Legion in front of Petra - Blender Animation CGI

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Hi, Here is a new Blender 2.92 crowd animation rendered in Cycles about the Ancient Roman Empire annexed the Nabataean Kingdom, renamed in Arabia Petraea.

:white_check_mark: THE ARTWORK: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OoRNEJ

While watching some documentaries about Ancient Rome and the Nabataean civilization, I decided to make a new 3D animation project. By using the new features of Blender 2.92, I wanted to update my workflow, in order to combine 3d render with volume. In addition, I work on animation and integration of 3d soldier character, which is clearly not my specialty. The magnificent tomb, Al-Khazneh (or The Treasury) is created entirely with the Megescan 3d asset library. So, this 3d reproduction is not 100% historically accurate, especialy with the statues. This project was carried out over 2 weeks, during my free time.

:arrow_right: Scene set-up
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. The scene is compose of two collections. The first one includes meshs like soldiers, terrain, environment etc. The second collection gathers volumes (VDB simulation).
To limit the rendering time, I render a first pass including only the first collection with the soldiers and the environment (render setting: 3440x1440p, 496 samples, with Motion Blur) Then a second pass with only the volumes, with the collection including meshs as a mask (holdout functionality). I lowered the samples to 96 and I deactivated the motion blur.

https://cdn-animation.artstation.com/p/video_sources/000/242/182/petra-combine.mp4

https://cdn-animation.artstation.com/p/video_sources/000/242/185/petra-pass.mp4

:arrow_right: Workflow
Environement created with the Megascans 3d assets library: https://quixel.com/megascans/collections?category=environment&category=natural&category=canyons-of-utah
Assets animated on Blender 2.92 (+ Some animations from Mixamo)
VDB FX Simulation and Cloth sim on Blender 2.92
Render in 4k with Blender 2.93 Optix Cycles (456 samples) on a RTX 2080 TI (23 mins/frame)
Post-production & Compositing on After Effects 2020
Final mix on Premiere Pro

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:arrow_right: PC specs
I9 7960X
64GB DDR4
RTX 2080Ti

Thanks for watching

191 Likes
2

Love it. My first thought was that if you replaced some of the foreground soldiers with Green Screen actors and maybe added another Green Screen Senator looking down from above the Temple doorway this would be feature film quality work. Well done.

3 Likes
3

2 weeks?! fantastic!

3 Likes
4

Thanks for watching,
The 3d objects come from the Megascans library. The Roman legionaries have already served for other 3d projects. So, I was mostly working on the 3d environment and animation.

3 Likes
5

Do you use sheepit? How long did it take to render?

6

Thanks for watching!

7

No, I use 2 RTX 2080TI with Optix Cycles. 496 samples; 3440x1440p (23 mins/frame)

2 Likes
8

Beautifull
Thank you

1 Like
9

Beautiful work and detail :grinning:

1 Like
10

Beautiful!

1 Like
11

Thanks for the comment !

12

Volumetrics, lights … everythings look cool, really great work!

1 Like
13

Incredible!!! :+1: :+1: :+1: :grinning: :grinning:

1 Like
14

Really really nice. I can’t imagine waiting long enough to render an animation. I get impatient just rendering a single image.

1 Like
15

Thanks for watching,

Yes, it takes time…
Optix for Cycles was a game-changer. However, you still need a powerful Nvidia video card.

16

This is amazing and very inspiring. Love the atmosphere of this shot, and the sound effects of the marching soldiers in the animation make it perfect.

1 Like
17

Thank you !

18

Woooah! And Indiana ;)…??

1 Like
19

This is amazing!

1 Like
20

WOWWWW!
That’s awesome!

1 Like