Chase over Endor (animation test)

I think it looks fine. If you got all the time in the world you can play with the shape, the length, the color, the glow little more, etc. See how it looks animated.

 

Hi, I could make a test using tubular lights, to see the difference...

http://www.savefile.com/files/3238174

Is it better than the previous lasers? More StarWars-ish?

 

From what I see in the SW films, and you can make any style you want of course, they are about the same size as you have.. there's a hot almost white part in the center taking up about 2/3 of the shape.. then there's a little falloff on the ends and a lot of glow and blur.

 

Hello there!

These days I haven't had much time, but I made some little things in this project. One of them is a lightning change. I changed all soft shadows to hard shadows, because the first ones didn't make realistic at all the dark sides of the ships. I would like to know what do you think about that:
[image=http://img302.imageshack.us/img302/4384/escenaluz200716ie.jpg]

I will try to get some time to finish some issues of lasers and make a small test of some TIE fighters flying towards one capital ship, which will be firing, too, or something like that, to see how does it look.

 

The calmari and the SD look like they're going to crash

 

Are you talking about the nearest Star Destroyer? It's far from the Calamari cruiser... This one is much more close to the camera than the SD

 

I see what you're saying...at first it looked like they were going to crash, but I can see it now

 

OK, I could find some time and I made more laser tests.

I used them in a little part of the animation, and I would like to know what do you think. You could also see some changes in the lightning, and in motion blur.

Here's an image:
[image=http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/1188/lserescena01038hj.jpg]

And here's the animation.

Comments and critics are welcome

 

The motion blur looks kind of weird. Was the motion blur applied to the capital ships? The lasers look OK, but I think the white core is too intense. There is also something hanging down at the top of the frame, looks like rods.

 

I don't like this. The animation is OK, but the lasers are terrible in my oppinion, and the motion blur does not look cool.

I have a good example of what I like my motion blurs to be like. This is my own animation, but it's still rough. Just look at the motion blurs, especially at the 3rd TIE fighter. Oh, and Ignore the lasers, they're still being worked on.
http://s53.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=15JTHH12K0N5T1YN5MN1673AKU

You see how the bur exceeds the object, unlike yours, where the blur is kept inside the objuct. My way makes the whole thing alot smoother...well, that's just my opinion...of course it's up tp you.

 

OK, so I have to use lower values of motion blur (45% seems to be very high and unreal ), and make something with that lasers...

I think that the "non-core" part needs to be darker. That lasers look relatively well when viewed from side, but they turn to nearly white, thick cylinders when they are directed towards the camera...

I will make more tests.

Thanks for the comments! They're the only way to progress on the right direction...

Any more?

 

Now, here's the same frame as above:

[image=http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/5421/lserescena01038dq.jpg]

Better?

 

Have you added motion blur to the lasers? That is one thing that adds some reality. I think that the colored glow has a high intensity in the middle.

Here's a good laser example I cooked up with Photoshop:
[image=http://cgfilms.x10hosting.com/lasertest.jpg]

 

I can't add motion blur to them, because they aren't polygonal objects. Cinema 4D doesn't add motion blur to visible lights, I think (I've tried it, but it has no effect in the render).

I modified slightly the lasers, and that seem to be reasonably good, now. What do you think?

[image=http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/6425/tiefighter00879vr.jpg]

 

Getting better.

Just seems that the glow just STOPS at one point, I think it needs to feather out more, and that would solve most of your problems.

 

Yo've got the shape, now just work on the glow. Carrara, like cinema 4d, does not allow motion blur on light objects, so I model them with the shape of a motion blur (because when are you ever going to see them stable?), and then add an invisible bulb with a green ligh to it. Simple enough. I do the glows in AE

 

I'd quit finetuning those lasers, they look excellent to me! They'l be shooting past so fast in the animation you won't notice any difference you'd make from this point on.

I would spend some time finetuning the lighting in your animation. It seems a little "dark" in there. I'm wondering what setup you use? For my scenes I'm using 5 spotlights all around now. All set to different colours and low multipliers. One of them is my main light, wich is multiplied 1,5. This is the only one I activated shadows on.
But that's how I'm doing it, it may change overnight offcourse. All I'm saying is you might want to experiment a little more. It would benefit your animation a LOT!

Also the animation of the fighters flying past needs some work. I'd say they're going (way) too fast and not smooth enough. It makes them look like toys, not real fighters. I usually spend watching my own clips for a very long time while making notes of every little bump in the flightpath of every fighter. And then correct them offcourse.
Take the X-wing from your clip and follow his flightpath frame by frame. It seems like it turned before the turn in his flightpath was there... now this may just be me.
Also, you may want to try not moving the camera. Track the fighters yes, but keep the camera fixed. That way you can move the Calamari slowly forwards and it becomes a spaceship. It's a big hunk of floting metal now. I know it's there for refference to the speed of the fighters and not really the point of the clip, but experiment anyway. Even if you don't like the outcome, you'll have gained some knowledge...

Now I don't know how high your bar is. Mine is pretty high at the moment, so if you're happy at the level you're at now, ignore all my comments and have fun. We're here to give our comments and maybe you agree with us of not, but do what YOU like. I don't think I'm much further at animating then you are now. It just took me a little longer, over 2 years. So you're doing great allready in my opinion!

Edit: I like the planet in there a lot, is that a mesh or an image?

 

Wow, I like that kind of replies.

You've mentioned almost all the wrong things that I had seen in my animation, and you give ideas to fix them. Thanks!

Lighting
Yes, I'm using 5 or 6 spotlights now (apart from the sunlight), but I want them to lighten all the fleet but not the planet, so they're big (hundreds of kilometres, I think). At first it was too dark in there, and recently I changed some parameters. Were you talking about the entire video, or the laser test? There's more light in that last animation.
About the shadows, I'm now using them in all lights, because the objects seem more realistic, and I need a C4D extra module for applying radiosity.

Animation
Hmm, a lot of little problems in here... First, I must make the total time longer to slow the animation a little. Then, those strange bumps and sudden changes of speed in the fighters trajectories have to be smoothed. And last... the camera movements. That's the hardest part. In the future, I will try to animate the camera before the fighters. Perhaps in that way the takes will look better.

Endor
The planet is compound by two spheres. For the land I used the Endor texture that can be found on SciFi3D, but the clouds texture map is made for Matt Davis, and can be found in 3D-Duckboy Productions. It's the Dantooine cloud map. There are amazing planet textures in that page.

 

Thanks for the link, there are some crazy planets there indeed!
I don't know much about C4D but in 3DMax lights got exceptionlists, add the planet to the list and it won't light it. It works the other way around too, lights can ignore everything except a certain object, handy if you want to light the background a little differently from the rest of the scene. I assume C4D got something similar?
And how do you animate the camera? What makes it so hard?...

 

Wait a minute, I'm talking about an ancient version of Max, newer versions work differently?

 

No, that's still in the newest version of Max, Remember "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

 

Yes, in Cinema 4D, lights have exceptionlists... I forgot them completely . Thanks, mishra.

And for the other question...
Well, it's not difficult to animate a camera, because you can easily make them follow whatever trajectory you want.

The really hard thing is to make a good scene. That's what makes the animation look "real". I'll need to find more time to practise with that, because I think that's the better way to improve...

Dark Sapiens

 

Hi, I'm back again.

I made a little animation based, of course, in the battle of Endor.
It's only a 4 seconds long scene, but I wanted to show it to you. It can be downloaded here:

http://www.savefile.com/files/4120572

And here's one of the frames, rendered at full screen:

[image=http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/5563/escena20271yh4.jpg]

I know that it needs more fighters, more action. And some of the lasers should be more visible...

Hehe. Comments and critics?

 

It seems the frigate might be too small, if you compare the size of the Millennium falcon to the size of the frigate when it was docked in ESB, you'll see the frigate was quite larger, but it seems your fighters are quite large compared with the frigate (not larger obviously, but larger than the millennium falcon if it was docked on the frigate)

The X-Wing in the background seems to have a strange flightpath--you might want to change it a bit, perhaps just make it a straight line instead of a curved path. The lighting is pretty good. But the lasers need to have an explosion when they miss and hit the frigate----just a little bit more work to do.