Final touches

I had finished my modelling and animation and set the lighting for the scene but I still wanted to add something to the look as I thought the scene was still quite bland. So I decided to use After Effects to finish the project and give it it’s final look.

I used the Fog 3D effects over a number of layers as I didn’t want the fog to move all in one layer but rather independently.The first layer I added a glow effect to near the door so it would look like the fog was reacting to the light. I then created two more fog layers, one for the foreground and one for the background.

Fog layers

As they were separate layers I could animate and light them separately.I adjust the rotation and transformation of the fog layers so it would be slow mist-like movement and I adjusted the foreground fog layer to react to the pod door when it swung open and shut. I didn’t quite achieve the effect I wanted with this as I wanted the fog reaction to resemble a ‘swirl’ but I couldn’t find a way of doing this.

Final pod with composite fog effects

Once my fog layers were animated in as best a way as I could get them, I decided my last ‘tweak’ would be the addition of sound effects. Originally I just wanted a fly buzzing noise which ended when the door hit it, but as is often the case I got overly ambitious and decided to have some more sound effects in there such as the actual The Fly’ theme music and the splat and glass squeak sounds.

These sounds took a lot of adjusting and changing until they hit the right time sections but eventually I got it as best I could and finally the project was complete within the timeframe and within the polycount.

Conclusion:

Of all the FGA projects so far this has been the most challenging for me, primarily because I find Maya a quite difficult programme to use. The process was complex and at times frustrating particularly when I had to rebuild my model from scratch due to the massive polycount. However once I had relearned Maya’s basics I was surprised at how quickly my project came along and although I had several glitches along the way I am pleased at my final work.