A new 3D & VFX Blender 2.9 animation rendered in Cycles about Ancient Rome Empire. In the south of Greece, two armies of legions fighting until death or victory…
By using the new features of Blender 2.90, I wanted to update my workflow, in order to combine 3d render sequences with real live shot. In addition, I work on animation and integration of 3d soldier character, which is clearly not my specialty. This is more of an experimentation than a finished job. There are many things to improve, but I need to move it on… This project was carried out over 3 mounths, during my free time.
The 3D legionnary are organized through groups of instances, which allows to obtain an army without over-loading the scene in Blender. All the legionnary are High-poly 3d models.
Workflow
Shot in the south of France, with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1000 and a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced
Assets modeling in Blender 2.9
Assets textured on Subtance Painter
Assets animated on Blender 2.90 (+ Some animations from Mixamo)
FX Simulation and Cloth sim on Blender 2.9
Render in Full HD with Blender 2.90 Cycles (350 samples) on a RTX 2080 TI (7-12 mins/frame)
Render in Full HD with Blender 2.9 Eevee render engine for the volumetric pass
Post-production & Compositing on After Effects 2020
Final mix on Premiere Pro
Very cool. The modeling, animation etc. looks great. The aqueduct looks 2000 years old which doesn’t make much sense though, I’d expect it to look relatively new. Also, it looks like Romans are fighting Romans?
The aqueduct was built during the 17th century. That’s why I said at the beginning of the video that this animation had no historical value.It is a personal work, just an experiment. The animation takes place during the Roman Empire (at the end). And for the battle, it is a fratricidal battle, as during a Roman civil war.
Ah yes, I missed that line of text at the bottom of the intro the first time I watched it. It doesn’t have to be historically correct to be cool. It’s a great job!
This look… real
Nothing more nothing less. Well, now one man on single ( moderate ) PC can produce stuff which only decade or two earlier was reserved for big ( costly ) production. Hope to see more.
Yes, the problem comes directly from shooting rather than compositing. I shot with a very low-quality camera and drone (especialy the drone), which influenced the quality of the 3D rendering. So I preferred to darken the rendering. I’ll anticipate this part next time.