Creating a Droid Army

I need to create a huge scene, with a pretty big druid atmy, but how do i do ? I found something on the web called massive software, but its extremly expensive and it only works with Linux.

Hope you guys can help me.

ps. I have this sfotware: 3DS max, Bryce, Blender and the full Adobe suite (After efefects, Premiere, you name it).

 

Okay, 3ds isn't good enough for this. Get the Advanced version of XSI, which costs 7000 bucks so you may need to get it through alternate means. With the version of XSi you get a program called softimage Behaviour 2.0. It's a crow simulator and it'll do what you want it to.

XSI:

http://www.softimage.com/products/xsi/v4/pricing/default.asp?pkg=adv

Behaviour:

http://www.softimage.com/products/behavior/v2/default.asp

Good Luck

 

darn and you couldn't afford massive?!?

Anyway, creating a droid army eh...you need to get a hold of the Geonosians, they are pretty good at that.

 

Who ever said that Max isn't good enough to do crowds? For that matter, Maya wouldn't be good enough either---it's all in how you set it up, models closer to the camera are high-poly while models further away are low-poly. For some reason, people get the Idea that ILM and other FX companies are able to put like 100,000 high poly models into one scene and render them out without any difficulty, that's wrong, they use low-poly and high-poly models each depending on the shot, plus they also write a bunch of their own software that works with Maya or some other program to make it easier, hence the creation of Massive. And actually, Max does have a type of crowd simulator with the Biped part.

 

Yeah, use low poly models from high above, giving the idea of an army, and then close shots of some droids marching. Perception is more important than reality in this case.

 

Agreed, darthviper.

Jaho, have you ever even tried making crowds with MAX's biped? If not, don't go off assuming something that is mostly the 2nd industry standard (next to, say, maya) can't do crowds.

Anyway, its a toughie, crowds. Hope you don't need a close up shot, usually those turn out well if you have well blended mocap'ed files for your crowd characters...

 

I didn't mean it wasn't good for crowds, just that with behaviour you can make them walk around stuff, and run, walk, fall over stuff in the same shot. I doubt that MAX can do this. A droid army walking could probably be done but, most other things would be extrememly had to do and consume more time than it's worth if you can do it twice as fast with Behaviour2.

 

BTW, can you even buy Massive. The last time I looked at it, it wasn't available to the public.

 

No, if you come up with the $18,000 you can buy it.

http://www.massivesoftware.com/purchase.html

 

That's the thing isn't it? Money.

 

Speaking of Max and Crowds, Max isn't as equipped as one might think. Although it has advanced mapping, charting, and other functionality features in its now included Character Studio, it is still unequipped for what he is needing. Sure, you can have a couple of jogging droids running around not bumping into eachother, but an actual battle with interaction and formation, you will need something different.

Massive is the studio standard, but the pricerange, as already mentioned, is extravagent.

XSI's Behavior is a nice package if you buy it with XSI's Advance.

Another choice is AI Implant which is a plugin that works with Max and Maya and that has been used in motion picture films. Since you already have Max, it may be your best choice, however I do not know the price. You can check AI Implant out Here

You could also try, with a little tweaking, the use of particles with linked models with animation, but I haven't used that personally so I don't know how well that would work in this situation. I believe that it works well with far off sequences, ie. droids marching into battle, but it doesn't help with up close interaction sequences.

Hope this helps,
Wildcat69410

 

ThinkingParticles 2 has some nice tools for crowd simulation as well if you're doing things in Max.

 

I knew I'd seen something for this across platforms before, this isn't the one I was looking for, but it is for Maya, MAX, and Lightwave... and it's only a mere(for Donald Trump), $5,000 USD...

AI Implant

Darksteps...

 

Well, in everything that you do for crowd simulations you still have to animate yourself--Massive works off of pre-made models and animations that it just fits together in random and complex ways----it's not like it just makes up 10,000 animations for characters, no computer would be able to handle that.

 

Still though, if I could get my hands on Massive...wow...

 

Well, soon, supposedly, Massive will be releasing an educational courseware version to make it more accessible with the average animation studio out there. I don't know when the release is planned, but I've already contacted them and let them know that I was interested, and received a speedy reply.

 

Wow so expensive... can anyone here create battle at all? ...I am doing the ''Battle of Hypori''...Does anyone know about it? if not u can read from EU...Its during clone wars, just before ep III, a planet like Genosis...Republic looses there, theres also General Grevious involved, leading the separist's armies...
So far i am dealing with jedi scenes, lightsaber duel..
I have atm maya 6.5...i started learning it few weeks ago.

 

For my latest short, I used a combination of bluescreen and lots of layering to create our battle sequence. I used an an actor (primarily because my animation wasn't up to par) but it could work with a 3d character as well.

You could render 3-4 different sequences (or more if you want it to look more random) of a single droid running/walking and then duplicate/composite them into one master shot in after effects. You would also be able to make the army a lot larger than mine.

I'm sure it's not the most effective way but it can work well enough if you can't afford the expensive software (and you have the time to let AE render the compositions!).

[image=http://www.akkerive.com/cu_battle.jpg]

Jeff

 

I agree with Niko...it will be a pain in the ass but I think in the end it would be alot quicker rendering in multiple passes.

BTW...Nice shot Niko, I just don't know what I'm looking at in the foreground.

~Rory

 

Thanks Rory! This is a grab from the completed movie where my alien hero is flipping around. His cape is sort of wrapped around making him look like a dark blob.

I'm going to try the same effect using lightwave and 3d models for a future project. While I liked the results with the actor, my computer couldn't handle any more than 35-40 uncompressed layers on screen at once. With a little more processing power, I think a much larger scale battle can be achieved without any new software.

Jeff

ps - I dig the droid animation you did in The Jedi Saga. Are you doing more in your new project?

 

It won't "ALOT" more,just better quality. I'm just having a hard time making a Coruscant environment ie: the surface matching with the buildings...but it's coming along fine!

~Rory

 

cool shot each layer contains 1 man?

 

Is a space battle done differently or does the crowd effect still apply to ships?

~Rory

 

i dont think a space battle is is that difrent how ever it is probably not as complex as hundreds of droids marching since most ships dont need animating just flying
and ships usualy dont have moving parts

 

Kchr1ss, yes each man represents one layer. After you add in explosions, lasers, smoke etc. each composition (3-4 sec.) reached up to 150 layers! If want to see some of these in motion, check out the trailer below. Shameless plug, yes, but it does serve the purpose of the thread (the army part anyway ).

battle trailer

I agree that since most ships don't have many parts to animate, it may just be easier to render the entire scene from your favorite 3D app. However, I haven't attempted a space scene with more than a handful of ships so I can't say for sure.

Wow, this thread has got me pumped up to start testing out some new ideas!