@schwaberry, Andreu, DaliFire Thanks for the comments!
Yeah we did have some problems with the character animations partly due to an unfinished rig. I can’t comment much on the animation though as I only animated 2 interior shots. But the ones I animated surely need more work.
The grass is achieved with particle systems and empties with wind physics as you say. There are some wind empties in the scene causing the field movement and some small grass variation. I also animated a few empties to move with the bus causing the grass to move as the bus passes by.
The trees have a simple modeled and textured trunk with a lot of twisted and squewed planes textured with 2 different kinds of branch textures. (Only one branch texture per tree though) The branch textures have alpha values as you also correctly guessed. The trees have a bend simple deform modifier + an empty at the root as origin. The values of the deform modifier are animated for different amounts for the different trees. Then I added a cycle modifier in the graph editor and a noise modifier to add some additional small variation to the movements. When completed I linked the trees in to the bigger scene. There are 6 different kinds of trees just rotated and scaled to add variation. It worked ok for such a simple trick I guess. I can post more screens if you wish.
Thanks for the C&C and keep them coming!
Ben
Loved the environment, and the story was funny. Only thing that stood out to me was the way the steering wheel was polygon instead of round - I drive a yard hostler sometimes and we don’t have any non-round steering wheels. Other than that, top notch job!
Still like it though, and I appreciate the insight with the wires and examples of the scene to get a feel of what it took for the animation and modeling!
