Evaluation

Overall I'm very happy with the results of my animation. Considering this was my first time using 3D Studio Max coupled with the small timescale we were given to complete the scenario I managed to create a trailer that represented scenes from my chosen film with a fair amount of realism.

I adapted to working with 3D Studio Max quite quickly and anything I did have trouble with I went and researched what I was doing wrong or how I did it. 

I felt like my original storyboard was quite optimistic, including explosions, character animation and other effects and I'm impressed with myself that I managed to stick to my storyboard so closely.

I was disappointed that I never had the opportunity to use Reactor in my trailer as I originally planned to use Reactor for my explosion scene. As I mentioned in a previous blog post Reactor would not work with the particles generated using PArray. However I am fairly pleased with the effects generated from the combination of PArray, PBomb, Gravity and Deflect.

If I had had more time to develop  the trailer I probably would have added more detail to the environments used in some of my scenes. The scene with the plane flying through the hanger seemed very bland to me and was primarily due to rushing the scene. If I was to improve this scene I would attempt to add some extra props (planes, equipment, scaffolding) and model and animate some extra characters to have manually closing the doors.

Ideally I would have also liked to not need to download models from external sources but the timescale meant spending time modelling things like trees would have probably cause me to not finish the project in time. 

In conclusion I'm generally pleased with the animation quality of the trailer despite the few weak areas. I feel like I learned a lot in terms of modelling in 3D and animating using key frames and other techniques. There is certainly a long way to go and more to learn and I hope I can do so in the near future.