Quarter I Project - Fifth Deadline

My last deadline was sort of absorbed by my fourth. With time on my hands, I knew I had only a little bit to do. What wasn't anticipated, though, how time-consuming these little menial acts could be. What I needed to do was get the lights to work. Then I had to create some artificial light via sun/moon respectively. Then I had to time the streetlights to go on and off depending on how the sun acted.

I decided I was going to start with the streetlights. At least, the base principle of them. Sooner than later I realized how bad of an idea it was. At first, I programmed only one light with keyframes to turn on at frame 600. 

I didn't know how my sun was going to get there in only 600 frames. Another thing I didn't account for was how keyframes aren't duplicated like an object. I had to sit down for roughly 90 minutes and make sure every streetlight had the exact same keyframes and intensity etc. 

 It took me the entire duration before I realized I had been setting the keyframes wrong. When working solely with objects, one only has to click "s" on the keyboard to set a keyframe. This does not apply for textures and intensity and all of the little details within. Rather, I had to go back again and set keyframes for every light by right-clicking the "intensity" icon (shown in the first picture) and click "set key" (shown below).

Once I had finally finished the streetlights, it was time for the moon and Sun. The moon was easy: all I had to do was set a very soft, but noticeable, white light to give a realistic sense of how we see at night and set it constantly. It was also nice because the directional light I used was stationary.

The sun was not so forgiving of work. At first, I had made it a 24 hour simulation, or a full rotation around the project. The dilemma that lies within this idea was there would be very little time for actual light to be shown on the city. Maybe 2/5 of the project would happen in the sunlight. So I started the sun right above the "x" and "z" axes. Then I made it finish after 7200 frames on the exact opposite side of my map. Once that was done, I made a new directional light that I paired with the sun so no matter where the sun went, the directional light followed its cue. 

I was finally almost done with my project. I had to do only two more things: create a camera path and a sky. The sky seemed tricky enough as it was and I need a camera path first. So I decided to start from frame one on the highway and make my way through my city. We'll see how it goes.