Asteroid chase (Animation test)

A while ago I promised DarkSapiens and Darknikkos I'd put my animation up after commenting theirs. Here is finally something. This bit was way to big to put up and the best compression I could come up with was by WMV'ing the thing with WMM... hence the hickups here and there.
movie03.wmv

 

Very nice. Just speed it up a little. Oh and the smoke trail wasn't neccessary I think.

 

Not bad at all. Starts out a little rough but gets better and better. Nice and clean.

Smoke trail could be necessary, just it's too intense. Try an make it more subtle.

Good work.

 

Thanks! I'll experiment on speeding things up a little.
You're right about the smoke trail, it could be improved on a lot. I'm still working out particle flow and I REALLY wanted smoke in there, this was the best I could come up with.

 

OMG that's amazing! Good job... i think that smoke trail should be a lot darker though and possibly add some fire in there too.

 

what program did you use?

 

Good job, but i think that there are still some ""tremors"" (For the X Wings) in the animation...

No fire in the Space !

 

i liked it . Good job. Probably fire would look unnatural, but what i think u could improve is the frames the inpact is. Make it more intense hit, you could paint the hit on the couple frames and then fade into the trail cause atm if u look for the first time, the impact is not noticable, and the trail starts suddenly.

Lookfilms

 

Wookieefett: Thanks! I'm still working on particle flow to get a nice smoke collom going. I'll try to add a little fire to it.

kchriss :Thanks and you're right, I should devote some attention to the impact. I knew it wasn't the best effect but left it like this to work on new stuff.

JimBobCarl: I'm using 3DSMAX.

 

Hi, Mishra!

Wow, am I seeing a little homage to "Scar", from Battlestar Galactica?

Well, first of all, that animation is great. I like the idea of that smoke trail. It seems that they hit the X-wing coolant pipes, a serious problem... (you know, the reactor could explode without them )

The only one thing I saw that could be improved a little is the asteroid field itself. I've thought a lot about how to make a realistic asteroid field (for the case if someday I try to make one), and there are some problems to solve.

The biggest of them is avoiding regularities. I noticed that the asteroids in the background have all similar sizes, and they're hand-situated (I know how difficult can be trying to imitate randomness in that cases). In order to fix that, I'd scale down some of them, and add "tiny-size" ones. I think there should be also asteroids smaller than the fighters, and also with fast trajectories, if you want to imitate TESB.

The other one is the size of the asteroid field itself. If you look at the background of TESB asteroid field, you can see that it's HUGE, I mean, there are thousands of asteroids in the distance, and the "flat" shape of the field can be also appreciated. You could try to make a matte painting in photoshop to add deepness to your field.

I think that's all. I really liked that chase. I'd like to see how you improve it


EDIT: I think your compositing program has stretched the image a bit.

 

Nice work Mishra. By the way, I sent you a PM a little while ago. Please check to see if you got it.

 

WOW! I really like it. Asteroid textures are really nice. Like the camera movements. Engine flares and lazers work properly. I think you can justify the speed and pace you used. What's wrong with the smoke....nothing. If I were to nit pick. I'd say you need a couple times where when the lazers pass close to the camera, add a full screen flash. Again that's a nit pick, bordering on personal preference. Keep going!

 

not bad at all. The only problems I can find with it are minor. That one shot where the 3 ships are coming and the camera is following them from above while they fly onto a large asteroid (around 20 second mark) kinda messes with my eyes. It's a little too much movement for a theatre, if that makes sense. I would try and make the camera stationary relative to the asteroid and not follow the X-wing.

At around 10 or 12 seconds in, there is a shot where one of the ties hits an asteroid. The first problem I have is how fast it's spinning. I'm pretty sure that with the high velocity it's going at in space, it would spin quite a bit faster before ramming into the asteroid. It also seems to be loosing most of it's foreward enery, like it's going directly sideways into the asteroid next to it. I feel that the hold on that shot while we wait for the explosion deters focus from the battle by allowing dead space. I would consider just showing a fraction of a second of the explosion, or changing the camera angle so we can see what's going on or allowing the explosion to take front and center for a second. The transition into the next shot is a little rough.

When the X-wing takes a dive into the canyon on the asteroid, I don't feel like there's enough weight on the move it's doing. It just completely changed path by diving in, and there isn't a rebound on it. If you fly, and you start going down, when you go back up, gravity will lower you a little bit. No, there isn't gravity in space, but it still looks akward to our eyes. Maybe it's just the camera angle, or maybe we need to see the ship visually pitch up a little to accentuate the change of direction, but as it is, it looks slightly akward.

I also agree with the business of the asteroid field. You don't want it to be distracting, but all it seems to be is tons of large rocks. There would be a wide range of sizes, from dust, to pebbles, to stones, to huge rocks like the majority of the ones in your test. Try to fill it out a little bit from a diversity stand point.

Definately like most of the cinematography here. the angles of some of these chase shots are pretty good. Nice job! It's very workable for the purpose you want.

~JW

 

Thanks for the praise and critics all!

@Darksapiens: Your right about the asteroidfield. When I started out it was huge with much more smaller asteroids. Satisfied with the result the scene became way too heavy for my machine. I cut back the number of 'roids and enlarged the rest to get a workable scene again. Perhaps time for a new computer? Or start working in layers... not much experience with it though, yet

@Jedi-Washington: Those are some good points and I must say I agree on nearly all of them. I could fix some of these in post but I don't think I'm going to. Lighting could be improved on some scene as well so I'd rather start from scratch. Anyway, thanks for the accurate analysis and clear feedback. Very helpfull!

 

In the original Star Wars there is first in Episode IV, when the X-Wings in the trench break apart into a fireball, and then in Episode VI, when TIEs crash into the Mon Calamari cruisers.

 

That was... inflamed oxygen from the vital support systems... or... well, I think that's the most convincing invention to make it believable

 

hi !

after a long time... i finallly come back in this forum...and i must say your work is very impressive...really!!

i really must set to work again...

really good job !

 

wow saw that first link. Looks really good! These 3d programs are sweet. I just got mine, so i can't wait to see what i can do in the future.

 

I know you're excited. 3D modeling is really fun. But just be careful about bringing up old threads.