Junk Satellite
A 3-D Animated Short by Sean Dwyer

Introduction

Junk Satellite is a 3-D animated short created for COSC 3P98 Computer Graphics at Brock University. The bulk of it was created using Alias Power Animator 8.5, although a mixture of various other tools also helped to bring it all together. Junk Satellite is the product of many long days and long nights in the computer lab at Brock, and although at times the amount of work seemed overwhelming, the reward was far greater (yeah right). The project helped to teach the application of animation fundamentals such as keyframe animation, motion path animation and control vertex animation.

Concept

The class had no limitations in choosing a topic for the animation projects. The possibilities were endless, although wise students knew to keep the animation relatively short and simple would be to save them a lot of hassle in the long run. Some early ideas that I brainstormed for this project included:

3-D animation seems to lend itself well to futuristic, science-fiction related material, and I took this into account when contemplating my subject matter. Objects with precise geometric shapes look out of place in the real world, but in a futuristic world they are very believable. I wanted to choose an idea with creative potential, something that would be fun to produce, but I also wanted something that would not be too ambitious. With all of these factors in mind, it all came together perfectly with an idea that was sparked by a song. The song of course, is entitled Junk Satellite, and it is by a band called Man or Astroman. Suddenly it all became clear to me.

A satellite crash landing on an alien planet would be an excellent concept. But it needed something a little more... perhaps some sort of inhabitant on this alien world?

Story

The original storyboard was a little bit different from the actual story that appeared in the final product. It went a little something like this:

  1. opening shot of satellite in space, zooming by camera and heading toward planet
  2. cut to: close up of robot, on the planet's surface
  3. robot begins to move, camera pans up as the satellite appears in the sky
  4. satellite streaks through the sky and crashes behind some rocks
  5. cut to: robot approaching smoldering satellite
  6. satellite dish powers up with a bright glow
  7. zoom in on robot's face, he's scared
  8. laser beam fires from satellite dish and blows up robot

This story was good enough to get started with. As time passed, and the animation evolved, it became clear that perhaps there was a little too much going on in the scene. For an animation that was supposed to be short (approximately 15 seconds), the action would have to be extremely fast paced. I decided to eventually trim the story down a bit. In the final animation, the satellite crashes behind the robot, and then the camera moves back to the robot who looks at the camera for a moment before moving on, as if nothing had even happened.

Models

Originally I thought that creating the models was going to be the hardest part of this project. How wrong I was! The modelling required . This was partially due to the fact that my models were fairly simple, and fairly small in number, but also because once you get the hang of using the modelling tools, it's not too difficult.

For a while I contemplated exactly what I wanted the robot to look like. I wanted something sleek and futuristic, but while I was going with the original storyboard, I also wanted something that would be able to show emotion. I decided that in order to simplify the animation, I would make the robot without any legs. Rather, he would float above the ground. A floating device made up the bottom portion of the robot hull, and this was created by drawing a simple curve and rotating it to create an interesting looking surface. The arms would have 2 parts to them, and they would have hands as well, but the hands didn't have to very detailed so they ended up consisting of a small sphere with an open cone attached. I was undecided about whether or not I was going to animate the robot's arms at all, but I grouped the different parts of the model accordingly, just in case. I added a gauge and some lights on the robot's torso, to make it look more ummmm "robotic", and these were also grouped accordingly for possible animation. As for the robot's head and face, I got the idea of just making one large eye on the front of the face, similar to the Binome characters in the 3-D computer animated show Reboot. I created a mesh texture to use with the robot's torso to make a speaker of sorts, and I created a shiny metallic texture to use for the majority of the robot's body.

I decided to create the satellite model using a demo version of Rhino 3-D which I downloaded and used at home. I found it to be a very easy to use modelling program and I had no trouble at all creating a basic satellite structure, complete with solar panels and a satellite dish (created using the Rotate Surface function, which can also be found in Alias). I exported the satellite as a .DXF file and imported it into Alias. This worked fine, although I was not able to apply textures to separate sections of the satellite because it imported as one single geometric shape. In the end it turned out I didn't need to add this detail anyways because the satellite would be in the distance for the majority of the animation.

A basic sphere was used for the planet in space, with a marble texture adding the look and feel of an earth-like atmosphere. On the planet's surface, a Sky environment shader was used, with a reddish-granite texture making up the floor, and a cloudy yellowish texture constructing the sky. Some extra rocks and hills were created to make the planet's surface look less plain. The rocks were done using basic cube shapes and distorting the control vertices to make them look more random. The hills were created by taking a large plane and pulling up various control vertices.

Animation

When it came to animation, I wanted to keep it fairly simple. I decided that rather than moving a lot of different parts on the robot, I would give the animation a dynamic appearance by using creative camera angles and movement. The opening shot of the satellite in space was created very simply by placing the satellite on a motion path, and grouping the satellite with the camera view node so that the camera would follow the satellite. The satellite rotates about its x-axis I believe, to give it a more realistic-looking motion quality.

The opening of the shot on the planet surface begins with a low angle shot of the robot, but zoomed in very close so that the viewer is at first confused about what he/she is seeing. Then the camera zooms out to reveal the robot, who looks around with his eye (simple translation of the eye pupil circle) and then the camera zooms out further and follows the robot as he moves forward a bit. This is done with simple translation of the camera and the robot with the same translation co-ordinates. Then the satellite appears overhead, and this was done by animating the satellite's visibility property. The satellite streaks down and crash lands on the planet. Again, simple translation of the satellite. When the satellite reaches the surface, the explosion is triggered. The explosion effect can be produced by animating mainly the intensity and 2-D noise properties of a point light and adding a little colour to it.

In the credits, a block falls from above and then stretches and gets pulled off the screen by an unseen force. This stretching effect was added by breaking the block into control vertices and then deforming the control vertices.

The majority of all the translational and rotational animation was done using keyframe animation, including the camera animation.

Special Effects

The junk satellite trails smoke behind it as it streaks from the sky, and also leaves a cloud of smoke after it crashes. The smoke effect is created by using a shader with a particle system activated. It is fairly easy to do, all you have to do is turn it on and Power Animator fills in the particles for you. It does make your rendering time longer however.

I also added sound effects to the animation afterwards. The sound clips themselves were downloaded from a few various internet sound archives, and then they were shortened and mixed together as needed using the SoundEditor program. Then they were added in using Soundtrack and SGI Moviemaker. After exporting the final MPEG file with the sound effects added, I found that the sounds were altered considerably. However, they had a very odd, robotic sound to them, and so I decided to keep the final product as it was.

Tools

A number of different tools were used in the making of Junk Satellite. First and foremost, there was Alias Power Animator 8.5. The robot model was created with Power Animator, as were the many different textures used on the models and the landscape. All of the animation was created using Power Animator as well. The satellite model was created using a demo version of Rhino 3-D, a fairly inexpensive NURBS based modeller. The satellite model was exported from Rhino as a .DXF file and imported into Alias. When the animation was complete, and all the frames were rendered, Alias Composer was used to group sections of frames together into .MPEG movie files. These .MPEG files were finally then grouped together using SGI Moviemaker. Sound clips were edited into suitable lengths and mixed together using SoundEditor. The sounds were incorporated into the final movie file using SGI Moviemaker and Soundtrack.

Conclusion

Alias Power Animator, is, as the name implies, an extremely powerful animation system. The possibilities are almost endless, and with software like this it's no wonder that more and more people are opting to use computer animation over more traditional animation methods.

However, Alias Power Animator can be a very intimidating system to someone who is just learning the basics of animation. Even if the fundamental concepts are taught well and adequate reference material is available, problems are still bound to happen. Unless you have knowledge of every single option in the program, you will often find yourself aimlessly toggling things on and off just trying to get something to work. But I believe this is a small price to pay for the power that a system like this offers.

More pictures

Junk Satellite
Copyright 1998 Sean Dwyer
dwyer@niagara.com
sd96an@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca

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