A Beginning, A mid…well a beginning…

One of the key elements we thought up early on was the idea of having a missile sequence reminiscent of a scene in the movie, X-Men: First Class, where missiles head up and outward towards the viewer then crash onto a map, exploding. It seemed reasonable to do this as an intro because we could give indication of the situation within Europe via the map and missiles.

Another thought I held was the power that quotes can have, they tend to sum up a situation quite succinctly and lend a certain gravitas to pieces of media. The quote was made up to sound ominous of the coming scenes where America is pulled into a War. The idea of fire was meant initially as merely a metaphor for how War often escalates and spreads throughout its surroundings; however it ended up being dealt with slightly more literally due to the particle effects chosen to transition from the quote to the main section of the intro.

In order to get into the map I desired something interesting and thus worked backwards from the idea of missile launchers on the map and the map in front of the audience. First I had to decide how the missile launchers would arrive, it felt appropriate to have them possess some motion and the idea of them fading in whilst moving to position was something I thought would look rather eye-catching. The next step was how to have the map appear, this was an interesting issue. I could have gone with a 2D style map piece and just had it be there, but ultimately I was using 3D animation software in a 3D course, it seemed more apposite to utilise 3D elements. This is where the idea for 3D islands and the clouds moving upon the map came from as it really made the map stand out and visually pop. The idea of the scroll came up due to the fantasy setting, often fantasy maps are seen upon ancient scrolls. The roll up idea was just a logical transition between scenes; it was natural to think that a scroll would be rolled up upon first retrieving it.

Within the intro I used the visibility track, within the curve editor, quite a lot. My previous knowledge of this technique meant the fades progressed quite swiftly. The main new element learnt here was the looping of the fades. I found with my standard choice of loop that the clouds faded earlier than desired on their subsequent loops, something I did not want. This was solved by merely adding extra keys in order to match the entirety of the visibility length to match that of the movement. The second problem was the loop was now permanent, so all the earlier footage of the quote had the clouds looping across on it. I discovered the remedy for this was rather than just clicking upon the overall loop icon within the out of range types if you pressed a small arrow at the bottom of the icon it would loop from the point you animated it onwards, rather than in both directions. This small detail will likely prove invaluable in the future.

 A key element to the intro is the transition between the quote and the map. This effect was accomplished via a particle system. It was done by using a polygon select modifier to separate the word ‘fire’ then having the first PArray throw particles from the selected polygons which were just the ones that made up the word. The second PArray then activated over the entire sentence. Once the fire had appeared to spread I wanted it to turn to ash. This was done by fading the original sentence down via the visibility channel in the curve editor. During this fade another particle system was engaged, which was a PFSource, this system was calibrated to form the sentence out of its myriad of particles. Once the flames died down a deflector which was set to activate a collision detection within the particle view dropped down over the sentence causing the particles to fall gently to a different deflector which didn’t move. Once settled upon the "ground” a wind force was introduced so that the particles would fly away as the map entered the screen.

At first I was going to just have the sheet forming the map enter, this unfortunately looked terribly boring and the plane that was the sheet didn’t exactly look anything like paper, it merely looked like a shape. This was solved by looking up how to create a rolled parchment effect. The way it is done is to add a bend modifier and then move the centre point of the bend to have the paper curl up. Auto-Keying this act allows you to get the motion of curling up or uncurling as an animation. The final act to get the map was just perfect and this was done by a double sided material, one side a plain coloured paper texture the other side featuring the very bottom layer of the map.

The clouds were an interesting build as they utilised an opacity map. Designing the cloud in Corel Draw was done by taking several reference images and taking elements of each to form a cloud design. This cloud was then taken into Photoshop where the opacity map was created. Once both the base and the opacity map were complete it was a simple case of applying the main material to the diffuse slot and the opacity map to the opacity slot. When layered this equated to the plane the material was on becoming partly invisible and forming the perfect image of the cloud.

Something interesting I stumbled across was the combination of a multi-layered and a bitmap material. Initially I found the multi-layered colour to be too bright and reflective but reducing the reflection didn’t help, a standard colour was too bland and didn’t stand out enough and a texture fill on it wasn’t enough to capture the notion of a map displaying a colour key the groups of differing countries. In the end I realised that I could have the best of both worlds, by lowering the amount the texture fill was displayed in the diffuse map slot I could bring through the multi-layered colour, this gave a delightful colour that was unique.

The vehicles were built briefly via the standard method and their purpose was in mind the entire time which was primarily why the wheels/treads don’t move nor is there proper under carriage colour. The new element I tried with these was to experiment further with Linking and constraints for the rear missile holders. Both were linked to the base unit and had their rotational capabilities restricted so they could only go up and down. The linking had the further advantage of allowing the missiles to still be manoeuvrable independent of everything else.

The link for the tutorial on Parchment rolling is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmyjT5XM6aA

The research images utilised when designing the missile launchers for both the central and allied powers.

Copying the map was done in Corel Draw, the map is representative of the Europe map but I altered the shape of parts to reflect the island style of our fantasy world.

The map was copied roughly before each line was curved in order to greater match the map.

Being able to add text and then extrude that text is rather useful

The particle effect for having a shape be made from particles and then have a deflector interact was something I learnt a couple of years ago

A tutorial provided greater knowledge of how the bend tool can be used to manipulate shapes, while also providing details on how to curl a plane.

 

Several Cloud designs were researched but the nautical-esque cross-hatch shaded one won the award for best looking cloud for our theme.

Using the Magic Wand tool then colouring the cloud black and white, where black is to be invisible is the way to make an opacity map

The cloud can be seen to be made from a plane, but thanks to the opacity map the plane surrounding the cloud is invisible.

The map was made from a parchment texture with a custom grid placed on one version for the sake of the double sided material

The continents were placed in from Corel Draw as splines converted to polys, then the edge was extruded and scaled down slightly to give a sloped edge to each island.

The Overall map was too bright at first and just didn't quite go with the parchment

Mixing the two material ideas provided something truly magnificent a rocky shiny colour which did go with the overall map theme.