Major Project: Gem Animation Test #4 - Updated Set & Camera Animation

Now that I'm beginning to move everything into my final Room (excluding texturing tests just to keep everything cohesive), I decided to work more on my gem/crystal animation. I also wanted to work more with the camera for this, since I think that could further enhance the shot and in my previous tests the camera was stationary. I created three versions, since each time I had to render it to see what the displacement map was doing (hence why it's relatively low quality, the lighting is different, and doesn't have the final textures to keep render time down).

The first test I didn't have the camera move initially until after the gem morphs into its more aggressive looking state. I also added some additional animation to the displacement map and the rotation of the gem after it spikes out, making it look more volatile and unstable. When the gem is in its more 'peaceful' state, the camera focal length is 35 but when it spikes out the camera jumps backwards, rotates slightly and the focal length changes to 15, distorting the image.

Version 1

For the second version, I wanted to have the camera move slightly initially so it wasn't stationary when the gem was in it's peaceful state. I felt that keeping the camera completely still initially didn't look right. Other than that the rest of the animation is the same as the first version.

Version 2

For the third version, I adjusted the displacement map animation because I noticed that as I was adjusting the timing of the rotate/translate attributes on the molecule, I didn't move the displacement animation too. This resulted in the gem looking like it was sort of 'winding up' before the gem jumped towards the camera in the first two versions. While I didn't mind how this looked, I wanted to see what it looked like without this wind-up. I'm unsure if I prefer it moving slightly before it jumps at the camera to hint that something's off, or if I prefer it being completely sudden. For this version I also removed the gem's rotation (after it spikes out) and replaced it with an additional displacement 'pulse' just to see what it looked like in comparison.

Version 3

Here is also a fully rendered frame of this shot. I need to return to the scene that is fully textured and see what I can do to adjust it since the render time is really high. I struggle to do this because once I achieve what I want a shot to look like, I don't like to change things but I'm going to see what I can do. I struggled to get the gem to be lit and look the way I wanted in this set since the lighting and colours are pretty different from my previous tests. Unfortunately, the refractions, reflections, atmosphere, and number of lights in this scene is what is making it heavy so I'm unsure how much I can do to decrease the render times but I will try.