I have finally begun animating the outdoor scene and I've been having alot of memory exception errors, fortunately it turns out that while the view is this far from the soldiers you can't tell that they are not mesh smoothed so I wont render them smoothed until the closer scenes when the dropship isn't in it taking up memory. Also I got rid of the repelling as it was just becoming too difficult to do so now the ship just lets them jump out.

Animation of the next stage of scene 1 is done now, I'm beginning animation on the outside scene

I have finished my outdoor scene now finally, the door is yet to be done but I'm still thinking about how to do it, once that is done I will start animating.

In this picture the fog has been turned down as you aren't able to see the whole base so clearly with it up

This is the finished dropship, I would like to model the inside of the cockpit but it just isn't realistic in the time I have left.

This is my current progress with the dropship, I still need to add small details to it but I am quite pleased with how it is looking so far.

Dropship Tail Test

This is a particle test to see how the dropship trail will look when it is flying

I have finished most of my dropship model, this just needs a few bits of detail adding to it and then it'll be ready for texturing, hopefully by friday and can start some real animation.

This is a test render of an idle stance with the gun to see how it fits in the arms, I also made the arms longer because I wasn't satisfied with them and the hands bigger so I am also testing this.

I wasn't satisfied with the old gun so I decided to make a new one and this is what I came up with.

It's also considerably less faces than the previous model which is good for frame rates.

I have spent the last day testing my rig to make sure the character will distort correctly without any odd faces showing through or shrinkage on the limbs, everything seems to be in working order although I've had to repaint a few things.

Updated Snow Scene

I updated the snow scene with faster moving snow particles moving at a 35 degree angle against the existing snow. The result does look quite good but I don't want to end up with anymore particles than this now so I will consider this nearly finished.

Animation Test

This was a test of the rig now that has all been paint weighted, I'm fairly satisfied with the result, the legs are snapping too much when they come to the fully stretch position but it's too late to fix that now; I will have to use fancy camerawork to avoid it.

I need to move the torso more whilst moving, it looks too wooden currently.

Character Rig

I have decided as the deadline is getting far too close to start animating asap so I will finish the ground scene and then start doing animation for it so it can be rendered before the project is fully finished. I was testing the arms and how the shoulder pads looked with this animation.

Snow test

I would consider this animation test of the snow a rousing success, it looks pretty nice if I do say so myself. I may add another load of particles moving at a different angle of about 15 degrees against the existing snow to make it seem more realistic since its been snowing here alot lately and I've been able to watch it, it flies all over the place.

Particle snow test

The was a test making snow using particles to see what it may look like in the final animation, there are less snow flakes than originally planned so the final animation may have more but that will most likely make it longer to render.

Scene 2 Render

I tried a second render but this time added fog and made the camera lower down to test it and I'm pretty pleased with the result however this fog is way thicker than I'd like to have, just put it this thick because the scene isn't finished yet and needs more stuff.

Scene 2 Test Render

This is a test render of the ground scene, the snow was added in afterward on photoshop however when I make the proper animation I will have snow falling so I did this to see how it would look.

I have made the spaceship considerably more detailed than the last time it was shown and I think I will keep it to this standard now, the next thing I will work on is the ground scene.

Spaceship scene 1 test

This is a test render of the first scene without shadows, after making this I've realised the transition to the docking bay doors is too fast and I may zoom to the doors instead or slow down the ship speed, also more detail is needed in the front parts of the ship but overall I am quite pleased with how it is looking.

The motion blur also worked quite well but the glow on the antennas I thought needs reducing.

Spaceship

I have continued with the creation of my spaceship, I still have more detail to add and the textures are only temporary but I'll make proper ones soon.

So I got a picture of Brandon Routh (his face was exactly the same scale as my models face) and made it into a texture, couldn't have worked better, it looks awesome now.

Also ignore the flipped text on the chest, that was just because I was messing about.