It is done! Here is my completed animation that I made after finishing both parts of the treasure chest course. Huge thank you to everyone who provided feedback. It was so helpful and I think it really made this piece much, much better.
One super important thing I want to point out is that I did NOT create the cardboard boxes that are used in this scene. Those were created by @waylow and they are from the Animation Workflow & Body Mechanics course.
Changes from Previous Version:
-Increased brightness of scene, increased the intensity of volumetric fog and accentuated the god rays a bit more
-Added per object motion blur using Cycles to create a vector pass and then compositing that vector pass with the final Eevee scene
-Increased glow intensity as the chest is expanding and getting ready to explode
-Added glow to the keyhole
-Added dust particles
-Added in cardboard boxes of the CG Cookie variety
-Paid closer attention to the spacing of the treasure chest’s jumps as well as added in some chest shake as it was expanding
Things I tried to change, but couldn’t figure out how to:
-Could not figure out how to reduce the blue, shiny flickering on the metal pieces of the chest throughout the video
-Tried to change the timing on the star explosion at the end but I couldn’t seem to take the baked simulation and turn it into keyframes. I used a plugin called “Projectile” to shoot the stars out of the chest. Maybe that had something to do with it?
Nice one Strunky!
I'll let Wes know you've finished ;)