Day 11

Started the day off researching about battle scenes in the air. I couldn't really find references to characters with wings, flying and battling each other at the same time. I remember watching the movie "Legion", there were angels depicted in that movie. However, there wasn't any fight scenes that involved actual flying and combat at the same time. I then remembered that in Lord Of The Rings : Return Of The King, there was a scene whereby the eagles came in to fight the Nazguls. I guess a nice direction to go with the movement could be like the agents circling around each other and zipping into each other at certain instances, much like the typical mid air battles in Dragonball Z.

I was wondering how I would simulate their movements in mid air. I tried playing around with the Orbit particles node. It does seem to give a "flying" kind of effect, but I wasn't sure how to really control it to get what I want. I just played around with it, made a particle system orbit around another one.

We also attended a presentation today, by some people from Autodesk about motion capture and Motionbuilder.

I watched Peter Quint's video about time and how to use the timeshift node to vary animation, might be useful in varying the motions of all the characters, so things will not look monotonous. In the video he did mention that he used the interact node to make sure the particles move away from each other when they come in too close. I tried his method, but still, my particles seem to just go through each other and don't avoid each other. I'm sure the problem derives in the fact that i am using the sliding collision as a way for the particles to follow the terrain.

The particles that are scattered throughout the grid will be controlling groups of characters interacting. They will be fighting each other. I will probably make those particles stationary, and make another set of particles move through them, like in a battlefield. That way, there will be a little more movement in the scene. The problem will obviously be that as of now, my particles do not avoid each other even though i've tried many ways to do so.

Got to admit I was rather distracted today because of the Gears Of War 3 launch event, but that's just today. I won't be distracted anymore once I get hold of my copy, which will be today.I think...