for now it works, and as long as there are no future complications then there is no need to change it.

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