Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Fall Project Final

My project was to create a functioning podracer of my own design and a track for it to move on. Adding extra lighting and special effects was something I wanted to do in order to add that extra step into making the project more personal. I had this idea mainly from a Nintendo 64 game called StarWars Podracer that I played as a kid. My process started with research on what certain podracers looked like and how they moved on a track with all the lighting and particle effects.

 I started by drawing inspiration from a few different podracers and then mixing it with my own creativity of produce the racer. The podracer itself took a bit of time to make because the shell of the cockpit required incredible detail in order to move the polygons to form that shell-like appearance of the cockpit. The electricity for the energy beam was something that I thought would be the hardest thing to make but it turns out that it was quite simple and fun to make. The environment that my podracer is placed in was something that I created from base concepts of Yavin IV and Naboo from the Star Wars universe and I thoroughly enjoyed creating the shatter effects on the walls. The Temple and pillars that I created were something that I had enjoyed seeing on Yavin IV and took that idea into my own creation, turning all the pillars and bricks from the original planet and turned it into Jade.










Coming into the project I had no idea how to make a shattered wall or even the glow effects on the energy beam on the podracer. Other than those two things, there wasn't anything new that I have learned when making this project. I would definitely try and make more podracers to race around the track in the future to add more diversity to the environment and to the animation as a whole. However, that was the only thing that I would really change besides making the animation just a little less choppy. I can see myself using some of these techniques, especially the shatter, in my future projects.