Having some prior knowledge on the process of rendering out an animation, I knew that due to all the lighting in my scene, my render would take some time. Therefore I bunkered down and make sure my project was done at least 2 days in advance, giving me the last two days to render out whatever camera animations I wanted.
UV mapping the buildings didn’t take too long, with me finding some images of night time office windows and using those as the template for most of the window textures in my scene. I also wanted to try and fill up the barren ground level, given I had devoted most of my time to modelling the buildings and neon signs. Going back to my padlet, I decided to include a vehicle, a few advertisement signs, as well as some trash cans. In hindsight, I would have liked to have added more to the ground level to make it more filled, but my scene was already taking very long to render due to all the lighting elements.
I experimented with a few different methods when it came to animating the camera moving, and eventually settled on two separate animations. One at a high level to show off the lighting, cables, and buildings, and another animation and ground level to show off the rest of the elements of the scene. Just got to render out the ground animation and I’ll be all finished.
Overall, I really enjoyed this project. It allowed me to get used to using Maya, whilst also creating things based on my own passions and enjoyments in life. I’m really happy with how my scene turned out and I think I am a lot more knowledgeable on how to use Maya…especially when lights are involved! (note: my project ended up having over 150 separate light sources 0_0)