Contre Joure

I had three scenes in mind when plotting the course for my animation. The title of the animation 'Exodus' refers to the act or an instance of going out, and so the underlying objective of my animation was to detail an escape. I also think 'Exodus' sounds cool. 

Scene 1 - The Cargo Bay

This scene is is where part 1(of 3) takes place. The design of it is fairly straightforward, a box as the set, and a plane for the floor. To begin with I designed the... machine which can be seen as a series of cylinders and boxes in the middle of the room. This machine was originally planned to convert white robots into black ones through means of an energy source. While this situation is still present in my animation, it is far from what I had originally planned, but the meaning is nonetheless portrayed. 

Below the machine is a glowing, white conveyor belt. This belt was (at first) a functioning conveyor belt. I created it one night while following a YouTube clip on how to make it, this method (while looking good) was both time and resource consuming, so I decided to go with the Sci-Fi glowing one instead.

In the scene contain a series of shipping containers. These were an essential part of my scene, and were not modeled by me. They can be found here: http://tf3dm.com/3d-model/shipping-container-36873.html. This model saved me a lot of time as I incorporated it late in to the year. I have not contacted the creator but my gratitude is with them as I could not have completed this scene without it.

Scene 2 - The Citadel

This scene is my pride and glory, and was the first to be completed. To begin with, I modeled the walls using the edit poly modifier on a box. I adjusted the sections to allow for a 45x50 cube, then selected all the faces, and chamfered the edges, creating the in-seam. From there, I extruded these newly created faces inwards and applied a glowing red material to them. By contrast this created the effect of plating for the remaining faces. Depending on the angle, the glow of the walls change, this can be seen  in the image above where only the horizontal lines on the left are visible. 

The mesh tunnel was created using a series of cylinders placed appropriately around an arch. To create the arch itself I lofted a circle around a semi-circle and extruded the bottom face of each circle to make the respective poles. After completing a segment I simply cloned and repeated. Unfortunately I forgot to reduce the polygon count of each cylinder resulting in massive resource dedication. I did not learn of the technique of 'optimization' until post production, a lesson learned. 

The lights used in this scene are simple spot lights, with a Photometric Omni Light in each lamp to give the impression of real light bulb. Spot lights were the only light I could find that wouldn't emit light through the lamp. It was not until post production that I discovered the Mental Ray Shadow Map and applied to lights in other scenes, that I realized I had over-complicated my lighting. Nevertheless, the desired effect was still achieve and the lights acted like I wanted them to. I made this scene without floors for two reasons; one reason was because I couldn't fix the clipping of the spot lights through the platform (light can be seen on the wall through the far end of the platform). The other reason was because I wanted to create the atmosphere of a large complex, rather than a small scene, and I thought a vast drop would help achieve that, or at least take away any inclination of height.

Scene 3 - Processing 

I designed this scene with a factory complex in mind. I wanted it to look as simple as possible, just an aspect of a factory necessary for it's functioning, and I think I achieved that. This scene depicts a processing facility, with bins taking materials in and out. 

I left the gateways (if you like) white because I wanted to leave the audience hanging about what it what lied behind the white walls of light. Keeping in mind that this project is a cinematic trailer, an ambiguous ending was the only appropriate way to conclude.  

The large structures making up the walls are gigantic boxes. The middle has been booleaned to allow for the holes in the gateways. The duct with which the characters fall out of was made using a a series of boxes all bridged together as a single editable poly. 

All of the trolleys were rigged onto a path constraint, which followed two paths; one heading towards the light and one away from it. The bins for the trolleys were not modeled by me and can be found here: http://tf3dm.com/3d-model/dumpster-85269.html. Due to time constraints I sought out a model with high amounts of detail and stumbled upon this model. The trolleys themselves are my creation, but could not have been possible without the bins.