Progress diary: Shot Two

Shot two

My second shots focuses on R2D2 hurrying down a snowy tunnel to the hangar as he gets hit by falling snow. The camera remains stationary to best capture the whole scene however the final frames result in a mid shot of R2 to clearly see his head.

After experimenting with it on the camera exercise, I felt a path constraint for R2's movement seemed most appropriate. Drawing the spline through the middle worked well as the tunnel itself is simply a thickened spline. After first setting this up, it became apparent R2 needed to change his orientation to follow the spline as well. The 'follow' option under the path constraint settings mostly achieved this.

 Following a practical session covering how to make asteroids I felt I could apply to this to creating realistic snowballs rather than using just a plain sphere. Applying a fractal noise modifier with around 75% roughness and a strength of 3 in all axis worked well. Though subtle and only a small part of the scene this does add to the realism.

The first attempt shown in the below gif shows the snow hitting R2 at the end. Though the falling of the snow has the desired effect, I feel the sequence is too fast. R2D2 is meant to be rushing but it feel too fast and unnatural. The speed of this scene also does not allow for any use of anticipation of the snow hitting him.

This second attempt is a big improvement through subtle changes. The snowballs have been scaled up, though this required setting the scale for each keyframe of them falling. They also now fall separately - one toward the start and one toward the front. His head now also rotates in response and this will be reflected in his beeping. The rotation happens slightly before it hits as a means of anticipation. 

Good parts:

• Use of anticipation in R2D2's head for more realistic animation
• Snowballs with interesting shape made quickly and easily

Improvement:

• Snowball movement is unrealistic and would benefit from physics simulation of gravity rather than manually moving it to the floor after it hits the head
• Rotation of R2 could follow spline better