Hello! I have another project I’m working on that I wanted to share. For our “1,000 Subscriber Celebration” video, I wanted to do something special for our Blender fans, so I decided to render not just one cool sports car, but 1,000 of them. I have a feeling it will turn out to be easier said than done!
I’d like the cars to rain down from the sky into a live action environment. Ideally, I’d like parts of the cars to fly off (tires, side view mirrors, etc), and for the wheels to look like they have a suspension. If there is a way to have particle sparks emit when two objects touch each other (with enough force), I’d like to add that as well.
As you can see, I’m using a decimated version of Veti’s Koenigsegg for the simulation. Initially, I had also parented the original model to it (with the high resolution on a separate layer), then Alt+D duplicated them both to create copies. That worked well, with the one issue that the high res layer became very, very laggy after just 8 duplicates. So for now I’ve just been focusing on rendering with the low poly model.
Render times aren’t terrible (I’ve given the windshield an opaque material to help with that), and simulation times are relatively quick. I was wondering, is it possible to use LOD (level of detail) functions inside the main Blender editor, or is that reserved only for the game engine? That is something that would be hugely helpful to me on this video.
Unfortunately, no. I really hope they port those features over, but for now they are BGE only.
You could start with the first car doing a super hi-res smash effect with glass shattering and suspension and doors flying off, then zoom out a bit further as the deluge of automobiles start coming down at a lesser level of detail, with a few key cars being more detailed to keep it believeable.
maybe have them crash into the ocean? water sims can be a bitch, but particle effects can hide a lot of detail. Maybe make an island out of burning cars as they pile up under water?
Really cool project, James. I love the crazy stuff you put together.
You also might want to look into kai kostack’s demolition addon. I know there is a thread for it around here somewhere, but here is a link to a demo on Blendernation
Those are some cool suggestions, SterlingRoth. I like the idea of so many cars falling into the water that they start to form an island of debris! I’d like to have the first car pull up into frame, using Blazraidr’s car rig tutorial, and then have the remaining cars fall down onto it. It would be nice to have all 1,000 cars fall into frame, and settle, and then perhaps have a leaf or a bird land on top of the pile and everything explodes like a nuclear bomb, but that would require an insane amount of simulation that I know my computer couldn’t handle. Maybe instead it’s better to cut to some stock footage of a nuclear bomb test (maybe cliche, but at least the joke still works).
I think you’re right about having some high-res versions of the car placed into the scene to help out; at least some of the cars that will be placed closer to the camera.
I’m learning about rigid body spring constraints tonight, so hopefully the movement of wheels will aid in the animation looking more real.
And thanks as well for mentioning Kai’s demolition add-on! I remember seeing that a few years ago and wanting to do something with it! I’ll take a look again at it and see if I can use it.
James you’ve got the coolest ideas for these projects. Looking forward to more. Only thing I can think to consider changing is the cars are all the same color. It might be nice to have some variation, if possible. Also, the flying pieces of the cars would add a lot to the scene, I think.
I got the car wheels moving as though they had a suspension. They don’t behave perfectly, but I think for this video they will look good enough.
Frobenius, it’s funny you mention that, I had just been thinking the same thing earlier this evening. I followed a tutorial on CG Cookie and did a test:
I only have 500 cars here. There isn’t much left to do with the cars now, I’ll just create some proper low-poly tires for them, and maybe some parts to fall off the bottom of the chassis, and then move on to the environment. I should note, the spring constraint allows the tires to separate from the vehicle if enough force is applied, so that helps to sell the debris effect.
One thing I have to decide is, how will the cars fall? Should they be all over the place, in big stacks, should they face different directions or all one direction as they fall? This also has a big effect on the “funniness” of the final sequence. I did some tests, and some formations were definitely a lot less funny than others.
Here is an old FreddieW video (from the golden era of FreddieW). The effect starts at 1:32, this is what I want to beat:
Not just in terms of quantity but of quality as well. Hopefully there will be enough funny details to make it surpass the “FreddieW quality” benchmark.
Thank you Vicky (and Frobenius, whom I forgot to thank), I do try to think of fun or creative ideas for the videos. Initially, I considered having a wall transform into a portal of some kind, and shoot out 1,000 Suzanne heads which would float around before falling to the ground. But then I decided this might be easier and take less time in the long run. By the way, I looked it up and they destroyed 103 cars in the original Blues Brothers film. I would’ve thought it was more!
I think you’re right, harley. I did an animation test tonight to see what it looks like. It’s only about 100 cars, and the camera is a lot closer than it will be in the final scene. I just had to place it in this position due to the backplate images available with the HDR I’m using in this test. I projected the backplate onto a very simple plane w/ 2 walls. This way I didn’t have to do any compositing for the shadows or ground reflections.
A lot of tires falling off at the end there! I want to refine the car rig so that the tires don’t go through the fenders, hopefully this will be a simple fix. I also need to have a higher resolution mesh for the car itself, and add back in the details such as lights and some body panels.
If you want to really go far with this add the cloth sim on the cars exterior, put “Plastic” way up and just fiddle around with the setting and you can get dent-able cars. (and that would be awesome)
(aaargh! after seeing the lego movie I can’t even type the word “awesome” without getting that song back in my head, aaargh!)
and if you don’t know what I mean; HERE
tc4266 - You’re right! I will try playing around with the mesh in that area of the car to see if I can keep the tires from clipping through the fender. I think this is a situation where the way the cars move is just as important as how they look (regarding polygon density and shaders, etc). Hopefully I can get some doors flying off as well!
Journeyman - Thanks for that tip! While I may not be able to do it on this specific video (I don’t know if I’ll even be able to render 1,000 cars, let alone run cloth sims on them), I do have a couple videos coming up that I’d like to try it on, including a new “Real Life GTA” video. Thanks for mentioning the “Plastic” setting!
And while I have not seen the LEGO movie, somehow I still knew immediately what you were talking about. Thanks for posting the link, though, the movie looks cool!
The video looks very cool James… What do you think is causing the tires to penetrate the fenders? Is it the low poly of the cars?
But it does reallly help sell the effect seeing the cars suspension in action.
I’m sure your going to do something like this… but a ground level camera looking up at the stack of cars as they first fall would look pretty cool I think.
I have a feeling that the way the car body is set up in the Rigid Body settings is what is causing the issue. The body is all one object with the “convex hull” bounds, and I don’t think this is accurate enough to stop the tires from poking through. I may have to create a simple mesh just to control the tires from going too far up into the wheel wells, and then disable it from rendering.
You’re also right about the camera angle looking up; I wanted to show more of a high angle in this test, but the backplate that was supplied with the HDR probe only allowed for this angle. But I’ll be sure to show better angles in the final animation!
I’m also thinking about having the animation in three waves of falling cars. One wave of maybe 8 or 10 cars, then another wave of around 200 cars, and a final wave of the remaining ~800 cars. And maybe adding a counter in the corner to show the total number on screen. This is due to showing cars interacting with each other (I quite liked the way 8 cars flopped around together in my tests), but also the practical limitation of getting 1,000 cars on the ground in a reasonable amount of time. The fastest way is to have big columns of cars falling, but if that is all we see in the video, then it’s not as funny, because it’s just a tidal wave of objects and there’s too much to focus on.
The last video already looks very cool and I really hope you’ll find a way to work around the penetrating tires. I don’t have any practical experience in this field of Blender. But if the car bodies and the tires are all separate rigid bodies they should not penetrate each other? In this video, which you may know already although it is a different kind of animation, Andrew Price mentions that it is important to set the origin of every object to its geometry.
I figured out what the issue was (after an hour of trying complicated work-arounds); I just had to adjust the maximum height of the spring constraint, which limits how far it can move along the z-axis. In this case, it means essentially how much the suspension can compress.
Thank you for that video link, minoribus! The chain workflow will be helpful to me when I begin work on the third and final video in my “Rigid Bodies” series. Hopefully that will be done sometime this fall.
Here is a test render with the updated suspension, as well as the nearly completed car:
Essentially, each car is composed of a low poly body and 4 low poly tires, as well as high poly versions of each. The high poly (HP) meshes are parented to their low poly (LP) counterparts, but the LP’s are disabled from rendering. I have my HP’s on a separate layer to hide them from the viewport, so it’s kind of like rendering with proxies.
I scouted locations for the car drop video today. I found two that fit the bill, meaning they have enough space to hold 1,000 cars, and they have interesting enough geometry around them (buildings for cars to bounce off of). I could just use a mall parking lot, but that’s not very interesting to look at.
Option 1 is behind the local Michael’s/Bed Bath & Beyond:
Either one would be fine, You might want to think about other sky backplates you may need to use when looking up in the sky at the stacked pile. Did you by anychance take any photos of the sky when you were at the shoot.
Speaking of the shoot… I’m envisioning Best Buy security guard saying… hmmm who’s this crackpot taking pictures of our dumpsters
Both are good, but I’d prefer #1. There is much more structure and geometry. Perhaps the second shot falls behind a bit, because the shot was taken with backlight, whereas you took the first picture with the sun in your back. Maybe the second shot would also look more interesting with the light coming from the other direction.
I agree with Frobenius.Edge, you do always have great ideas 
LOL
