"Red Star Fly-by" Slowdown

Well, after a productive week, I kind of let things slide. I did make some progress though.

Aiming the Camera

I worked on the aiming problem in the animation. I experimented with some of the Blender animation features to see if I could get Blender to handle the aiming issue. From what I can tell, it should be possible, but I wasn’t able to get it to work for me, so went back to the way I had done it so far.

Sometimes the problem was the interpolation Blender did, but a few times it turned out I had mistyped some information. I don't think I got everything, but I think it looks OK. I think I’m done with this step now.

A More Interesting Star

I tried to do something with the star to make it more interesting to look at. Right now, it is featureless and rather boring to look at. I had cut down the length of time the camera aims at it, but it still seems to go by very slowly. I tried to add texture to the star surface. I tried to add an atmosphere layer to give some distortion. Nothing I tried got me anything I thought looked better. In fact, I couldn’t see any difference at all.

Captions and Audio

My original plan was to add captions to the video to describe what is on the screen. Then would add some "spacy" sounds in the background. NASA has produced some audio files for various planets in the solar system based on the radio waves they produce. Some of the sounds are very eerie. I used some for my “旅行火星 (My Trip to Mars)” video.

I discussed my plans with someone at the script group I joined. He suggested that I have some voice overs. For example, a "mission control" voice, a news anchor and "color commentator". I have thought about the suggestion at length. I find the idea attractive, but it would also mean it will take me longer to finish the movie.

I would need to write dialogue for the character, find voice actors to play the parts, and then arrange for the sound recording. I’m not all that keen to take that route. On the other hand, I wanted to take a similar approach with the revised version of “The Barrier” I want to finish. It would be an opportunity to practice the method on a small project before I tackle the big project.

Links:

“旅行火星 (My Trip to Mars)” https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/my-trip-to-mars/

“The Barrier” https://dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/filmlist/the-barrier/

Red Star Fly-by – Some Progress – 2018 September 23

Well, I did make some progress this week, after a week where I didn’t make any. I had run into some snags that I wasn't sure how to deal with. I had to take a break to decide what to do next.

Camera Movement

The most finicky problem was the camera movement. When I let Blender interpolate the animation, the camera movement looks "strange". So far, I haven’t come across any way to control the interpolation, other than specify more intermediate positions. I also found that I had mistyped some of the specifications for the camera movement, so I can’t put all the blame on Blender. It didn’t take me all that long to fix most of the problems. I still have more to do though. The rest seems to be more messed up, so it could take me longer.

I also adjusted the times when the camera shifted from planet to another. I wanted a more even distribution between the planets. I also wanted to cut down the time I look at the star, since it isn’t all that interesting to look at. I did a test video and I think it looks better now.

Starscape

Earlier, I created a starscape back drop. I set it up as a cylindrical image that encircles the star system I created for the animation. I felt it turned out OK. The background needs to look the same where ever the camera is positioned. When the starscape is static, there isn’t too much of a problem, but I decided it would be better to have it animated. I set it up to track the camera location, so it is always the same distance from the camera.

When I was about three quarters of the way through, I realized that I there was an easier way to do. I wasn’t all that sure it would work, so I decided to finish it the way I started.

The other problem I’ve run into with the starscape was that when I would zoom in on a planet, the stars looked bigger. That doesn’t look right. I should get a narrower range of view, but the stars shouldn’t look any larger. I haven't figured out how to deal with that yet. I want to do this because a couple of the planets are quite far away and look small. I’d like to be able to have them more visible.

Titles

In the final version I wanted to have titles giving the planets names and descriptions. The standard practice in Astronomy is to give plants letters, starting with b. I also wanted to give each planet a nickname. I came up with "Bowser", "Chuck", "Dodgeball" and "Elvis". I suppose I could have gone with Diego for “d”, but I felt that would be a bit too egotistical. I have come up with a name for the star as well, but I am just not happy with it. I also developed a star catalogue ID for it. I don’t want it to be any real system.

Planet and Moon Images

I added three moons to the system. Mostly I wanted to use them to justify illuminating the shadowed side of a couple of the planets. I had to develop surface images for them. I took the opportunity to modify the surface images for a couple of the planets too.

I’m am not very good at creating images from scratch, so I got some moon and planet images in Mercator projection that NASA created. Some of the images are easy to identify, so I tried to modify them, so they would look reasonably alien. Sometimes I altered the colors and in others I cut and pasted parts of more than one moon/planet together. I am still not 100% happy with the images I have. I may take another shot at them later.

What’s Next?

Over the next week I want to get all the camera positions fixed properly. Then I want to work on the captions and titles. I’ve started to give some thought to the sound track. I’ll likely use the same approach I used for my trip to Mars video.

I may still go back to have another look at the planet images. Once I have new images, it is relatively easy to change them. The hard part is getting the images.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog