Ship flyby & Planet

Hey, I'm trying to do a decent ship flyby. I've got the animation of the ship down, but I'm unsure how to add an engine glow to the ship (I'm using the shuttle tyderium from scifi 3d). Also, my planet looks crappy. I just want this shot to look realistic, but it looks too fake. What do you guys use to make your planets? I'm just tryin to make a realistic earth. I guess my last question is that how do you import your ship into adobe after effects? Do you just render it in a green background and color key the background out? Thanks everyone

 

Yep...at least I can answer the green screen part. You got that right. Color key and all.

 

Well, for the planet, if you have photoshop, this is great:

Planet Tutorial

Good Luck

 

Nonono! Don't greenscreen! Alpha channels are what you need. Use the .png image format with alpha turned on, render the animation into a folder, and then import that as an image sequence into AE.


For your earth, you should probably find or make bump maps and specular maps, so it doesn't look flat. The planet also needs a glow. But I'm bad at glows.

--Colin

 

Ok then FINE!!! What eff said

Doesn't it also depends on what program he's using?

 

For the planet use different layers for the surface, clouds etc. and add a glow to simulate atmosphere. The tutorial above is very good and can be used if the camera moves aren´t very complicated. It´s perfect for still images or panning shots. You can also easily adapt it for creating planet textures to be used in the 3d app.

As for rendering the ship do what Effstops said and don´t use greenscreening. Alpha channels are much easier and give better results. I think every 3d app supports them.

 

If you are using MAX: In the rendering panel, unroll the bars until you find a thing that says "render elements" or something like that. You can specify to render BOTH the color version, and the alpha channel as MOVIES, no need to mess with images. The alpha channel will be saved in the same directory as the normal version. Then in AE, you set the alpha matte on top of the normal version, and set the matte as the "Luma matte" for the normal version. Hope this helps!

 

Thanks everyone, and yep, I'm using photoshop and Max, so with that I'll try everything out.

 

Okay, now could someone help me with the engine glow? Thanks, oh and by the way, all of you guys are in the special thanks credits, I know, woohoo, but hey, its all I can do.

 

Dude, the luma matt thing worked perfectly. Thank you thank you! Now I just need to start on that more realistic planet and I'll be in good shape. Thanks a ton!

 

For your engine glow use the glow filter in 3ds max. It should be located in the rendering tab in the main toolbar. Use this filter on an object(e.g. circle) on the engine and animate the glowing to decrease when the ship goes away from the camera. I know there´s a tutorial for max on this but I can´t find it at the moment. Maybe later!

Edit: The glow filter itself isn´t located in the rendering tab, it´s there under "Video Post".

 

its nice of them to post 3d projects but i wish people would just make there own stuff... besides denotation films muwhahah!

 

Yeah, if you can't export mattes, just render on green. But if you can, use mattes!

(I'm actually going with obijuan on this one!)

 

using an alpha channel AND key is the best you can do, i also use it. and about the engine glow, you can find a good tutorial here.

 

Ay that photo shop tutorial for the planet, was so mad, im going to do a scene like that in my film now, hehe thanks for the idea who ever yoy are.

laterz

 

neo2004:

Glad I could help. Don't thank me, somebody gave me that link on this site, and somebody probably gave it to him/her. I love the way that works here! Just pass it on.

 

using an alpha channel AND key is the best you can do, i also use it

NEVER use a Key for rendered footage. Alpha channels. PROPERLY, i.e. a "premultiplied" alpha channel (all else, i.e. "straight alpha", is madness for rendered footage).

Also, NEVER use "Video Post" in MAX, "Video Post" is a holdover from old days of lore, you use "Render Effects". It has similar effects, of a newer type, and is much easier to use.

/Z

 

Keying the green or blue out is how I do it. Gives me better control of the final composite & also makes rendering easier on the Computer...