Hello and welcome back!
This will be my final post about the MDU115.2 Assignment as I have now finished and I’m really happy with my final product!
I stayed late at school on Monday hoping to get it finished and rendered ready to import into After Effects, unfortunately a quarter of the way through rendering it the computer stopped rendering the file. So I started again from the frame the render got up to and for some reason it would only render five frames and then stop. It was late and I was hungry so I decided to come home and finish it the next day.
I couldn’t work out why the shadows wouldn’t soften. To compensate for the sharp edges of the shadow I changed the colour of the shadow from black to a light grey and this gave it a softer effect. (Figure 1&2)
The next day when I came into school I set my project up on a different computer and it was rendering fine. I assume last night it must have been a technical issue with the Maya software. I was at school from 1:30 – 6:30 waiting for it to finish and I remembered it didn’t take this long when I rendered the first time and the speed of rendering one frame had slowed significantly from what it started at. I didn’t want to touch it though in case it stuffed up again so I left it for a while but it was starting to get late so I stopped the render and started again and it was faster – or at normal speed (still slow) . And then after about twenty five frames it would stop rendering like last time. This was an improvement from the five frames it would render yesterday and I was close to the end so I just reset the frame range a few times and it rendered successfully.
Once I was home I uploaded my rendered images into after effects. The first thing I noticed was when the coin hit the screen it wasn’t black as in my animation so you could notice some movements I wanted hidden (Figure 3). So to fix this issue when the coin hit the screen I inserted a black image and cut the animation where the coin hit so it would go to black as it did in Maya. (Figure 4)
Then I inserted my sound track. It was obviously longer than 19 seconds which is the duration of the animation. This meant I had to trim the file. I looked up how to do so. It took me a while but after a few tutorials I learnt how to cut the audio down to size and also how to move it along the time frame so the timing was how I wanted it.
Once I had the audio I wanted to add sound effects for the crab when it gets flicked away by a tree and also for the crab that jumps off the rock. Because of my music background I have recording mics/software and was able to record my own sound effects and import them into after effects. I recorded a couple of different sound effects but I chose to use only one for the crab getting flicked away.
That all worked according to plan. I moved on to adding text to the end of my animation saying “Pirates Gold” to add to the black canvas I inserted. This was a little complicated at the start but I got my head around it and was able to have “Pirates Gold” appear on the screen but it was there for the whole 19 seconds so I had to learn how to edit the text so it came in when I wanted it to. Once I did that I didn’t like how it just appeared so I also learnt how to fade it in.
The last thing that I wanted to do before the animation was complete was fade the audio out because it ended so abruptly. So I looked up some more tutorials and was able to work out how to do so.
Once I was happy with my animation I saved it and had a look around the after effects interface at some of the effects I could add to the animation. I explored simulations such as, rain and snow etc and also lenses flares, adding a glow, and colour effects but I decided to leave the animation how it was because it was becoming too much.
When it came time to edit the render I noticed the settings options on a window are different to a Mac. For example there is no “QuickTime” option or “codec video” option to compress the file to H.264 but I found the alternative places where these options were available and rendered out my animation. Just when I though I was done I had one last issue, and that was the audio wasn’t coming through with the render - I was only receiving my audio. I had a look in my render settings and saw audio wasn’t enabled and that fixed that issue and I successfully rendered my completed animation. (Figure 5)
See (Figure 6) for a perspective view of my scene.
Thanks for reading!
Steve,
This will be my final post about the MDU115.2 Assignment as I have now finished and I’m really happy with my final product!
I stayed late at school on Monday hoping to get it finished and rendered ready to import into After Effects, unfortunately a quarter of the way through rendering it the computer stopped rendering the file. So I started again from the frame the render got up to and for some reason it would only render five frames and then stop. It was late and I was hungry so I decided to come home and finish it the next day.
I couldn’t work out why the shadows wouldn’t soften. To compensate for the sharp edges of the shadow I changed the colour of the shadow from black to a light grey and this gave it a softer effect. (Figure 1&2)
The next day when I came into school I set my project up on a different computer and it was rendering fine. I assume last night it must have been a technical issue with the Maya software. I was at school from 1:30 – 6:30 waiting for it to finish and I remembered it didn’t take this long when I rendered the first time and the speed of rendering one frame had slowed significantly from what it started at. I didn’t want to touch it though in case it stuffed up again so I left it for a while but it was starting to get late so I stopped the render and started again and it was faster – or at normal speed (still slow) . And then after about twenty five frames it would stop rendering like last time. This was an improvement from the five frames it would render yesterday and I was close to the end so I just reset the frame range a few times and it rendered successfully.
Once I was home I uploaded my rendered images into after effects. The first thing I noticed was when the coin hit the screen it wasn’t black as in my animation so you could notice some movements I wanted hidden (Figure 3). So to fix this issue when the coin hit the screen I inserted a black image and cut the animation where the coin hit so it would go to black as it did in Maya. (Figure 4)
Then I inserted my sound track. It was obviously longer than 19 seconds which is the duration of the animation. This meant I had to trim the file. I looked up how to do so. It took me a while but after a few tutorials I learnt how to cut the audio down to size and also how to move it along the time frame so the timing was how I wanted it.
Once I had the audio I wanted to add sound effects for the crab when it gets flicked away by a tree and also for the crab that jumps off the rock. Because of my music background I have recording mics/software and was able to record my own sound effects and import them into after effects. I recorded a couple of different sound effects but I chose to use only one for the crab getting flicked away.
That all worked according to plan. I moved on to adding text to the end of my animation saying “Pirates Gold” to add to the black canvas I inserted. This was a little complicated at the start but I got my head around it and was able to have “Pirates Gold” appear on the screen but it was there for the whole 19 seconds so I had to learn how to edit the text so it came in when I wanted it to. Once I did that I didn’t like how it just appeared so I also learnt how to fade it in.
The last thing that I wanted to do before the animation was complete was fade the audio out because it ended so abruptly. So I looked up some more tutorials and was able to work out how to do so.
Once I was happy with my animation I saved it and had a look around the after effects interface at some of the effects I could add to the animation. I explored simulations such as, rain and snow etc and also lenses flares, adding a glow, and colour effects but I decided to leave the animation how it was because it was becoming too much.
When it came time to edit the render I noticed the settings options on a window are different to a Mac. For example there is no “QuickTime” option or “codec video” option to compress the file to H.264 but I found the alternative places where these options were available and rendered out my animation. Just when I though I was done I had one last issue, and that was the audio wasn’t coming through with the render - I was only receiving my audio. I had a look in my render settings and saw audio wasn’t enabled and that fixed that issue and I successfully rendered my completed animation. (Figure 5)
See (Figure 6) for a perspective view of my scene.
Thanks for reading!
Steve,