^Before I began positioning Si and laying out the camera path (that it was to follow in the scene), I moved the ironing board to one side to allow Si to approach the table from the centre of the room - plus, it would work from a commercial perspective that a viewer would see the 'board and go "Hey, that's the ironing board from that other Ident and its still in his lounge!" thus appealing to the sense of normality in this otherwise surreal bunch of scenes^
As I had done with the two Idents before this, I made use of the original camera path I'd created for the kitchen scene.
As I adjusted/deleted vertices that were and weren't needed, I decided that for the last part where the camera pans up towards Si (as he turns to move away from the table), I could use the 'create_line' tool and add onto the end of the last vertex of the path
I then moved the path and the lounge_camera into the area where the camera would follow from the archway, past the 'board and the television and then above the table itself
By doing this, the path could be manipulated in such a way that I could add in 'Set_Keys' as waypoints for the camera to know when to rotate or even slow up its movement along the path
^Re-positioning the camera entry-path to a few feet from the archway, I then discovered that by altering the cameras focal length and field-of-view figures, the image seen by the lens would seem to stretch or contort depending on the settings chosen - as if going from a wide-angle lens of 25mm to telephoto zoom of around 150mm^
Using the 'Constrain_Path' used for the first two Idents once again, I knew that all I needed to do was to position the path from where I wanted him to begin moving (using a similar fashion as in Ident 1 where he is moving along the path, with flippers moving in synchrony)
The end of the path would be to position Si just close enough to the table
A quick render of the scene from an exterior view. This view wouldn't be shown during the Ident, however I just wanted to make sure that the lighting arrangements would work for when the camera does reach this corner of the room and the Field-of -View doesn't get burned out by the intensity of the lights or equally, isn't so dark that the logo is clearly seen on the tables surface!
What I had planned for the table was to apply the Sci-Fi logo
on just one little section of the surface - it was divided into four sectors after the 'Lattice' modifier was applied a few weeks before
Applying an 'Edit_Poly' modifier meant that I could select 'elements' of the lattice work as shown in this image of the left
After selecting all 3200(!) polygons, I then planned that, by using the 'Multi_Sub_Object' standard in the Material Editor, I could give this selected area the ID of 2 and then specify that value in the 'Sub_Object' menu
Unfortunately, I couldn't apply a further 'UVW Map' on this highlighted area and the image below shows what happened
^When the material is applied to the area, the previous 'Galvanised_Steel' texture is erased and all I'm left with is a logo that cannot be re-positioned and will remain halfway off the surface'
^I also tried removing the lattice texture completely and then applying a 'UVW Map' that would then position the logo texture as I wanted with the 'GIZMO', but the tiling just wouldn't sort itself out and I was left with the render shown here^
The last solution was to create a plane, convert it to an 'editable_poly' and extrude it by only a few units, so that it wouldn't be so obvious (a similar technique I used to make the t-shirt lie properly in the ironing scene!)
Also, I made sure that , for added realism the texture was also semi-integrated into the lattice texture of the table by lowering the plane until it was breaking the structure of the table, as shown
After that, I then could apply the 'UVW Map' to the plane, treating it as a separate entity from the table, and use the 'GIZMO' to rotate the re-position the texture. double checking how it was looking every time I moved it - this was the result
The 'Bump_Map' that had previously worked with the t-shirt so well didn't look right here, so I decreased the value of 'Bump' from 250 to 100
^As per usual, the basic scene view doesn't give me any indication whatsoever that the tilings and mappings applied as actually recognised by the 'UVW_Map' The difference is marked, as you can see by the rendered and un-rendered versions
Note: I have also used the 'GIZMO' to rotate the texture to face the camera as it hovers over the head of Si when the last few frames are played out...^
The next step was to incorporate another path for Si to begin his movement across the lounge towards the table. Through the initial 120 frames of the animation, Si would slide along the path and begin his scripted movement that involves him moving along the table left and right, as I tried to subsequently block the camera, as if portraying Si to be vindictive and irritated at having to do this menial task!
As from a similar method used in the other two Idents, to give the impression as though Si is using the flippers as means of pushing himself along the floor, I wanted to use 'Set_Keys' and rotate the flippers on the interior 'pivot point' as they moved from rest to active, set up along the timeline
Completing the looped movement of the flippers ( with the help of the Dope Sheet ), I then managed to get Si next to the table
table, keeping his back to the camera at all times
The green line nearest the camera is this new path (kept straight to avoid any unnecessary changes to his co-ordinates in relation to the interior space...)
^One more, I needed to make sure that the flippers would be reacting to Si's changes in direction and motion. The simple process of rotating them upwards and downwards by slight increments every 20 frames justifies the repetition of this process ^
The Dope Sheet became an invaluable tool when making the adjustments to not only the flippers, but the rotation of the arms as, due to my design decisions and lack of experience in 'boning', I was able to use only the two finger bones and wrist in rotation, and not the upper arm bone as this caused the limb to cave in towards the body 
^As the image above shows, I have tried to time all of Si's movement within the panning motion of the camera so that I can achieve the effect I'm aiming for Note at this point, the actions will include Si waving his arms over the tables surface and the inclusion of a suitable sound effect will contribute to the 'cleaning' the surface action (I was to involve the Reactor again, but the trouble I have had integrating it into the timeline during the Ironing Ident meant I wouldn't attempt it again for this final Ident)^
The final section of the Ident was to involve Si moving away from the table and sliding away back towards the kitchen
As the image shows, the camera has been positioned at just the right moment when it begins to rise and position itself across the table and sweep around during the last frames
Repeating the process of animating Si's flippers was simple enough too( although the camera wouldn't be looking at Si anyway)
As it has seemed with the Sci-Fi logo texture through all the Idents, the un-rendered screen image doesn't show nowhere-near a true visual representation of the rendered material
This meant that positioning the camera proved slightly more tricky as I couldn't gauge where the lens would be aimed to fully display the logo for a decent length of time...
However disruptive and repetitious it was in practice in order to retain an accurate image, I had to alternate between the 'l_camera' view and 'Perspective' viewI was impressed however, with Max's ability to almost second-guess the adjustments and timing of 'Auto_Keys' prompted by the user to judge when and where the camera's F.O.V would place itself - apply the key to a certain frame and then a key 20 frames later allowed smooth travel throughout
Not all the designated keys where, in fact, as accurate as I had thought. Returning to 'l_camera' view once more, I got a surprise when I found that there were a series of jerky and discordant movements along the camera path
I was hesitant to use the Dope Sheet in this instance as I knew that, while the sheet helps in co-ordinated terms with axis, perhaps it wouldn't fix the motion-based glitches I discovered
^The sheet, typically, revealed that there were indeed small discrepancies in the path, showing up as sudden changes in elevation or horizontal movement along all three axis. I smoothed out all the areas I felt were going to cause constant irritation and tried the animation again.^
^Deciding that it wasn't going to be improved on much more, I moved the ceiling into position - which, incidentally, needed to slide across when the camera would approach Si as to avoid 'empty space' above) - and a background texture (shown to the left of the image) placed onto a plane giving the impression of an outside environment, again needing to be moved as the camera pitched and rolled along the path!^All that was needed now was a quick check of the Rendering menu - selecting a 'Custom' output size of 1200 x 800 also - and a rendered AVI is the reuslt ready to be edited in Primeire - this will the last stage for all three Idents, as the audio is ready to be inserted too (all relevant sound effects and ambient audio clips included...)
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