scope of cg sets

I have a question about cg sets: when I am modeling what is going to be a large model, like one of the ones is an island standing in the sea, with clouds and lightning, etc, and there is a landing pad coming off the island, should I make the whole thing one big model and then just render out shots from the appropriate angle? Or should I build it as separate models i;e the island, the landing pad, the water, the sky, and then just comp the whole thing together in AE?

We have pretty much scrapped all former progress on my Star Wars short due to a hard drive crash that deleted all the models, most of the lightsaber tracking, etc and have started all over with the modeling in Blender. Formerly, I was using matte paintings made by a very talented fellow working with me mixed in with CG plates but now I am thinking that the whole thing should be CG and that is the direction I am angling. Any advice/ideas for the best way to do this?

 

you'll want to separate everything out onto layers. there are times where you'll want to show just the landing pad, or just part of the island and you won't want a 5 or 6 million poly model sitting in front of you slowing you down. With layers, the worst thing that happens is that you have to assemble them prior to showing the whole thing

 

but still model it as a whole thing in one project? Just stick everything into multiple layers?

 

Yep,

that, might not be a problem...
It will speed up your process and you will still have all the moddels in the same projectfile.

I'm also suggesting to model most things (e.g. the island) from NURBS first since they have unlimited smoothnes and resolution.

 

does blender support nurbs?
I know Electric Image Universe, my old app that I formerly had everything modeled in did, but I dont know if Blender does.

 

Blender does support NURBS. They have a few options of different NURBS stuff. I dont use them, but then I dont model much organic stuff. Matter of fact,
http://download.blender.org/documentation/oldsite/oldsite.blender3d.org/117_Blender%20tutorial%20Fun%20with%20nurbs.html
its a tutorial for nurbs in blender modelling a mouse
Bruce

 

Well I personaly, when I do any cgi shots, (most of which are exterior shots), I build up an area that is roughly around a hundred square miles, and do my shots within that area. Now grant it that with the program I use, a hundred square miles of snowy, tree covered mountains can be created in just a couple minutes. The rendering itself is what takes a long time.

 

What program do you use?

 

Ya really, thats quite a feat.

 

Vue 6 Infinite. Pretty nifty program.

[EDIT]
Here's a video with some examples of the program.

[EDIT2]
And a few stills with other shots of mine:
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v483/monkeyheadstudios/Junglebuilding.jpg]
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v483/monkeyheadstudios/MemoriesofBeauty.jpg]
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v483/monkeyheadstudios/sdfgfbgftgadsfdfjyfhj.jpg]
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v483/monkeyheadstudios/otherplanet1.jpg]



... Yeah...

 

That's pretty good. I know of another terrain generator that's pretty good too. You might have heard of it before. It's called Terragen. They're currently developing Terragen 2, and from what I've seen of some of the images being produced (I guess it's somewhat of a beta right now), it's pretty darn good. I've seen some that look nice, but I've seen some where they looked downright photoreal (as in, literally, just about).

Here's a prime example. (from the looks of it, Terragen 2's greatest strength is in natural-looking rocks/mountains).

Unfortunately, when they finish Terragen 2, it won't be free (the original terragen was freeware, though I think you could pay for a version which would handle higher resolutions & enable you to use it commercially).

 

Terragen 2 looks pretty sweet, but I haven't been able to wrap my head around the tech preview that they released. I'll stick with TG1 and Bryce.

 

Yeah, I used Terragen before I got Vue. Vue was used for the second and third pirate movies, for 90% of the shots on the islands, and cities and whatnot. It is about 700 dollars I think, but I got it free from a friend I have who works in the industry. So, yeah. I'm still learning my way around vue. I've only used procedural terragains once, which give the most realistic stuff I've seen done with a computer. Only problem is that they take longer to render, and work with, since I'm using a computer with about half a gig of memory, and on board everything... Sucks...

But yeah.

 

I haven't tried Terragen 2 at all myself. I tried Terragen 1 once years ago, but never really did a whole lot with it (seriously, I think I only rendered a small handle full of images). It was a little complicated for my tastes.

I have also used Bryce in the past, and I personally found it much more user-friendly and intuitive. I borrowed it one time from a friend about seven years ago when I was making a fanfilm for my high school's film festival.

I recently bought a used copy of Bryce 4, so I think that'll suit my terrain needs, if not just for animatics. If I ever do a full-blown serious fanfilm, I'd probably use Bryce to make animatics for reference and hand it off to someone else to do the real FX (hopefully, my animatics would be of a high enough quality to be acceptable if I can't find outside help).

However, if I could get the hang of terragen, I'd love to use it, just because of how awesome-looking you can make stuff with it (especially terragen 2; I still can't get over how realistic some pics are that I've seen).

 

You can get Bryce 5.5 for free, via Download.com, I've been using the free versions for about a year, and enjoy quite a lot, I use it primarily for pictures.