I was able to lower the polygon count for the chains, which helped the freezing (though it still happened every once in a while after that, but I guess it can’t be helped). I also found a good way to animate the clouds: I made 3 layers (each at about 40% transparency, to show the chains dipping into them), and animated each layer so they go at different speeds: the top layer would go the fastest, and the bottom layer the slowest. This, along with the lighting, would make a nice moving “floor”, and have the buildings’ shadows wave around.
Along with them, I also animated a man flying from the farthest building up to next to the camera, and some small people flying around the same building (they’re barely visible, but I wanted to add that detail).
I’m currently having trouble with rendering the animation; other than it taking forever, the rendering doesn’t show the clouds to be transparent at all, which really annoys me, as I put a lot of effort into getting the clouds to look and move nicely.
Also, I can’t seem to be able to upload the rendered file onto MyBlog, but I will as soon as I figure out how to do it.
Overall, this pathway left me more disappointed than the previous two, both in terms of structure and my own work. The program being done completely online generally made it less impactful and harder than the previous two, especially with how much harder 3D is for beginners, and I feel like I could’ve done a better work. I think my choice of environment was just a bit bland, which resulted in a pretty boring, if functional, piece of work. If I do end up taking 3D Production as one of my two choices later on in the year, I’ll put more thought into my environments before I start creating them. Still, all things considered, I learnt a lot in this pathway.