Ident 3: Electrons

The idea for the electrons ident was to first view a room of machinery and equipment and a large pipe, then the camera would cut to an inside look at the pipe and finally, a side cutaway with two sets of electrons crashing into each other.

The first part of the scene was made with basic boxes for the floor and two walls, cupboards, machines and boxes on the floor. A set of shelves were also made with boxes for the wall. The pipe running through the room was created with a cylinder and a bend modifier. Two other straight cylinders were joined to the bent cylinder to fill the room with the pipe. A smaller pipe was created by cloning and uniform scaling the larger cylinder pipe. Two boxes were put together at right angles to create the brackets to hold the pipe in place.

The second scene for the inside of the pipe was created with a long tube and another bend modifier to mimick the bend from the original scene. This was cloned and added on to double the length. Small spheres were created to act as electrons that raced through the pipe.

The final scene was created by drawing another very long tube and placing a box through half of it along it's entire length. A pro boolean was then used to remove half of the tube giving a cutaway effect. More electrons were created at either end of the tube that would race together before crashing into each other.

For the first scene, the materials are rather basic. A silver grey metal shader was used for the pipe running through the scene. A black blinn shader with high specular and glossiness level were used for the brackets holding the pipe. Two different shades of wood map were used for the boxes and shelves on the wall. Bitmaps of different pieces of machinery were applied to the boxes around the walls to make them look like real machinery in the scene. A Tiles map was used for the floor with tiling of 1.3 in both axis. This created a good floor tile effect. The walls were a basic colour. Finally, the Discovery logo was placed onto a box on the wall in the right hand corner.

For the inside pipe scene, the same metal shader grey was used for the pipe. A glossy yellow Anisotropic shader was used for the electrons.

The final scene was slightly more complex. The same grey metal and yellow anisotropic shaders were used for the pipe and electrons. For the explosion, a Particle Array was used with a Wind Force bound to the array. This linked to a cylinder in the middle of the tube. The pArray was set to run from frame 200 to 400. This allowed the electrons to race in for the first 200 frames and the pArray to run for the next. The material used on the particle array was a blinn shader with several maps attached. A particle age map was added first and in the parameters, two noise maps were also created. The colours for these were yellow and red and a grey without a noise map. The first colour had an age of 10% whilst the second colour had an age of 60%. All together this created a realistic fire effect. This was added to the particle array.

In the first scene, a Target Spot light lights up the main scene whilst an omni light high above gives more ambient light. The camera tracks in from a distance to close to the pipe bend in the centre of the scene. This happens over a space of 200 frames. When rendered this was too quick so in Premiere Pro, it was slowed down 50% to give a slow zoom into the scene.

The next scene shows the camera following electrons round the tube. This was done with splines. Two spline arcs were added to the inside of the tube running through the centre. Using path constraints, the camera was linked to one and the electrons group was linked to another. When the timeline was played, the camera followed the electrons around the inside of the pipe. This was rendered and formed the next section of the ident.

Two quick shots were created by tracking a camera along next to the pipe cutaway whilst the electrons travelled through it. A shot was created in either direction and added to form an extra part to the ident.

The final scene was the two sets of electrons coming together. The first 200 frames show the camera zooming into the centre and the two sets of electrons travelling in from either end. At 200 frames, the particle array starts which starts of the explosion. The two sets of electrons move through the back wall of the tube to give the impression of disappearing in the explosion. The particle array runs for 200 frames. This is the final section to the ident.

The four sections are linked together in Premiere Pro with cross dissolve transitions. The final ident shows the start of inside a room, moving inside the pipe travelling with the electrons, seeing electrons travel in either directions and finally see the two collide and explode. As they explode, the Discovery Channel logo appears and then the ident fades to black.