Mechanical Marvel - Keyframing and Animation

Mechanical Marvel -  Keyframing and Animation

The last part before I finalize the entire model and add fully render textures was to animate. How I did this was referring back to the pivot point I set at the ball-joint and circle (curve polygon) earlier. What I did was set the total keyframes in my timeline and set them to (50) frames. From here I went right-click > object mode and then selected the entire upper body of my model. My method was to rotate the entire upper body as though my Mecha/Robot is looking around, saving a keyframe for every turn I make whilst using the rotate tool. Here was my first attempt without ambient occlusion. 

I knew I needed to insert more frames frequently to get a smoother result. In addition to that there is no lighting or added environment effects at all so beyond the blinn material set on the model itself, it have no lighting or effects which in all honesty looks awful, so I had to change that. 

How I did this was added ambient occlusion, which gives the model more of a professional and realistic look. How I did this was by using the mentalray render engine in Maya and tweaked the settings to what I wanted and or needed it to look like. 

I set up spotlights and cameras throughout my scene to really highlight the features of the model I wanted to been seen in full detail for the final render. Here is what the scene set up with the spotlights and cameras looked like...

Here was the result with the spotlights, camera perspectives and ambient occlusion looked like. I personally am really happy with the outcome and wouldn't have changed anything.

As you can see the result in comparison to my first attempt is drastically better. It has depth to field, soft shadows, light reflectivity and of course, ambient lighting. Below I put a screenshot of my original (first attempt without ambient lighting) side by side the model rendered with it. 

Knowing what and how to fully render with the correct lighting and settings I could now focus on tweaking and altering my animation as I needed to. This means smoothing the frames of which I did but I also changed the animation slightly too. Instead of right to left, left to right it does a full 360 degree turn now. I felt this suited it more and showed off the full extent of the model.

This is what it looks like... 

Once I fixed all of the frames and their timing and once I added the tweaked ambient lighting settings my model was ready to be rendered and a completed animation. Here is the result...