cyclops eye beam effect?

The 3dmax tut was very straight forward... not overly complex.

I'll give it a go.

Is the idea to make it a perfect copy of the movie effect, or to make a better looking effect than the movie (more like the comic book ).

 

I just felt the tutorial didnt really give too much detail. I am a complete n00b with 3DS Max.

The idea was to pull off the movie look. I've managed to get a result in AE, but it's not identical to movie but i think it looks fairly decent. I'll post it up on www.yousendit.com in a bit. I need to render the small version first.

Danny

Alright guys, the link is:

http://download.yousendit.com/A8B777B0047327A4

What do you think

 

the actual effect is pretty good but it moves way too slowly

 

Trailers for reference:

X-Men

X2

Trailer 3 has a nice shot where he's fighting Jean.

The Last Stand

I'd look at Trailer 1 here. It has a shot of Cyclops and his unrestrained blast.

 

Well, unless you've completely ruled out Photoshop by now, I've used the glass filter with motion blur before and it gives youo an effect smuch like that.

 

If I could make a comment here on your effect(after comparing them), it seems like yours just isn't concentrated enough. See, since you're going for the bare eyes version, take a look at the effect in the trailer. You see that the beams are much tighter and you don't really see any particles. Honestly, to me it seems more like the real thing is made of concentrated flames rather than particles, but I'm no expert. Your effect doesn't look too bad except it does move rather slow as someone else said. Also, to me it looks more like a substance is flooding out of the eyes instead of beams being fired out of them.

 

Mhmmm. Well I was going for the "normal" beam but since i don't really have anything remotely like Cyclops' glasses (the single classic look) I had to make do without glasses. But yeah, i agree it does need to move quicker. The reason I used particles was i noticed that the beam shimmers and looks like energy. Now, i'm not familiar with Photoshop (i know i know, shoot me now ) even though I own the package. I just use it for DVD menus and what not. But anyway, the only closeness i could get was making the beam the same way as lightsabers. so yeah, 2 huge lightsabers sticking out my eyes lol. But as mentioned before, the Cyclops optic beam shimmers and looks like energy, thus creating the particles to give some sort of shimmer like movement. I know it's not brilliant, but for a first attempt i think it's do-able. But i'd love to create the actual look.

 

I see, well, they both seem the same way to me(except that without the visor they're separate beams). Look at the X2 trailer. The beam looks pretty solid, with wisps of it coming off the edges(much like a flame). I think you were on the right track when you tried a variation of the lightsaber effect. It really looks to me like a concentrated flame, especially in that moment when Jean starts blocking it. I don't know how to do digital flames, so I can't really say much more than that.

I figured out what I was trying to say before. The particles make it seem like something is being sprayed out of the eyes, as opposed to a solid beam. I think the way to do it is to make a solid, and then distort it enough to get the right effect. Then add the glow, etc.

Again, I agree it's a good effect, just giving some constructive criticism to help make it closer to the film version.

 

In the first movie, the effect was like a rushing torrent of water from his eyes. Really, really fast moving water.

 

Ah I see. Still, it wasn't like a spray, right?

Like I said before, I'm not an expert on these things. Just giving my own interpretation.

 

I prefer the one that the make of the "size matter's not" lightsaber duel, the sort of bumpy, turbulent effect. The ones in the trailers were just beams that grew and frame by frame you could barely see any animation going on

 

Oh don't worry, i did take it on board as constructive criticism And i agree with the post above me, i, too liked the Size Matters Not lightsaber duel. really impressed. I actually spoke to the guy who made that effect and even he doesn't remember how he did it. He claimed he accidentally pressed on something or other and as a result, came up with that pretty ace cyclops blast. But yeah, i'll give another shot at it soon. Been busy with work recently so it's just a matter of finding time really.

Danny

 

The tracking was great on your test Danny, but it moved too slow. It as to look like as Funk said, a "torrent of water", very fast, blurry, bumpy and turbulent. Not glowing needles.

Also, I made mine from that tutorial on the Shinning star unlimited site. It's not all that hard really.

 

here is a test i made, the image looks ok on my computer, the quality of the screenshot is crap but yeah, the animation needs improvement

[image=http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/kenobifett/cyclops.jpg]

 

The reason why I would do it in 3Ds Max is because, if you notice on the test I made a long while back, you have the main beam, and some, as I call, "Little Dropplets" of the beam that has a variation in its' trajectory.

I don't know if I explained that well.

 

Wow that pic looks great. How did you get the core to wave like that?

 

What i did was just masked out a rectangle, then added a fast blur of 3 to it.
Next, i made a new composition, copy/pasted that rectangle into this comp and duplicated it 6 times for the glow. (fast blur went 10:20:40:80:160:320)and put a black solid underneath all those layers.
Then I went into a new comp again, brought in the 1st comp and added some turbulent displacement until until it looked right with the scale of the beam. Then i added the glow layer and copyed the turbulent displacement, except the glow layer was separate because i didnt want very much of that effect in the glow. Anyway, then I just turned down the settings for the turbulent displacement. simple!

Here is the animation of it, the glow looks really bad also with the MPEG-4 compression .
http://www.savefile.com/files/94110

 

Here is my lil test animated...

http://rapidshare.de/files/33894846/Comp_2.mov.html

not perefect... but kinda ok for my point of view

aa and sorry about the quality i dont have time for a good render

 

The link is dead...

 

all the links are dead