OUAN504 - Testing & Animating the Time-lapse Scene

The first scene I approached and tested to see how it worked was in my mind one of the more interesting and complex scenes. The way it was produced wasn't complex at all, and in fact was incredibly simple, but it seemed like a complex concept at first and I wanted to test it to see how it worked out once rendered and to some extent completed. Since it was a test I tried to cut the render time as much as I could and rendered it in a 640 x 480 format, so although the quality suffered, I was able to produce a result reasonably quickly. The way the physical sun and sky works is based on the angle of the arrows that represent it. So if they arrows are vertical then it translates to the idea that the sun is at it' highest point and that would be mid-day. This would produce a very bright scene with very short shadows and look like a sunny day. The more the angle of the arrows is rotated the lower the sun gets until the arrows are completely horizontal. At this point it means that the sun has essentially set and their may be a very faint glow or no light left at all at this point.

Overall, I'm quite happy with how the test turned out. There is, however a couple of aspects I think I need to refine before I render the final version. Firstly, I will of course include some extra environmental objects such as grass and trees. This will add a little more depth and realism to the scene. Furthermore, I want to change the camera angle. I think for scenes such as a time-lapse scene one of the most noticeable things and what I believe can make a huge different with this scene specifically since it's a still shot, is the angle of the camera. I would like the final shot to be a lot more dynamic than this. I felt that with this shot you're not getting the full view of the barn and this overall affects the feeling you get when watching it. I think a good shot for this scene would be a three-quarter view from the side of the barn. Another huge factor in the angle of the camera specific to this scene is that I want the shadows to fall as much as possible across the scene. This is mostly reliant of the positioning of the physical sun and sky, combined with the angle that it's being viewed at. Next, for the final version I'm going to take the scene and make it longer, probably by a second or two so that I can extend the rotation of the physical sun and sky and gather a greater range of times in the day. I also want the transition between the times of day to be a bit slower, hence why I want to extend it in the final version. The main point of this is to have a good range of footage that can be incorporated and cut where possible to include the most successful sections. The image below demonstrates the angle of the camera I wanted to use in relation to the barn and the environment.



The final version turned out pretty much how I wanted it to look. I was able to get a great range of times of day by rotating the physical sun and sky through a little more than 360 degrees, and the duration of the time-lapse was around six to seven seconds. The only drawback of this however was that it comprised around 144 frames in total, which took around five days render time across several computers. This was mainly due to the scope of the scene and it included every object that had been modelled and included in order to make the scene as dynamic, cinematic and as successful as it could be. One thing I do want to do to further this slightly is alter the lighting and play around with the colour during the post-production stage. I think this is the stage where the scene will finally come together and the colours can be corrected or even improved to make the scene a lot better for viewing. Whist I was animating the scene and going over the rendered frames I was trying to think of a suitable soundtrack that would fit the pace of the scene and hopefully tie everything together. I think this is quite an important scene given the context of the narrative, so I want to enhance it as much as I can to make it more dramatic. This would increase the value and effect of the 'punchline' at the end of the animation.