Staff Animation Blog 4

o   Hey guys, this is the final blog for my magic staff animation! Because I've made a trend, Ima follow the same formula as the previous two.

​Successes:
​This week has solved some major issues, and a bunch of tiny ones, making production just that much smoother.
​So, the main one is the issue from last week with the Lower Cage not being nice. After migrating to 3DSMax 2017 (AutoDesk, 2016), and erasing all the files from the 2016 version, it fixed it! Now the cages are nice and pretty.

​Texturing went well, with everything UV mapped, and I even got a little tutorial from Cameron Dadd (a fellow animation student, albeit in trimester 6) about modifying dynamasks. All elements are now textured, and this went even better than expected. I have discovered a new technique of exporting from Quixel (Quixel, 2016) that slots straight into Max. All I have to do is export for Unity and adjust specularity and I have niceness!

​Aside from this, I have finished most of the animation. I still need to get Camera animation finished, but the main staff is done to my satisfaction now. Once I get the Camera done, it will be ready for render and submission!

​Problems:
​The background was way too boring, so I tried to skybox it. I, however, grew up in Unity, so skyboxes are a thing, but not a transferable one :P I have tried to teach myself how to make a good skybox, but with the pressure from my major project hanging on me, its not looking good for that.

​I just CANT get the lighting right. I have tried multiple omni lights of different colours, targeted and free directional lights, but no matter what combinations i use it always looks ... off. Im sure im missing something here but I cant figure out what. Unfortunately, I'm not going to have time to fix this before submission which is reallly annoying me.

​What am I working on from here to submission?

Get the render done, get it looking good. Make sure the resolution is right, I got that wrong last time. 1920x1080 in 720p. For some reason the editor isnt accepting my input but im going to look into it.

​I'd like to do a special last thankyou for anyone that followed this series through. It was a bit of a slog, but its done now! Ill put up more photos than normal, of course.

Thanks guys,
Peter Carey
Dracon Interactive
References:
3DS Max (Version 2017). (2016).
Quixel (Version 1). (2016).​​

Crystal levitating with cage activated

Oh yeah, I made a pedestal too

Far shot of activated staff

The scene!