Magic

This post is dedicated to the various techniques I adopted to achieve certain effects in my animation. These effects will appear in chronological order. 

Eyelid

To make this effect I booleaned a sphere with a slightly smaller one. I then went back in the boolean operation and sequentially modified the 'slice on' parameters for the sphere, resulting the effects of an opening and closing eyelid. I applied a material which allowed for no light reflection & refraction, and sat a camera fixed in the centre of the 'eye'. 

I then got a rigged model of Bub, deleted his torso and eye, and rigged my newly created 'eye' to the biped. This allowed for the appearance of the arm, and gave the impression of looking through an eye. 

Decimation 

This scene was a last-minute improvisation as I realised I did not have the resources required to do what I had originally intended to do. I had planned to have some kind of pushing on Bub's part which would knock over the Igors and end their bullying of Float, but as my animation skills are lacking and I could not make a convincing throwing animation or a pushing animation, I resorted to another technique.

I had previously purchased an educational licence of RayFire (http://rayfirestudios.com/). This is an add-on for 3DS Max's MassFX simluator, and allows for the realistic fragmentation of objects. I simply applied a fragmentation to the Igors, and converted Bub's foot into a kinematic object, so that it would interact with the newly fragmented Igors. MassFX then simulates the flight pattern of the fragments, resulting in realistic destruction.

Renovation

This effect is grounded in the RayFire implementation. The subject wall was fragmented into almost 4,000 pieces, each containing between 5 and 20 faces. This was easily the most time-consuming aspect of my project as even moving the camera would result in lag and sometimes crashes. However, the work paid off as I believe that this is the most visually appealing moment in the animation. 

Similar to Decimation, I set up Bub's whole boy as a kinematic object which would impact the wall, this allowed for pinpoint accuracy when the wall was breaking. I placed a Photometric Omni right next to the door to give the effect of flooding light entering the hole in the wall. I think this made the scene as it put emphasis on the entrance of the characters. 

Following the wall break, I converted both Bub and Legs to Dynamic Objects, this allowed them to literally fall to the ground as they fall into the duct upon the floor hatch opening. 


Transportation

To create the bouncing effect of the components down the duct, I implemented techniques of the MassFX engine in 3DS Max. This provided an environment in which gravity affected objects of my choosing. To make the scene I created a network of boxes around the duct, and made them invisible to the MentalRay Renderer. I then applied a RigidBody modifier to the respective components of Bub and Legs, and converted them to a rubber material, so that they would bounce as I needed them to.

I also converted the trolley into a RigidBody and made it metal, so that the components would physically land inside it. After many hours of toying, I finally made it work to the desired effect and result.