Since I had some time before the hand-in session, I decided to apply the feedback that I received from both Mat and my peers from the final crit session. The one that stood out to me the most was the introductory scene where the camera swoops into the environment, so I decided to start with that first. The feedback I got from this was that it looked quite jagged and forced, and to improve this I could perhaps put it on a curve. I decided to take this onboard and apply it to my animation because it is the beginning scene and I want to leave a good first impression!
I could not actually remember how to put a camera on a motion path, so I did get it wrong a good few times before I finally got the hang of it. I used the 'CV Curve' tool to 'draw' my path, and then clicked on the camera and attached it so that they would work together. As you can see in the video above, it went horribly wrong.
I realised that this was due to the directional axis that I was attaching the camera to. I had just used the settings that were already set by Maya, and I hadn't realised that you have to alter them accordingly. I ended up using the ones in this screenshot as I found that they worked for me best, and the option that really worked for me was 'inverse front'.
I also thought to draw my path in the side view perspective, as there was no way I would be able to create a smooth, effective path in the global perspective. This way I could keep it at 0 in the Z axis, and therefore my camera could be stable and fluid for the viewer.
Though this allowed me to keep the camera stable in the Z axis, it was then down to me to try and fix the pace of the camera path. I had trouble previously trying to make the camera look slow enough to be realistic, but for some reason I found it much harder when working on a motion path. I had to do LOTS of tweaking with the 'Control Vertex' option, moving the points around so that the curve would be smooth, but a lot of the time, it was a case of trial and error.
I did however, end up tweaking the camera path so much that it ended up looking nice and smooth, much more than I had done to begin with. My only issue on the other hand, is that you cannot see my character walking anymore. I wanted to establish the setting in this sequence showing the whole fun fair, however as a consequence of the swooping, I have cut the little sister out of the shot.
To counteract this, I tested moving some of the control vertex points to the right, in order to get that rotation element in, like I had previously. I noticed that I could not set keys on the camera once it was on the motion path, otherwise the motion path would not be in effect, therefore I made another camera in the exact place where I would have wanted the rotation to start and keyed it that way. This seemed like a lot of work, so this is when I tested out moving the points. I found this to be extremely effective, as the camera swoops through the entrance, establishes the scene and then rotates to the point of action and just in general I like to overall aesthetic of the scene. All of this experimenting has allowed me to create a better looking opening scene, as well allow me to find new skills that I can incorporate into my future work!
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