Animation Base:

 

 

Above is a rendering of the actual base created in Bryce for use for the main portion of the animation.  First off Bryce ability to make backgrounds was put to good use to make a mountain range, sky and green textured grounds. A cube was used to create the concrete pad under the base, with a custom texture added to it.  All the meshes come with no textures, just wire frames, so even though they where acquired else ware, they still required some time to set up different textures to what you can see here. The camo’s on the meshes where imported form general pictures found over the internet. Also note there is a symbol under the drop ship, this is the symbol of one of the main houses of the Battletech universe, also imported.

 

 

The first animation of the base was from the view of a tank which had the camera grouped with it. Wherever the tank was told to go the camera was right there with it giving us a close up view of the base form the view of a hover tanker.

 

 

            One issue that was never fixable is that now matter how I tried some Mechs could not be put flat on the ground as seen above. If the feet of the Mech went into the ground then they disappeared, but if they are above it there was a space. This scene took about 1 day to render completely.

 

 

The Second animation around the town is form the view of a hover Camera which gave a lot more angles to play with. It took a lot to make sure that the camera never went inside any of the parts of the scene.

 

 

            As we can see above, we get some relay good close ups of some of the amazing objects people had created and provided online for use. The hoverCam idea allowed these objects to be shown off to there full glory. One thing I was relay happy with was the texture on the dropship, which reflects a lot, you can actually see reflections of mountains and other objects when you get close to the ship. But that came at a cost of increased rendering time of 2 days for this section.

 

 

            The last scene also being the most complex and shortest is the explosion. It took many attempts to come up with a way from something to come form the sky and a explosion to envelop the entire base. The trick for the weapons I used was use a round parallel light source and added a texture to it. The light is shining up so it gives the effect of a tale to the weapon, and the textures make it look mean and destructive. The explosions themselves are nothing more then a Radial light source with a texture on them as well to make them look like a explosion. Expanding the size of the light created the effect of an explosion enveloping the entire base.

 

 

            The big cost to using the light sources was a HUG renders time. The second longest render was 2 days for 1 min and 16 seconds of animation. The 4 seconds of the explosion scene took over 2 ½ days to render. I am assuming it’s because 6 light sources creating light in different directions, such as the light shining on the drop ship above, and all light sources being semi transparent just played havoc with rendering. But the end result was a very realistic explosion for a beginner.