Tony Montalvo
Cosc 410 - Advanced 3D Modeling
Assignment 04
Movie Descriptions

Movie 01 (Fly Through):

This animation was used to setup the following movies. It involved sliding the camera across the front of a space station. While the camera was moving along the x, y, and z-axes, panning was slightly adjusted to keep the body of the ship in the center of the window. To keep the animation smooth, smaller camera adjustments were made over a longer stretch of the timeline. The end of this clip is the starting point of the next clip.

Movie 02 (Fly By):

In this movie, the camera follows the first space ship along its path. The camera pans slowly until the ship is nearby, then quickly adjusts to keep the ship in the center of the screen. To make this a little smoother, the camera actually backs up when the ship comes closer, which helped to make the main pass a little more even.

Movie 03:

The most complicated part of this movie clip was the placement of the stars that made up the atmosphere. The animation was accomplished by making a very long path of these stars and then pulling them pass the two space ships which were stationary. Another collection of stars was spread out to fill up the space in the window. These, along with the moon in the upper left corner of the screen, are pulled towards the camera at a much slower speed than the other stars to give the appearance of depth. The camera is grouped to the back space ship, just over the left wing. Although it is difficult to see in the rendered animation, the camera and the ship are actually being rotated along the y-axis just like the front ship. The front ship was a little more involved in that when it was being rotated, it was also moving in the appropriate direction along the corresponding axis. This helped to simulate gravitational forces.