The Great Blue Beyond

Having laid out the majority of the animation, I realised that as the Ornithopter soars through the air, it is, in fact, placed against the rather dreary grey default background of the 3DS Max environment. I felt that this was not realistic and also would not do justice to the wonderful flying machine invention of the great Leonardo Da Vinci.

Rather than flying through the grey expanse of emptiness I decided to place the winged machine into the great blue beyond, where it belongs.

Initially I had planned to just include the sky in such a way that it would not surround the entire environment but could be seen from the camera. However, due to the panning of the camera, the entire environment had to be surrounded.

To achieve the necessary effect, I placed planes against all four edges of the bottom, ground plane so as to create a box with the roof missing. It then became a matter of texturing these planes with the brilliant blue of a clear sky. This was just an image from the internet as it was felt that simply colouring the planes in would not achieve the subtle contrasts of a real sky backdrop.

Once the blue backdrop was in place, the lighting needed to be put into place. This was achieved by the inclusion of omnilights. Originally, it was felt that a single light would be sufficient, however when this was put into the scene it was discovered that no matter where it was placed one of the sky planes became completely black, as if in shadow. Of course this was not acceptable.

To solve the problem, one light was placed in the centre of the scene, serving as the main light source and then a second to illuminate the shaded sky panel. These lights provided a nice light source for the scene with the models casting the appropriate shadows.