Final Project – Asteroid Chase

Final Animation

The Millennium Falcon is being chased by TIE fighters while its hyperdrive is charging or being repaired. With its blasters offline, the Falcon flies into an asteroid field to try to lose the pursuing ships, narrowly avoiding impacts before making a last-second escape.

Asteroid Physics Demonstration

Frames / Stills

Storyboard

Project Breakdown

I spent a significant amount of time on this project, roughly estimated between 30 and 50 hours total. About half of that time went into modeling the Millennium Falcon, along with building and texturing the asteroid field. The remaining time was focused on lighting, physics, animation, rendering, and post-processing.

Rendering took a long time due to output issues, which required multiple full re-renders. I also spent approximately 3–4 hours on additional post-processing work, especially audio, to make the final result feel more cinematic and complete.

Problems Encountered & Solutions

• Texturing: Achieving a believable, weathered look on the Falcon was challenging. This was solved through extensive work in Hypershade, combining multiple texture nodes.
• Physics: Initially, collisions did not function correctly and gravity could not be disabled. Connecting Bullet properly through the MASH dynamics system resolved both issues.
• Modeling: Many modeling challenges came from incorrect component selection. Learning when to use vertices, edges, or faces significantly improved workflow.
• Asteroid realism: Adding a cloud node to the asteroid materials helped break up the surface and improve visual realism.

Credits / Attributions

• TIE fighter model: Sketchfab
• Sound effects sourced from the Star Wars films.