Lighting and more problems

So I realise I didnt mention much about my lighting so far. the lighting really wasnt hard to grasp. The concensus online is 3 well placed omni lights is enough to gain a good ambient light effect, which is what I wanted in space considering all the stars are tiny light sources.
For the final scene, I wanted to protray the bleak desolation of the planet hoth, so I set an omni light low to cast shadows across the snow dunes.











I also wanted to vent my rage in regards to animating objects to appear at certain times. I wanted my Tie to fire a laser, and upon contact with the Xwing, create the smoke effect. I tried EVERYTHING to do this proffessionally, looked online, tried layers, even animating visability but somehow it was always out of my grasp. I had to result to sneaky work arounds, namely hiding the lazer object inside the tie, and using the curve editor to ensure they traveled the same speed. as for the Xwing, upon getting hit, I animated it to spin, then snapped to a different perspective with the smoke now attached. Not the best,but hey, it looks good

Adding text

I discovered that text counts as a spline. I had to go into the rendering in the command bar, and select viewable in render and viewport. Helpful to know, I imagine 3DS max has a size limit to ensure random "shrapnel" polys are not rendered.

Opening Scene

Animating the Xwing flying along a path I felt was the best option. I set the target camera and xwing to the same path to ensure fluid motion.

This is a fantastic way to ensure smooth fluid motion along a path, removing natural human zig zag motions. Also editing the banking amount and ticking follow path really gives it a realistic touch.

I also addressed the issues of the thruster glow. For this I used directional spotlights, and adjusted the far attenuation to ensure no light reflected on unwanted areas. It gives a nice surrounding glow to the rear of the ship.

References

Sorting out sound files for the final piece, I would like to reference the following-
http://soundbible.com/suggest.php?q=boost&x=0&y=0
http://www.tk421.net/gallery/sounds/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Znv29YPtyGA&feature=related.

The rest of the sound files will come from my personnal library and voice acting. These wont be submitted as part of the assignment as I do not have the right to distribute the files.

Thankyou to George Lucas and Lucas Arts for the use of sounds, images, and references of the Starwars Universe.

Animating xwing crash

Whislst animating the xwing crashing into hoth, I decided to manually draw the z axis track to add jostling to the ship, I felt this worked really well and had to blog it. I feel this is an amazing tool to really convey the motion of first person views, and is widely used in the gaming industry for things like running.

Also I found this amazing tutorial on creating smoke effects that I will use to portray the damaged xwing in external shots http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3regJHtfBU.
One final note Id like to make is excluding hoth from the interior lighting, I felt this gave a much more crisper finish to both the cockpit and hoth. In future I will use this function to achieve better lighting.

Texturing the Cockpit

Firstly I wanted to reference http://bypuk.com/2008/09/tenclo-set-building/ as they had an amazing picture of an retro looking Xwing cockpit that I used part of in my textures. secondly i wanted to blog about my problems with texturing inside an element.
Part of my animation will inclue a view from inside an Xwing. Initially upon texturing, I found everything was appearing on the outside of the element, instead of inside like Id hoped. I discovered UV wrapping is not dependant on the side you click the polygon from, its natually always wraps to the normal facing side. It was sjust a case of adding a normal modifier and clicking "Reverse Normals"

I now know a very quick and easy way to texture interiors in the future.

Arranging UV unwraps and referencing

Firstly I would like to thank Agida Iwo-Sse for the use of this texture http://swg-piloten.com/html/x-wing_texture.html. I did not use all of it, just some of the engine decor .
Also http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=tie+fighter+side&um=1&hl=en&biw=756&bih=526&tbm=isch&tbnid=euUPlGo_dVNrHM:&imgrefurl=http://www.erikstormtrooper.com/vehiclestickers.htm&docid=GWhM9-vovcQCsM&imgurl=http://www.erikstormtrooper.com/tiestix.jpg&w=1018&h=635&ei=F1bRTtGvPIi5hAebuamgBw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=429&vpy=216&dur=202&hovh=177&hovw=284&tx=224&ty=141&sig=116454246868238874563&page=6&tbnh=129&tbnw=207&start=33&ndsp=7&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:33

which I found useful for the Tie fighter wings.

The texturing of the xwing was very straight forward, however the tie fighter has a large poly count, so I am finding it more and more essential to move the polys around in the UV template to get a better, more accurate detail placement.