Rendering and Camera shots on the Ladder Course Animation

          I have rendered out the ladder course animation I made, ready for use in After Effects when putting the showreel together. I decided that because the animation doesn't make use of colours or textures in any meaningful way that I would render it as an ambient occlusion scene.

The A.O. values were eventually kept at the default for both samples, spread, maximum distance and falloff because I had used trial and error to see what settings worked best whilst keeping in mind the render times. I did however change settings inside of Mental Ray so that quality of the sampling was set to 1.25, with a Gauss filter of 1.0 to 3.0 as this seemed to give smoother edges, acting like a sort of anti aliasing tool. I did also think of using a small amount of motion blur, however I chose not to include it as I wanted the animation to be seen for exactly what it is so that it isn't taken as 'he could be covering up mistakes with motion blur', because motion blur can easily hide the small clipping errors or poor silhouettes in animation, or at least make it difficult to tell.

Below are two different renders of the same frame. One was set at 64 samples for the A.O. and one at 16.

A.O. Sample Value: 16

A.O. Sample Value: 64

As you can see it is obvious that 64 is of higher quality, and of course it would be. That being said, I calculated the render time for 64 sample, having 611 frames to render, and it would take around 3 to 4 hours, something I thought was too excessive and time wasting considering the quality difference between 64 and 16 sample isn't enough to justify the time. I therefore stuck with the 16 sample and rendered out the animation. I will take a second look at this once the showreel is complete, and if I find the quality out of place with the rest of the reel then I will re-render at 64 sample, as at that point I will also have the time to spare as well.

Camera shots

For the camera angles and shots I made sure to stick with the 180 degree rule. I wanted to make sure those who are viewing don't get lost in the camera shots because they need to be able to follow it without confusion as the whole animation is split into two parts throughout my showreel, which I need to make sure is understood.

Line of action rule (180 degree rule)

The first part of the animation has 2 camera shots. One shot is of the start where the character is climbing the ladder and the second shot is from slightly higher up. My reasoning for this was to get a good and interesting angle so that the principles of animation can be observed (most importantly time, spacing and arcing) on the first shot, and the second shot I found to be the best angle to allow a person to understand the continuation of the animation, whilst abiding by the rule of thirds.

2nd camera shot

          The second part to the animation, which will be at the end of the showreel, is shot with only one camera. My choice to use only one camera shot was made because this part of the animation has the character traversing the scene in quick succession, and I wanted to capture it all in one shot without the camera moving so the timing and speed of the character can be accurately judged.

Part 2 of the animation with single shot camera