Fmp production reflection part 1

FMP Production Reflection Part 1
•Sean cawood

Animated Trailer Process
After I chose what trailer music I was going to use I then imported it into MoviePlus. I then edited the music to remove any themes that
related to other franchises when I could. I then merged the gap between them so it transitioned smoothly. I think this worked very well
because the edited music worked very smoothly and people who I asked about it didn’t even know it was avengers infinity war music because
I removed the theme. I Cut out the audio with the Split Tool and I Merged them back together with the Fade Transition on the audio.
I Then Added Voice and sound effects to places where I thought they fit. The line I took were from recordings from Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3. It
Was Mainly from the character Sovereign who is a reaper. I think the voices that I added worked very well.
I also added a few lines from star wars the clone wars republic heros to try and make it fit as my girlfriends OC Raven who played a big part in
the original premise of the story but the line was cut because I couldn’t quite make the line fit but I planned to do a scene with raven instead.
I then went through the edited music and went through the moments that I thought would be the best moments for scene changes. I then
wrote notes for my ideas of what I could do for the scenes when I animate it. It was similar to the idea of writing my ideas of what I would do
on my preproduction but this felt better Though it would need edits and there were still a few changes and blank spots to do I had a basic
idea of what I wanted to do. I liked this idea of how I would layout my story board ready to start creating my project.
Discuss the tools and processes used in your production.
Log your thoughts and feelings about your work.

I then started working on my first asset I would need for my first scene. First I used Unreal Assets Extractor to Open up the game files of
Mass Effect 3 and I Unpacked the Mass Effect Relay 3D model and the textures. I used Unreal Assets Extractor because its one of the
better tools from extracting models from games
I Then Imported the Texture files into Photoshop. I used photoshop because it’s a good professional software that I have a lot of
experience in using and it has all the tools I need.
I then Went over the areas that I wanted to go over with the pain tool on a separate layer. I then removed the first layer and isolated the
one I hade created and painted on. I then Exported the new Layer as a .PNG. For this I used the paint tool put to 2.5 Pixels wide. I went
over all the areas of the model that had this glow.
I Imported the .OBJ model I extracted into 3DS MAX. I used the Select Elements tool to Isolate the parts of the model I wished to move
during my animation and I Detached them as a new model within the scene. I also did the same for the second ring. I used 3DS MAX for
this because its tools are a lot better for separating meshes than Maya Is.
I then Imported the model into the Element 3D plugin Inside After Effects. I then Linked the Parts that I separated to AUX animation
Channels so I could animate those parts inside After Effects while they are still Technically Part of the model.
I did This because in Mass Effect These Mass Effect Relays Spin. I think this Technique works well because it doesn’t wait time having to
Mess around with other grouped models inside after effects. I also applied the textures that came with the model, the
diff
Spec and Bump map like I explained previously what they all did.

I then Imported the Illumination Map I created earlier in photoshop to the model and turned the Intensity up and the colour to tint purple.
This created an Interesting purple glow effect on the model which made it look a lot better while rendering. I changed the colour to purple
because I wanted the relay to be visibly different to the Mass Effect Relays in mass effect where they glow blue. Glowing purple immediately
tells people this is something else.
I then added a Environment. What the environment does is change the Reflection/Natural Lighting of the object to help it fit into the
environment that you create inside after effects. For this I used a darker background with a few aspects of light in it that helped it look like the
model was in space.
I then accepted the changed I made in element 3D and Moved into the After Effects Work Space. I then Used the Auxiliary Animations to
Animate the 2 Parts of the model that I edited before in 3DS Max. This gave it the illusion of spinning parts. I think this worked well for want I
wanted it to do and ill do the same for when I have to animate other parts like on this.
I then enabled the Glow, shadows and Environment and added Ambient Occlusion to make it look a lot more cinematic. All these effects make
the relay seem more like it’s a physical object rather than just a flat 3D model.
I then added a parallel light source and a point light into the scene as well as a Purple Lensflare using the Plugin Optical Flares. I prefer to use
optical flares rather than the default Lens flares because it has a wider verity of options. I added the light source because it helps blend the
Lensflare into the scene because it looks like its emitting light and makes the scene more realistic because any real life scene would have
some kind of light source in it. Without the parallel light its just flat colour. I then added Stars In the background by adding one giant image of
stars there. I did that because it’s a quicker and easier way than going through Particular to try and create stars for this situation.
I then added a camera and linked it to a Null in 3D space so I could slowly pan it around the Inter Galactic relay. Adding camera
movement stops the scene from feeling static. Because I had a camera I also had to edit the lensflare as well. I had to move it
along each frame to make sure it stuck in the right place and I had to edit the size as the camera moves around it too.

Once I made all the tweaks I wanted I then rendered it to a
Uncompressed .AVI file and I later used Premier Pro to Convert
the file into a .MP4 file that is a smaller size and more
compatible with Movie Plus. I think this scene worked very
well and looks good. The scene was inspired by Mass Effect 2’s
Omega 4 Relay and i think it worked well. Taking inspiration
from Mass Effect and Star Wars is something I said i would do
in my Research

I then Imported the Model of the Reaper into 3DS MAX and Detached its limbs the same way I detached the rings on the mass
effect relay, I spent a long time detaching all the limbs into separate models so I could animate them. This Method does have a
few problems, like you might make mistakes when separating the mesh into different models but also if there are too many
pieces they will become hard to animate because I only have 10 AUX animations to work with. However some of the parts can be
mirrored so they do the opposite of the other’s movement.
I then created the Illumination map in phtotshop the same way I did before with the mass effect relay. I Imported
in the textures and I painted on parts that I wished to glow on a separate layed and Exported the layer as a .PNG I
I used this technique again because i thought it worked very well on the last model and that I should keep using
this for Illumination maps.

I Then imported the model and textures into Element 3D inside After Effects with all the textures and my illumination map. I also moved all the
model parts that I detached to look like the reaper was flying rather than talking. It was very important to the scene that they look like they were
flying because it wouldn’t have been accurate to have them walking in their T-pose so this worked very well even if I didn’t assign the limbs to AUX
animations yet
I Duplicated the reaper putting them into different groups and I tinted the illumination map to Red to make this reaper look different from the
rest. Implying that this reaper is special or maybe the leader. This was because I think it would have looked weird if all of the were all the same
colour so I think it helped it all blend in.
I then saved the changes I made and Enabled the same Render Setting that I did for the last scene. And this made the model look a lot better.
These render setting s really do increase the cinematic quality.
I then had an idea to populate the background with reapers to make it seem like an arm that was going to invade.
For this idea I used the Particle Replicator Tool within the element 3D Effects Control Panel. I used the Scatter
option to make them look a lot more randomized and less Uniform.

I then did the exact same effect but moved them all further away creating lots of reapers that look very far away. This scene is
designed to make you feel like there are just thousands and thousands of reapers
I then went into particular and added in white dots, set the emitter to box, turned down the Velocity, Turned up the Particle
Life, Set to explosion and moved the particles far back to make them look like stars. This is what I used for my Experiments but
this time I wouldn’t have had the same problems I ran into before where when the camera moved the stars didn’t look right,
but since the camera didn’t move I wouldn’t have the same problem I did during my production experiments.
To then make it look like this shot look like the reapers were between galaxies I downloaded a .png of a galaxy and shrunk it
into place in the background amongst the stars. I think this worked very well of making it all feel like this scene was taking place
outside of our galaxy. This makes the reapers feel very advanced because they actually have the ability to goto any galaxy they
choose and we don’t have that ability
I attached the 3 groups of reapers to Nulls and used them to pull it forward towards the camera slowly. This helps the audience
get the idea that they are the bad guys of the story and that they are coming for the audience.
I also added a light source that allowed me to start off dark and slowly light up the scene revealing the reapers, I also did this in
time with a fog effect that helped with what I wanted to do. This was really good at making the reapers seem a lot more
creepy. This scene was inspired by the shot at the ending of Mass Effect 2 where at the end you get a shot of the reapers
heading towards the galaxy at the end of the game. The scene itself was supposed to give the player a sense that they only
prolonged the inevitable, I wanted to do a similar thing. I said i would have taken Inspiration from shots in Mass Effect and Star
Wars in my Formal Proposal and my research,

I then tinted the colour of the light source that made it look slightly red, relating to how I said before in my research and
Preproduction I would use the lighting to Effect the emotional feel of the scene and this scene was supposed to convey a sense of
doom and I think that worked very well.
I loved how this scene turned out and after a few tweaks and I was happy with it I then moved onto rendering it
I then went back to movie plus and filled in the scenes I knew I couldn’t animate with Existing footage, I only did it for 2 scenes
close to the beginning and the Logos However I would later go onto removing these logos inplace for the ones I created myself.

I wanted a star wars scene so I decided to go onto youtube and find a scene with Grand Admiral Thrawn from the rebels animated series. I wanted to use this
shot because it was Grand Admiral Thrawn over a Holotable
I took a screenshot and imported it into Photoshop. In photoshop I used the clone tool to remove all the planets that were in the shot so I could replace them
with my own holograms. I used the clone tool for this because it seemed like the best way that I could get this done, even though there are a few problems with
it like the cheek looks a little weird and the arm but I think it looks alright
I then imported the reaper 3D model that I Edited and the model of the Normandy and the crucible from mass effect 3. I didn’t edit these models further
however .

I them into after effects, shrunk them down and used a tint effect to make
them blue like a hologram. I then grouped them to nulls to make them
spin and then I turned the transparency down. This gave the illusion of
being able to see through them to make them look like a hologram. I think
this worked very well however it needed something else to make it look
more like a hologram
I then added scanlines by track matting the Element 3D layer to a video of scan lines, the Track matting was linked to the alpha
channel of the layer that you link it to. The alpha channel is what allows for images and video with transparent areas so you can see
through them.
With the scan lines it made it look much more like a hologram and I was happy with the shot
This scene was inspired by the scene that thrawn was looking over the table in star wars rebels, however thrawn in the antagonist
there so the original scene is supposed to portray some kind of impending doom getting closer where my scene its supposed to
present hope in a way.

I then went onto my next scene idea. For this I imported a star destroyer,
alliance destroyer (both I found on deviant art) and the Normandy SR2
(which I extracted before) models
I then moved them into the scene and started animating. First I started
by making the Normandy undock from the star destroyer. I then
animated ships coming out of hyperspace behind it.

I then animated more ships in on others layers, this turned out to be a very
inefficient way of doing things
I then added reapers in and starfighters
I wasn’t very happy with how it turned out so I decided to attempt it again

some time after i made the last scene I decided to go back and redo it from scratch.
As I did with the last two illumination maps I created , I imported the Textures into
photoshop however unlike the reaper and the mass effect relay I instead cut out the
windows that I wanted to light up and I pasted them on a new layer and pasted a black
background on it. I then tinted it Blue.
I then applied the new illumination textures to the model and turned up the intensity of the
glow. I then added Several stretched spheres with a blue illumination behind at the engines
to make it seem like they were glowing. I didnt like this effect very much however because it
doesnt look right, it may work for some Star Wars ships but mass effect ships engines look a
bit more animated and somepoint down the road i hope i can find a way to fix this issue that
I’m having with this effect.

I wasn’t happy with the Imperial Star Destroyer 3D model that I had so I decided to find another. I found another
but it didn’t have any textures. I managed to fix this by adding a Aluminium texture and Tinting it grey, this gave
the illusion of panels along the hull of the ship and I think it worked very well with that I wanted it to do. However
this created another problem because there was no Bump map, spec map and it would be hard to set illumination,
but I managed to go into maya and add small 1 face blocks that would be on a separate texture to the rest of the
ship. This would allow me to make those windows glow and this worked very well. For the bump map I instead
used the Dynamic Normals Generator within Element 3D and turned the Smoothness up and that allowed me to
create a flat bump map on the model. For the spec map I applied the spec from a rusted iron proshaders texture
to make it look better in the way light reacts to the material.
I did a test render with all my custom render settings to see how I looked and I think this worked very well. And I
was happy with the outcome so I think ill use this edited model in the rest of my animations
Next I needed a crane to drop the Normandy SR2 from. I thought of this because I didn’t like how it just dropped
out of nowhere from inside the star destroyer so I downloaded a crane that was extracted from the Star Wars
Battlefront Game. I then used 3DS Max to detach all the working parts that I needed on Aux Animation Channels.
When I imported my edited models of the crane into Element 3D and I applied the same texture that I added to
the star destroyer onto it.

I then set each mechanical part to a separate AUX animation and the on the other side I set it to mirror any animation that I would do later.
I then attached the model to the bottom of the star destroyer so I could use it in the scene later. I wanted this so i could create a similar
scene to when the Tantive IV was captured by the star destroyer but i still wanted it to be unique. in its own way so i would give it my own
spin only taking inspiration and not flat out copying. In a way its in reverse to that original scene and i think i kinda like that idea
I saved what I did and went back into after effects and started animating. First I made the star destroyer come in really fast and I also edited
the size to make it seem like it was going even faster from nowhere. It was supposed to look like it came out of hyperspace And I think the
effect worked. If i had one gripe about it right now i think i would still want to make everything bigger, to give it more scale, i dont think the
star destroyer looks big enough compared to the normandy.
I then animated the Normandy flying out after detaching from the star destroyer and at this point I really appreciated the size difference
between the two and It makes the scale feel real.
I then animated a camera to follow the Normandy as it flys past. I made sure this movement was as smooth and as realistic as possible to
help improve the scene

I had an idea to help stabilize the camera and make it focus on the Normandy better without having it move weirdly or having the camera spin with it or enter with it
when it enters the first frame. when i finished the normandys animation i Duplicated the Null that was controling it and i grouped the camera to it. I also removed anty
rotation keyframes from it so it would go more smoothly. I think this ended up creating a very good and realistic camera effect that i promised in my preproduction,
Proposal and my Research.
I then went to add the reapers. i used the edited reaper i made before for one of the other shots, and i also imported the illumination map i made.
I then used the same Particle Replicator effect as I did before and i applied the Scatter Randomiser to make it seem less uniform. I also made the
reapers
really big and pushed them far away to give a good sense of depth and size to the scene. I think that worked pretty well to help give the sense that
this is an
Unstoppable enemy that our heros have to face in this story.
I went to working on the fleet. This was going to be a more difficult task but for ideas on how to accomplish it i turned to my Production Experiments. There I made a
mass group of ships by putting them all into one scene. I then had the idea to control them with AUX animation channels. Ofcourse the software is limited to 10 of
these AUX channels and this became a problem with I had more than 10 Ships. I then had the idea to set the individual ships to different animation percentages. This
would mean if i set the channel it was on to move 100 Meters and the animation was set too 70% on that model and 100% on the other model set to the same
channel. one model would go 70 meters and the other 100 for example. This would create a feeling of Randomness and variety that would make it look like they
weren't all jumping in at the same time. At this point it was still yet to be tested if this could work but i had high hopes that it would.

i then opened photoshop and imported the main texture files from the alliance cruiser model that i ripped from the mass effect 3 game and I started to
get to work building an illumination map to set up glow like i did with the other models i Created illumination maps for
I went over all the areas that i wanted to have specs of glow and i painted it onto a different layer and exported it like i did before
I then went into element 3D and applied the illumination map i created and it made the parts of the ship glow
I also went over this process a lot for different ships that were in the background but i later regretted it after i rendered everything and found that you
can barely see them anyway when rendered. however at least i had these illumination maps in case i needed to do any more close renders

I then added a lease flat tinted orange into the scene. I think this gave the scene a ittle more depth
but if. Was to go back to this scene i would have edited the lensflare a bit more to make it look more
like a distant sun.
I then enabled all my previous render settings, including ambient occlusion, motion blur, glow, Etc. I
also added a parallel light source and an low ambient light. The parallel light helps create shadows
coming from the sun lens flare i added earlier and makes the scene feel alot more realistic And it all
fits together. the ambient light helps the shadows feel smoother and the parts in the shadow and
facing the ship aren't pitch black. I put the ambient light on very low so it doesnt overpower the
lighting of the scene and keeps it looking as cinematic as possible.unfortunately i forgot to add any
kind of lighting change with the emotion of the scene. I wish i did that when i was making the scene
but if i could go back and change it. I would change the lense flare to Blue and also change the
parallel light in the scene to blue. This scene was inspired by Rogue One A star Wars Story where the
fleet is coming out of hyperspace. I really liked the shot and the soundtrack to it so i decided to try and
do something similar.

I then moved on to starting a new scene. For this i needed a few models from battlefront 2. I found
out that each model within the game had several low poly copies to help with the games rendering
of far away object and it look awhile to isolate and delete every single low poly copy but i managed
to do it in the end.
I Then went into maya and found that somehow i had messed the mesh up and it was all stretched
and spiky so i went in and attempted to fix the model with some luck and once i managed to fix one
side i then went onto Mirroring the side that I fixed onto the other side. This helped fix the model
completely.
I then started Selecting Elements of the model to help break it apart in case during the scene i
wanted to break the model in an explosion or something. I marked down the different ways i broke
it apart with different bright colours

i then imported the model into Element 3D and that was when I found out something was
wrong
when i applied the textures to the model i quickly found out that something i had done to it
had mucked up the UV map. The UV map is what tells the model how the textures should be
applied to the mesh, the textures how they were at the moment were a mess. I figured that it
must have been when i was in 3DS max and I transferred the model to maya that something
must have gone wrong so i went back to the model and tried this again. This time i went
applied a texture to the model. So it wouldn’t lose its UV texture again. I then went through all
the same steps i did before.
I then encountered a new problem even though the UV was now working. When i applied the
texture within element 3D it became darker than it should be. i later found out this was
because strangely it is transparent. i have no idea why but i dont know how to fix it. I tried
brightening it up with a white tint effect but that didnt work, it made it look even worse. I tried
exporting the texture as a Jpeg which doesnt support alpha channel. But this just replaced the
black with white again.
After going through a lot of ways to attempt to fix it i gave up in the end and worked around
the issue and just kept working

I then dida rest render tp see how it looks but it still alloyed me that i didnt know how to fix
the issue. i need to find a way to get rid of the alpha channel and not replace it with white or
black
I then decided to move onto the next model. I made sure this time i didnt lose the UV mesh
like before. I then followed all the same steps as i did with the last model.
I then imported the model into element 3d and i was thankful to find that the textures are
perfectly fine. I then replaced the window textures to make the glass look shiny instead of
matt black, this made it feel more like windows.
I also replaced the texture for the engines so i could make them glow.
I isolated th texture for the tie bombers wings and created a bump map by Using a small
triangle bump map and repeating it a thousand time. This would create a bumpy effect on
the tiebombers wings that would make the light react to it differently. It also adds texture

I then started assigning the separate elements that i split inside 3DSMAX to AUX animations to allow me to
break it apart in an explosion if i wanted
I then ran a test render to see what it looked like when it was finished and i think it looked very good. however
i didnt make an illumination map like i did with the other models because i didnt think it fit with these models.
In star wars a lot of the smaller ships dont have many glowing points on them.
I then got to animating the models that i had edited. when i was animating the ships i thought it was a bit too
stiff so changed the animation keyframes from straight to smooth. This would make the animations curve a lot
more and hopefully feel more natural. For the main part of the animation i only wanted the two ships the be
the Center of the shot. So i dedicated two of the 5 groups these two ships. I planned for the fleet at the back
to take one, then the other fighters in the background to take another two.
I then isolated the Tie bomber so that was the only one in shot and i then started working on destroying it as
the reaper beam shredded straight through it. I animated these parts of the ships with the AUX animations i
set earlier.
Once all the animation was done i then started to add the reaper laser, i needed to make sure it looked like it
came from a reaper so i made it red and added an energy distortion. I also made one end really small and one
end really big like it was at an angle. This looked a little weird to me but this was the best idea i had so far. I
then had to animate the size of the laser as it passed past the camera so it had to get smaller as it got further
away. This laser effect was created with a plugin called saber, and it does it is creates Lots of beam and laser
effects that you can customise and create from scratch. It was initially designed for lightsabers in Star Wars so
thats why its called saber.
i later realised it was small and it looked a little off in its movements. I will have to find a way to fix this next

Now i needed to isolate one of the wings of the tie bomber so i could make it look like it was infront of the laser beam. This would hopefully make it blend better. with the
scene instead of making the bomber look like its completely behind it.
Once I isolated the wing and its movements I auto traced around it creating a mast that could cut out the laser around this mask.
I added this infront of the laser and alpha matted the layer so it would cut out anything cut out by the mask on the layer on top. I also shrunk the mask down a little and i
feathered the mask so it looked like the light was bending around the object. This also helped blend the scene together.I also did this to the bomb chamber of the bomber.
I then started looking at ways of creating an explosion and debris so it felt like it really did just explode to help the cinematic effect. some of the options i explored was
using stock elements from Video Colpilots Action Essentials 2 pack. I also looked at creating an explosion with particular. there were problems with both that i found. AE2
is very good and realistic quality however this had a problem with being in space. The debris stock footage looked good but It it doesnt work in space because space
doesnt have gravity. With the particular created explosion I can edit it so there is no gravity. This works well because i need there to be no gravity But the explosion doesnt
look very good or realistic. Then decided to just mix the two instead. I had the explosion from AE2 and the debris created by particular with the gravity set to zero.
I then started creating the fleet behind it, i needed an angled view to make it seem like there are more ships behind the camera and i dont have to generate the whole fleet
or risk having the partical replicator be too easy to spot. I created the fleet the same way i create the others by using one of the groups and putting a whole group of ships
together.

I then started adding the rest of the ships and started animating them. I found that animating is harder on AUX animations when your trying to do
individual objects And your trying to move them in more complex ways.
This scene was inspired by a scene in Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 1 where there was several Y-wings diving upwards away from a large
energy weapon heading towards them, in the scene one of the Y-wings gets damaged and falls apart taking the next 2 with it. I even though it
looks radically different that scene was always in mind while creating this scene
I then when to add alll my custom render settings that i have used for all my other scenes. i think this always makes the scenes look a lot better
and they look a whole lot more cinematic that before without all these effects
I then rendered this and all the other scenes in premier pro to convert it from a Uncompressed AVI to a .MP4 . I did this because movie plus
doesnt accept uncompressed AVI Files. It also makes it harder to store uncompressed AVI files as they are usually very large Files.

I then started adding all the scenes i rendered to Movie Plus making sure i left all the scenes I
hadn’t finished or started yet as my notes / storyboard.
I then started working on my next scene. I first imported asteroid models and then duplicated them
a bunch and created a kind of asteroid field.
I then created an illumination map using the textures for the ship i created an illumination map for
the asari ship, destiny ascension which is supposedly the most powerful ship in mass effect. In
mass effect the asari are a race of aliens who are very diplomatic their military tactics mostly
involve having a few big powerful ship rather than waist resources building thousands of smaller
ones. Their advanced technology very much helps them make their big ships more imposing.
Alternatively races like the Turians dont care for diplomacy much and they create lots of smaller
frigate type ships much smaller than the asari Dreadnaughts. Humans in mass effect go for a
more in the middle approach of creating Carrier/Cruiser Hybrid ships that pack a lot of punch and
can be built in a lot of numbers. However human technology in mass effect is a lot less advanced
than the asari or turian races.

i then added my edited star destroyer, my edited nebulon B, a turian frigate, my edited normandy SR2, a CR-90 corvette, an unedited arquintain and my edited Asari
Dreadnaught. Unfortunatly to fit it into the frame i had to make it smaller but it still has a good sense of size. I then animated them all going towards each other but in
the end i gave up the idea of the debris feild because i just couldn’t find a way to make it look good in the scene
I animated the normandy coming in from where the camera is flying under it similar to in mass effect 3 when in the final battle with the reapers you see if fly under the
camera towards earth. This links back to my idea where the shots and cinematography would take inspiration from mass effect and Star Wars in my research
I then went onto google images and looked up Star Wars planets. I found this image of dathomire from the clone wars animated Tv show and I downloaded it
I then moved it into the scene and because the camera doesnt move i just placed it at the side of the scene without transferring it to 3D space. I think dathomire
worked well for this scene of all 5 factions meeting to talk about the reaper threat because its a neutral planet far from any core system that the reapers wouldn’t be
interested In.
I then added a light source and a lensflare and made sure it was coming from the same direction as the planet. This helped everything blend in more but after thinking
about it i should have made the lighting slightly red to make it feel like it fits in with everything around it. I also put a mask around the planet i imported to stop it filling
the whole screen with darkness and let the stars shine behind it.
I then applied all the render settings that i usually apply to help make the scene more cinematic like i usually do with these scenes

I then started the next scene where i found an image of earth and imported it into photoshop.
First i needed the scene to look damaged so i started selecting parts of the planet and used the clone tool
to fill them with ocean like they had been destroyed.
This created a good sense of destruction and i started doing the same to a lot of the continents. I only
focused what i did to one side of the planet because thats the only side people would see when looking at
the scene.

I then used a curves adjustment to make the planet look more red, with less green and blue,i also made it darker. I used a curves
adjustment because its one of the best colour correction tools and its easy to learn how to use. I think it worked very good in making the
planet look a lot more dead.
I then downloaded an image of magma, i then used another Curves adjustment to make it darker, take away green and blue and raised the
red up a lot,
I then cut out the new edited magma onto the world and i then feathered the edges to make it blend better into the land. I think this effect
worked very well in making a burning earth.
I then isolated the burning parts i created onto another layer Where i then exported it on its own to create an illumination map that i could
use Later when putting together the scehe.

I then opened element 3D and created a sphere and applied the textures i had created. I also changed the environment
settings so it was a much darker, more like space environment. I also turned down the spec setting so it was less shiny.
I then went into the after effects scene and I turned on all the render settings that i usually turn on and i think it looked very
good. Very cinematic. You couldnt even tell that it was earth.
I then created a blue circle around the burning planet. This was supposed to look like earth had an atmosphere. I then
feathered the mask and turned the transparency way down so it would blend in a lot better
I then created a fractal colour. I wanted to use these for creating dark colouds on the planet. I set the clouds to screen so
the black parts wold turn transparent So it wouldn’t block the ground on the planet. I then Precomposed it ready for what i
wanted to do next. I precomposed it because that means the footage will be in a container and any effects i add. Will be
applied ontop rather than during the footage. It also makes it easier on live rendering.

I then applied a CC sphere effect onto the Precomposed Fractal Cloud. This warps the footage into a sphere.
I then turned off back rendering and that helped it so there wasnt two sets of clouds on each side. I turned the light to AE light (after effects light) so it
would use the light from the scene.
I then turned down the transparency, and used a curves adjustment to make it darker. I then also gave it a slight spin as well as the planet. I made
sure the plenet spins towards the sun so the light would be coming up like it would in real life from east to west.
I then added stars using particular the same way i did in my experiments By using particular. i went though all the same steps of setting it to box,
making it white dots, setting it to explosion, turning down velocity and upping the life time of the particles. this created the same Illusion of stars that i
did in my experiments. Though i was tempted just to add a star map instead, that would have been easier.
I then went over each area that should have glowed and spent time drawing feathered masks around them and made sure i created keyframes of
their positions so they would follow the burning parts of the planet. I then put those masks on an adjustment layer and applied a heat distorition. This
would help the impression that the fire is burning on the planet not just glowing.

i think this heat distortion effect and moving the masks worked very well. This created a very good illusion that the
planet was burning
I then moved on to creating more things to add into the scene I imported a model of a reaper destroyer into 3DS
MAX and realised that it wasnt in a pose that could look convincing that it was flying instead. so i exported the FBX
file as a .OBJ and opened it in Maya. This time i wanted to do it a little different. Instead of taking the model apart
and posing it that way like i did before.
Once i imported the model into maya i used the create Joints tool to start creating the skeleton. this is similar to
what i did during my production experiments where i rigged those fish models from subnautica. However this would
be more difficult as when you build the skin it automatically creates a skinweight where everything bends, creating
a skeleton for a robot like creature would be more difficult. non of its parts can bend and i have to find a way to
make sure they don’t bend.
I then spent a long time skinweighting and this look a lot longer than expected. It wasnt till near the end i
discovered the fill too. This mean that i could get rid of any add or subtract any skinwight value i wanted on part of
the model. This meant it became a lot easier to make it so the skeleton work properly.

once i finished rigging the model properly i then exported the model as a .OBJ and imported it into element 3D where i could
add it into after effects. I exported it as a .OBJ file because its one of the only formats the element 3D V2.3 can work with. I
decided to rig and pose the model this way because its easier to reuse. If simperly broke the model apart then it would be
harder to repose it again. I will still. Break models down for making them break to pieces but from now on i think i will continue
this way when working on moving models.

I then created 4 Illumination Maps for parts of this model. while this creature is smaller its designed
to work more close up. its more of a massive ground invasion creature than a space one.
I then created theses illumination maps the same way i created all the other illumination maps
because this way is the best way i can figure out. I did it by importing the original texture into
photoshop, i then painted over the areas i wanted to glow in and i spent awhile trying to make sure i
get all the spots. I then exported the illumination map on a separate layer and imported it into
Element 3D where i applied it to the modelto make areas glow.

I then did a test render of the model inside after effects to see how it looked and i think it looked very good.
I then put it into draft mode and started working on an animation for the reaper destroyer, it took me awhile to figure
of a good way to animate it and i worked with curve keyframes and i did a lot of stuff to try and make the animation
good but then it just didnt end up working so instead i decided to just have it going straight past the camera. I tried to
take inspiration from a shot in the mass effect 3 final battle where its a close up of the reapers and a reaper
destroyer flys past the camera but it didnt work how i wanted it to work.
I then went to see how it looked in final render and i think it worked very well
I then went into element 3d and used the reaper model i animated and applied the particle replicator effect within
element 3d and this helped create what looks like a blockade/Wall of reapers Protecting the destroyed planet.
I also used the scatter option to help it look less organised and more random. I also added a lensflare off to the side
where the light is coming from. This was to give the whole scene a bit of a colour tint and add some themic colour to
the scene. i chose yellow not only because it is the colour of our sun but also because it is the colour of uncertainty.
this themic colour is something i talked about in my research

Fmp production reflection part 1

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Fmp production reflection part 1