digital: It’s a Quicktime movie. That’s what you need.
Godzilla: Not really a wire, but here’s a viewport screengrab, also showing the nodes for each scenes (note that the background and ships were animated together but rendered separately in both cases).
Attachments
that is truly beautiful great work
GREAT !!!
The matte paint is very cool !!!
Exept the starship and the fx of the reactor…
I think they are a little bit less good than the rest.
By the Way…
It’s a amazing job !!!
Fantastic render (i havent seen the animation yet, bandwidth seems to have hit a limit at the moment).
One thing i notice is that the same metal texture being re-used over and over, such repetition distracts me a littel bit. Also i find something a bit unsatisfactory with the background, there sees to be a lack of horizon (the sky being a bit too washed out for my taste) and i cant really see any properly distant buildings.
That said, the materials look nearly perfect, and the lighting looks pretty much perfect, it has a realistic washed out bright day feel to it.
Nice stuff Bertrand!
4*
Thanks Animal. All your points make sense. I should vary the textures for the buildings, but each time I do, the city starts looking Lego-like, somehow. It just takes away the homogeneity (and therefore credibility) of it. Not sure why.
I’m currently working on a new version of the animation with a little bit of help from friends who know what they’re doing better than I do. Looking much better already. Will post later.
Wow! That is tres cool!
BbB
You are great!
No Andrey. YOU are great!
Hi guys,
Here’s a new version of the cityscape animation. With a little bit of AE for extra punch. I think it’s much better now.
Yes, a lot better, good job on correcting the ships.
One thing, do you think the ships should cast shadow a bit?
Better, I think I see improvements such as lightened scene, hazy background, lens flare and better ship movements. See you got the CA in there as well. 
I think there should be a slightly longer lead in to the camera movement before the ships and lens flare hit, the first frame is already showing the flare so you don’t get that appearing from behind the building cinematic type feel. Unless there is a shot before this one to lead into this animation?
Maybe the animation should be a little longer to see the ships exit to right side, it feels a bit of an abrupt end when you consider it as a animation in it’s self, if there was a shot following it then no problem maybe.
The ships path appears to come very close to the building on far left, like they will almost hit it, then they appear to correct their flight path averting impact.
Is their more to come :-)?
Thanks guys. All points taken.
I think I’ll leave this one there for the time being. The idea is to do a reel when I have enough material (which is far from being the case yet). It should be cut like a trailer, so the individual shots will most likely be a lot shorter than this one (a 10-second shot is too long for a trailer, I think).
I wanted to do more work on the Terragen fly-by, but I think I’ll get rid of the ships altogether in this one.
Shame, I spent a long time texturing these ships and they end up being almost invisible. I might use them again at some stage.
hhofren: re the shadows: I went some of the way by making the buildings cast a shadow on the ships. Not the other way round, though, and that’s something that’s definitely missing. Unfortunately, I had a problem creating matte shadows. The “only shadow” button didn’t seem to work for some strange reason.
amazing, such detail!
great work
Hi BbB!
Looks fantastic! Really great, will look into the above posts concerning camera projection, really gave me some inspiration.
Some suggestions as to the ships (from a “real world” point of view, I´m not a Blender pro yet).
- Do the movements of the ships (like tilting to the side) correspond to their flight path? Like they would tilt to change direction, we would expect that. They must have some kind of “Antigravity” thing, apparently, so if they tilt, they WOULD move sideways, considering the forces involved.
- Also they would probably interact with the air more, meaning: turbulence, some small shifts and movements. And maybe also some tiny changes in speed.
- Concerning the texture: both scenes are fairly bright, harsh sunlight, so they would, I think, get more light, dark as they may be. Plus more reflections from the ground, especially in the desert. That´s a very bright environment, and it would reflect more light, making them reddish on the bottom, whilst the sky would give them more blue light from above. And in the city, consider their behaviour when flying into the shade, they would pass a pretty sharp border there, like the shadows on the ground suggest, with a clearly visible drop in brightness. So, in the sun they would need to be brighter.
- The halos: where visible, they are very bright, and pretty “opaque” (as in: where there´s halo, there´s no more background). In real world terms (as they are - I assume - hot plasma, meaning: transparent air, hot enough to emit light), this means they are very, very bright (even thought they´re not white), bright enough to completely glare out the background. Now in your image, they do that with the (relatively bright) city, here and there, but not with the (darker) ship itself. So, where the halo blocks out the dark ship, the ship can be seen, where the same halo blocks out the bright city, the halo dominates. Seems illogical to me. Additionaly, IF they´re so bright, their source would itself need to be very bright as well, probably brighter than the halos, possibly the brightest spot in the scene. And the brightness would probably fall off from the source/exhaust/engine outwards to the edges of the halo, while you have a bright engine, a very bright halo, and at times dark space in between…
Plus: considering they´re SO bright, in my opinion they´re a touch too colorful, would probably be more whitish, at least in the center. - The heat haze: really nice idea, wouldn´t have thought of it. Still, in the real world it would probably be more turbulent, as it´s, again, basically only heated air, which would be somewhat dragged behind the ships, or otherwise disturbed, anyway it wouldn´t have a clear edge between “inside” the haze and “outside”, or at least that edge would move somewhat…
So, all this said, I really love your scene. Very inspiring… :o) Makes me wanna do my own!
Hi BbB, only just now saw version 3. Much better indeed. So most of my suggestions above are obsolete.
I still think they would get significantly darker when flying through the shade. And hhoffren is right about the shadow of the ships themselves, that would give it a nice additional touch, tie them into the scene much more.
Only take care you don´t knock your camera off the tripod flying by! Poor thing almost topples over! ;o) A bit less shake might do, like if it´s just the vibrations of the engines making the air shake, or something. How close is the fly-by, anyway? Might try and get as close as possible, as if the ships (or one of them), misses the camera only by one or two inches, see how that looks, but that´s just an idea…
Still love this, looks great, feels great…
buh buh buh BbB i still very much admire the tenacity with which you attack these projects. i can never seem to find time to finish the projects i start to even near the level of detail/completion id like to.
VERY solid work on that last vid!
if i may ask, are the trees instanced geometry or cutouts? the one major problem (among many, har har) is vegetation and chucking it through Vray and the Vray exporter without breaking things.
keep it coming, cant wait for that reel!
The detail is AMAZING. I can only dream of having such scenery in my sci-fi games. This is very inspiring so please make more. =) I can’t watch the animations, however. They don’t seem to work for me.
- Kujiforo
Alright. I’ve been searching all over the net for this effect, and you are hopefully my saving grace. How did you get the effect where the air and scenery almost ‘bend’ behind the reactors of your ships in your desert scene?
PLEASE RESPOND! I NEED YOUR HELP!
please! I must know this ancient secret! I neeeeeeeeed it!!!:eek: