Ident 1 - Animation & Lighting

Now to the fun part, ANIMATION!

Now that all of the scene has been created the next step is to animate the character movements and add lighting to the scene.

Before i started any animatation i realised that the potato didnt have a remote control for the television so i decided to create one before i started to animate.

To create the remote i used a box and multiple spheres with different colours on them, i arranged the spheres so they were in a shape of all the numbers and then added a single one in the corner that would be red for the on / off button.
Then for the colour of the remote i used the material i used earlier for the television that was a shiny black plastic material which added a nice touch to it then added it to the left hand of the potato.
Animation

Once the layout was completed the next step was to place the pototo in the right place and start to animate him, my idea was to have the potato sitting and having a drink of coke and turn on the tv to watch "Dave".
The very first frame has the potato with a can and a remote by his side and he lifts them to drink the coke and turn on the televison.
To do this i selected the left arm first and started to animate it using the "Set Key" tool and key frame each movement using the "Key" button next to the set key option.
The timeline shows each keyframe used for the right arms animation.The next step was to try to move each part of the potato so that the movement was smooth and worked effectively, this was created by using the "Set Key" function and using the HI solver for the arms and legs to move them.
The image shows the next step of the animation having the can by his face and the remote pointing towards the television, with the timeline below showing the keyframes.The final animation for the right arm was to bring it back down to the sofa ready for the camera movement to come into play.
The next step was to animate the leg movement and finish with the remote movement.
The leg movement was created the same way as the arms, using the HI solver i had created for each limb and the keyframe system i setup the leg to bend and rest onto the sofa so that the potato looked like he was relaxed. The timeline shows the keyframes used for the leg movement.
The image shows the movement up to the point of all of the movements so the can is up to his face, the remote is pointing to the screen and his leg is resting on the sofa.
Cameras

The next step for completing the ident was to create a camera and the movement for the camera so it worked effectively at conveying the idea.
The starting point of the camera is just infront of the sofa aiming towards the potato so that the viewer can see all of the sofa and all of what the potato is doing.The next part was to animate the camera so that it moves at certain points of the animation, to do this i used the set key tool and made keyframes with movement at certain parts of the timeline as shown in the image below.
The camera goes behind the sofa but high so you can see the back of the potato and also the television screen then it flies down towards the television to display what the potato is watching.

Lighting

To create a good lighting effect i decided to use an Omni light with some effects on it, then i placed the omni light just infront of the television just to the right of the centre point of the tv.
Doing this gives a great effect of light coming off the television and also helps cast an accurate shadow behind the tv.To add a television shine effect to the room i changed the Intensity and colour of the light so that it was a light green reflection onto the room so it looked like a television glow. I also set an advanced shadow effect in the panel to make the shadow cast behind the sofa and behind the television.When the screen was rendered it displayed this image of the light shining from the television which i thought looked effective.
Once i was happy with the lighting effects and animation it was time to render the video to do this i set the resolution to 1280 by 720 and the quality stayed the same as on 3Ds Max.
The next step was to edit and add audio to the scene.