Scene two

Problems

For some reason the z axis was not working as is evident by the picture below: 

After researching it I found that I somewhere along the line I must have accidently press x.  When I pressed it again I was able to move the z axis.  http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58761

In order to get scene two done I pondered about using the earlier animation (Animation – path constraints & dummy) but for some unknown reason I couldn’t move the key along the frame so I could extend it with zoom out, because by the time the glider hits the floor (or appeared to have hit the floor) it would approximately be 19 frames.  Although it will be appropriate to make the glider fall really fast, I needed it to fly (or hang in the air) whilst making the glider flap its wings at least once.  So with all this in mind I felt it was prudent to draw another, shorter path.

I drew a slightly bent line like so:

I then moved it into position like so:

To add more vetex so I could move the line, i had to right click on the line and click on refine. 

 

The reason why I set the path constraints like the picture above is because the glider’s wings are going to coming down so that would lift it just a little bit.

As I thought more about how I’m going to animate it I came to the realisation that I might have to change the person the biped.

First things first, I had to apply the dummy and link the hip to it.  I did this by hiding the other elements/objects in the biped except the hip.  And I placed the biped on the glider, due to the proportional size of the biped it wouldn’t fit in the glider so I decided to make some changes to the glider.  I did this by selecting the glider and group > ungrouping it.  I first made the pedals longer like so:

There are some issues such as the arms not going through the rings as the picture above demonstrates.

Once I was happy with it, I pondered the quickest way to group the glider.

I clicked on ‘select by name’ and i selected all the objects that I thought made up the glider like so:

Next I had linked the glider to the dummy and the dummy to the path.

I first had to figure out how a person would fly the glider and came to the conclusion that when the wings are up the arms/wings go up, where as the knees are bent, vice versa when the wings are down. 

Then I had to ungroup the glider in order to animate it.

After hours of positioning and rotating, the wings, cameras, and other things I’m finally in a position to say that scene two is done.