Ideas for creating on screen Clone Troopers?

I know that the most obvious way to go about getting Clone Troopers to interact with live action people would be to create an actual Clone Trooper costume, but I'm wondering if there are any other ways that I might achieve a photo-realistic Clone Trooper.

I'm no craftsman, so if there is an alternative to creating a suit from scratch, I'd really like to explore it. Obviously, I havn't been able to find any 3D Clone Trooper models yet, since the movie was only released a month ago. However, has anyone experimented with any Stormtroopers or CG extras with good results? Should I try using miurature models with stop motion? I guess I should really just experiment, but I'm just wondering if anyone have any Clone Trooper resources at all. How should I apporoach this?

 

Just make your own with 3ds max, the link for makeing a character is...
http://www.geocities.com/zerox0001000/modelling_tut1.htm
Thats the best i could be of help

 

ewing, I would say wait, their will be a clone trooper on the internet, I'm sure this summer...you would need to use pixel's method and lightwraping to get it to look right in your scene though

 

"However, has anyone experimented with any Stormtroopers or CG extras with good results?"

You mean besides ILM?

Not a single one of those Clonetroopers in AOTC was real. It was all CG. Pretty neat, huh?

M. Scott

 

woaaaaaaaaa they were? all of em? o dear... i've been humbled beyond imagination

 

Dorkman, I hate to burst your bubble, but check out the last "Making Episode II" featurette, "Part 12:Reel 6" on the official site. Near the beginning of the featurette, we see a raw video shot against a bluescreen, and there happens to be an actual, live clonetrooper blasting the heck outta something right in front of those two jedi.

But, yeah, I originally thought they were all CG, too.

**EDIT** Haha, whoops my bad, that was an effects shot.

--t.toe

 

Hi there, I´ve just signed up to be able to answer you

Well, actually I´m working on a small and funny fan film myself and we are using fully CGI Stormtroopers in some scenes as we are not using real costumes and stuff.

I have uploaded one scene of our movie where you can see those troopers more or less interact with the environment / the main character. For your understanding our movie will play nowadays here on earth in Germany. Vader is going to attack out hometown in invade it with the help of dozens of stormtroopers. So this is basically the first scene where you can spot the troopers the first time.

I used Poser 4 for animating the troopers and I´m using a freeware model I found some weeks ago on a website, unfortunately I can´t find the link anymore. For integrating the troopers into the material I used Photoshop and After Effects. I know that my troopers are not moving hyperrealistic but the outcome of the scene is quite okay I think.

Here is the video (requires DivX 4 or better):
HIDING.AVI

Hope you like it!

 

Ive also read on the official site that they didnt make a single clonetrooper costume. . .


EDIT:

And I just watched the movie, that was definately CG. Sorry.

 

Slightly falsified...they made one for reference I believe (as in, for reference in building the CG models. Not a single piece of clone armor made it to the film, though).

M. Scott

 

@Venardhi:
Of course it´s looking CGI

I´m not GL at all, but for the purpose of our movie this would be fully sufficient, I think.

 

Not a single piece of clone armor made it to the film

Crumbs, that's jolly impressive then. I realised some of the stuff was, but I didn't know all of it was. That's just plain showboating of ILM

 

I wonder if all the clones in the cafeteria type thingie had CG heads. Ill have to go see it again. . . again.

 

I don't hink they're CG, just copied:
[image=http://www.sgtfretsurfer.com/Grilled-Sarlacc/s/i/jangojangosm.jpg]

 

Thanks for the shot. Yea. the first few rows at least are probably just composed of a bunch of shots of him on bluescreen. Those back ones might be CG. You would be surprised how real they can make CG people these days.

 

he meant in the Armor

 

when they're lining up to get thier helmets .. the shot was far enough back that it could be cg... altho they could have also just composited him over a bunch of times .. if ilm modelers/animators r like me (lazy ) i would have composited a bunch of shots of the clones .. less work for modeler... more work for camera crew muahahaha...

im putting money on cg tho

.. if u wanna see realistic CG people at thier best.. This site has some really good examples of great 3d work people.. and everything

EDIT:Fixed link

 

One thing just came to mind regarding the use of CG models in fan films. I´m probably going to try this next weekend. It should be possible to let your actor play a scene together with "dummy" actor that will later be deleted from that scene and replaced by the CG model.
I would therefore use a static scene and record it twice. First time with my actors and second time without them. In post production I would then create the CG stormtrooper or thatever suits the scene and place it ontop of the original material to make it fit the action.
When the CG part is done I´d use AE5 to first place the empty scenery in my composition, then the CG character above that and finally the scene with my actor on top. After that I would then mask out my dummy actor to reveal the CG character beneath it. This way the effect of having your live action actor react more realistic to the CG should be improving. I´m not sure how good the outcome of such a scene would be but it´s definitely worth a try.
What would you guys say? Any other approach to this kind of effect?

 

probably would be best to use a bluescreen and a person covered in all blue so they would be erased along with the bluescreen.

 

Yes you´re right, that would be the other approach I thought off, but you need a huge bluescreen and fitting clothes to get good results. I try to achieve the best results with a minimum of effort put into it. As we don´t have that much possibilties to pull off such scenes. Although it may be quite diffcult to make the bluescreen scene look realistic, it´s definitely worth trying. (The scene I was talking about would not have any CG backgrounds but live action filmed, so this could get quite hard to make the bluescreened actors fit into the footage.)

 

Well, I recently checked up on the Sci-Fi 3D forum, and idn had been working on a 3DS version of a Clone Trooper. It was a little tricky to get to work in Poser, and I finally had to settle for a Stormtrooper body and a Clone Trooper helmet, which kinda sucks because idn's version is so cool.

Anyway, throw a walk cycle on it, and Eureka! Walking clones!

 

The clones in the cafeteria are just comped in, same with the kid in the 2 shots of the learning center, just the actor playing the part differently and comped in together.

The scene where they go pick up their helmets all the troopers are CG (so you are correct Lots, thwere is a funny anecdote about that). All fully armored troopers in the film are CG. No costumed actor was used. According to John Knoll himself a suit was not evr built not evn for reference for ILM even though he and Ben Snow begged for it.

 

What Venardhi suggested about the blue suit is exactly how the eyelines and reactions were achieved for the Kaminoans.

If you remember a shot from one of the "Making Ep II" featurettes on the site, the bit about motion tracking, it showed a monitor with a scene being motion tracked. In that scene was a guy in a blue suit that was nicknamed "Plungerhead" since a long rod extended from a cap on the top of his head. "Plungerhead" was replaced in post with Lama Su.

M. Scott

 

Here's a site where you can buy tons of stuff including Clone Trooper helmets and costumes.

http://hollywood-costumes.com/hollywood-starwars.htm

 

pretty much the entirety of the last 30-40 minutes of AotC was bluescreened. I'd say that was the films only weakness.

short of getting some mocap on your film, the best way to do it (in my opinion) would be to film the scene with both actors, comp out the clone-trooper actor, and use the film as a 'mocap' of sorts (by matching up the points).

as far as compositing your clone troopers, the hardest part (by far) is lighting it so they look like they're in the scene. while you may have only one light in the room when you film it, it may take upwards of 40 or 50 lights to achieve a similar lighting pattern in CG, unless of course you have something like Entropy.

 

Ewing, could you point me in a direction that I could obtain this posable model but with the Storm Trooper helmet? That looks very good and would work great for distant shots in my project.