Not sure why I haven't posted in so long. One way or another, I haven't.
DP1 is now over, and my content is all submitted. Including this here video.
I suppose I should put some explanation of what went into it, since I don't think I've put it down in writing yet.
This video was more about trying something new than demonstrating skill. Had I decided on a different plot, I could have done some good modelling and lighting and worked a normal animation. But I ended up with this concept since it allowed me to explore Reactor.
Reactor, for the uninitiated, is the physics simulation engine built in to 3DS Max. It's what let me set up all the dominoes, and animate them dropping, without going through frame-by-frame and animating every single collision and drop with keyframes. It uses Havok physics, which is used in many current-generation games (such as the Bethesda RPG's, Starcraft, and pretty much every Valve game) for dynamic physics simulation in real-time.
Once you get around the basics, it's all a matter of just figuring out what sliders do what and how you can use this to make what you want to do. Anyone scared to press a button to see what it does isn't going to get far in 3ds Max, so I just flipped through a few tutorials then started tweaking dials.
Lighting used Final Gather, which is significantly more realistic than the default lighting engine in return for significantly increasing render time. Significantly. The whole peice took around sixteen hours to render on my laptop.
There were bugs about whilst trying to make this piece. Most obvious being the render on the original scene bugging somehow and preventing me from rendering anything but single frames. I ended up having to import all the scene info into a different scene entirely which was rendering okay, and use that one instead. An odd fix, but it worked.
Also, been building contacts, which is cool. I now know a guy who knows a guy who worked on Heavenly Sword. Since I'm considering a sandwich year, knowing people in the industry could be a big help one way or another.
Been told that we're doing something haunted house related in the Animation section for the rest of the year, so soon I'll start working on various haunted-ish ideas.
