harley - You’re right, although it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve taken pictures of dumpsters. As a matter of fact, I got excited when I spotted a heavily worn one on the way back to the car, it had great textures! It’s just one of those things other people will never understand…
And I didn’t get any sky pictures from that day, but that’s because I’m planning on shooting some chrome ball HDRI probes for it, so that will help with the sky issue.
minoribus - I agree, the details in the first area are more interesting to look at. The only issue is that my widest lens is only 18mm, and the space available to move the camera back away from the building is not very big. So, I think I’m going to go with the second location, as it allows me the space to begin with the medium shots, and progress to the wider shots, ending on a super wide shot showing all 1,000 cars in a pile. Also, you’re right, the above two scenes were shot at the same time, as they’re literally right across the street from one another. The Best Buy location is much more backlit, so it loses contrast and doesn’t look as nice.
I stayed up all night (learning how to use BLAM and then trying to get it to work in Blender), then went to the location again at 6:00 this morning and took some photos. I think for the final sequence, I will shoot my plates sometime between 7 and 8 AM, but it looks a lot better already:
It took three versions of Blender and three versions of the BLAM script, but I finally got the two playing nicely together, and BLAM computed the camera position very well! In my next update, I’ll set up some mock geometry and run another simulation to see how it looks. I’m happy I’ve started using BLAM, as it’s something I think I’ll use a lot for the types of videos I make. It’s a nice substitute for using PhotoScan, as I often don’t need super precise models, and it takes a lot less time to get results!
I’ve also found a way to merge two chrome balls in one world scene, I’ll post that soon as well.
I promise I haven’t abandoned it, ghost! It’s just taken a backseat until this video gets done, since we actually passed 1,000 subscribers last week (so this needs to get done ASAP). Additionally, I’m taking a trip to Maryland next week, so I’ve had to set aside money for that instead of purchasing the Stonemason models I need for the gun video. But once this 1,000 sub celebration video and the Maryland trip are over, I’ll be returning to it. I should be back in Florida by the 23rd, and will be returning to it at that time.
Thank you, Frobenius! It should be done and uploaded next week, after I get back from my trip.
I’ve been testing a few other things for this video; besides combining two chrome ball environment maps to create a full 360 degree world material, I’ve also been trying to create HDR textures for mesh objects. I don’t know if it’s working exactly (I’ll have to create a normal 8-bit version of the texture to compare it), but so far the tests have looked good.
I leave in less than 24 hours for Maryland, but before I go, here are some shots from the paintball shoot on Friday. John is wearing the suit I built for him out of EVA foam (my first one).
Thanks, minoribus! John already had a paintball mask, so luckily for me I didn’t have to build that as well. I had him keep it off for the pictures, but you can see it on the ground next to the backdrop in the second image.
And a quick question before I go, does anyone know if it’s possible to use an image sequence for an environment texture in Cycles? Even if it requires an unofficial build of Blender?
Nooooooo…don’t hit Mary … hit James instead:) Ok I’m confused… is the suit for the falling cars animation, or the gun/hologram video?
Have a safe trip to Maryland…get yourself some crab when you’re there.
Harley - The suit is for the same video as the 1,000 cars, but a different segment. The idea was to find things we could do with 1,000 of something, and I wanted to include a VFX segment since that is what many of our viewers are interested in.
And thanks! I used to live on the eastern shore of Maryland, so I’ll be sure to find some crab cakes before I go back!
Minoribus - Thanks for posting that, I’m very glad to see image sequences are finally supported in Cycles! That was such a basic feature that we needed, I didn’t know if it would get implemented anytime soon. Now I don’t have to render separately with BI and composite. Thanks again!
Sorry I’m not able to check out everyone’s threads right now, it takes about 5 minutes to load a page out here!
Hey, it’s my 1,000th post here on Blender Artists, just about exactly two years after joining.
I got back from my trip last Wednesday, and have been catching up on all the new work. Finally I can focus on this again. I’ve added a more realistic undercarriage to the cars- I did a google search for “undercarriage”, found a decent result and ran it through Crazy Bump to generate some quick normal and specular maps.
It’s been raining all day today, but with a little luck I’ll be able to shoot the final background plates and HDRI tomorrow morning! I want the final video to be out by the end of the week.
The under carriage looks like it will work just fine, with all the motion blur doubtful if you will see much detail anyway. But if a car happens to roll or slide toward the camera, this should look just fine I think.
Hi, James, I hope you enjoyed your trip! That industry area in your last renders just a stand in for lighting? The undercarriage looks good and I agree with Harleynut it work very well when everything is in motion. It was a good idea to let it run through Crazybump, which is an awesome program by the way, but unfortunately a bit expensive.
Are you going to shoot a real HDRI? If time allows it would be interesting to hear how you do that.
harley - Thanks, your input makes me feel better about how well the bottom of the chassis will hold up on-screen. It was something I never had to worry about with the GTA video, but as soon as I started testing it became very apparent I needed something on the bottom of the car.
minoribus - Thanks, my trip went well. You’re correct, the background seen in the last renders is just a placeholder HDRI. I shot my chrome ball HDRI this morning, as well as the background plates that I’ll be camera mapping onto the scene geometry. I also can’t currently afford Crazy Bump, so I’m just using the demo version- but it would be a handy program to have one day!
Also, until I can afford a fisheye lens, I’ll have to continue shooting Christmas ornaments to generate my HDR environment maps; but I did think of a simple way to combine them to create a full, 360 degree map with accurate reflections. I didn’t need to do it for this scene, because the background geometry will create the background reflections for me, but I’ll post a little tutorial about the process. Maybe I’ll even make a short video for it.
It seems I’ve caught a bit of a bug, so I’m taking it easy for the next few days. I’ll continue to post updates as they come. Also, is it just me, or are the forums a bit slow lately? It seems like there have been far fewer posts since summer began.
It seems I’ve caught a bit of a bug, so I’m taking it easy for the next few days. I’ll continue to post updates as they come. Also, is it just me, or are the forums a bit slow lately? It seems like there have been far fewer posts since summer began.
I hope that you’ll feel better soon. And I too have the feeling that the number of posts on the forum has decreased although there are a Blender Guru- and a Bender Cookie-Competition at the same time. Summer, holidays, soccer world cup, …, plenty of reasons for Blender to take a back seat.
When you shoot the chrome ball - how do you prevent to see yourself with the camera in the photos? That’s something I’m asking myself for a long time now
You’re right, I forgot that a lot of people get very excited about the World Cup. It’s funny, when summer comes, the activity on this forum goes down, but in other places on the internet, activity goes up a little bit. Summer usually means more views on YouTube, because many of YT’s audience (young children and teenagers) are now off from classes and free to browse the internet more often.
I’ve made a list of 13 new videos I want to put out over the next 5 months, so hopefully we’ll get half of those out before the end of summer.
Regarding the chrome ball reflections, I know there is a technique where you can shoot exposures from two different angles, and combine them into one (like this), but that’s a lot of work for what I’m doing. Additionally, you could just paint out the reflections in Photoshop. I don’t bother, though.
What I do instead is use my longest lens (70-300 mm), set it to 300mm, and this helps to reduce my reflection as much as possible. Normally I’ll use my cabled shutter release to eliminate camera movement, but on this shoot I didn’t have it with me.
Below is one of the bracketed images from the shoot:
But honestly, I don’t really like the way it looks. I think some things are probably a little bit off in the compositing, but that’s nitpicking. Really I think the light looks boring. I liked the look of the lighting in the previous scene, where the light is a lot more diffuse. But I think to save time here, I might just skip the whole live-action environment and just create something more like the scene in my first renders in my original post. It might seem a little lazy, but ultimately it will give me many more camera angles to choose from, and I think the whole sequence will be a lot more fun thanks to that.
I decided to render it out in full HD and 4096 samples per pixel. Even at this many samples, there’s still a good bit of fireflies, but I’ll sort that out later. I really like the “wet ground” look, and the desert setting gives it some visual interest without requiring a lot of work. I may add some extra stuff like a small wall around the perimeter, but for the most part I think this is how it will look.
I’ve added some funky compositing to it here, but will probably dial back the funk for the final animation.
That’s quite a change James. Curious on a couple things, are you planning on leaving the camera about this distance or will you be pulling back. Also wondering if your still planning on using as many cars?
I may add some extra stuff like a small wall around the perimeter
I would think you would almost have to have a wall, so the cars have something to prevent them from falling off of the ground plane.
I’ll have the camera pulled back further at the end of the animation, once all the cars are in the shot. I do still plan on rendering 1,000 of them. I also plan on adding some additional camera angles as well, now that I’m not limited to live-action plates; things like top-down shots, POV shots from a car’s perspective, and slow motion.
And you’re right about the cars probably falling off- That ground plane is pretty big, but I’m sure some of them would end up sliding quite a ways before coming to a stop.
Have a nice trip and I’m looking forward to your next update.
