I promise I won’t use the same sound effects that GT6 video does! I do have an idea of what it could sound like, but don’t know how to put it into words. What is is called when we use a word to parallel a sound? Onomatopoeia? Approximately, I envision the sounds being very much like whooshes, or electronic burning, maybe sizzling. I think the concept of the car spawning into the video game would require a lot of energy, and because this is a digital world, I think that energy should reflect it’s digitized environment. I wish I knew more about sound design, as this is an area I could use a lot of improvement in. I can imagine different sounds all the time, but have no idea how to actually create them!
And to answer your question, minoribus- I know you can also use particles to get the same effect. Just set verts as the “grow from” area or whatever it’s called, instead of faces or edges or whatever the other options are. Then, you can use weight painting to designate a growth pattern. There is a really cool tutorial I saw that shows how to use the movement of an object to control weight painting, which in turn controls the particle growth. It sounds a little complicated, but maybe it will be useful to you in the future:
As for this project, I’m just going to keep it simple and use the Build Modifier to create a duplivert generation effect. I’ve also found the Decimate Modifier is handy for not only reducing the density of high-poly meshes, but (if you set it to unsubdivide) you can set it to odd numbered levels and get “diagonalized vertices” as I’ve taken to calling them. It can make a mesh look a little more organic and less grid-like. The whole “unsubdivided” feature is also very handy on objects that have had subdivisions applied before you begin working on the file. The rear bumper was like that. It’s not a perfect solution, but seems to work well.
I wanted to share today’s update with you all. I’ve got all my dupliverts set up properly, and now all I have to do is animate them into their shots! Whoohoo!
Here is a frame showing what the car looks like in duplivert form. It turned out looking a little cooler than I expected.
The scene is a little laggy in the viewport, but renders each frame in about 16 seconds on CPU. I’ll see if I can get it to render with the GPU without crashing. I’d had some issues with crashes while trying to render higher-poly meshes with dupliverts on GPU. I don’t think it’s the polygon count, but rather the total number of objects in the scene, which has given me some trouble. With all these dupliverted planes, the total vertex count is only about 1.5 million, but the total object count reaches over 312,000. Over 300,000 objects! Sheesh. Thank goodness that doesn’t show up in my outliner.
Damn…that looks very cool indeed James. Looking forward to seeing how the animation is going to come out, but if this is any indication, I’m guessing it’s going to look great.
Thanks, harley! If you ever want to try it yourself, the only adjustments I made to the raw render in After Effect were adding “Tint” and “Glow”. When I rendered from Blender, I turned on Transparency for the film, so that the background is gone, and saved the image as a PNG with alpha. But with this type of image, you could also just render it with a black background, and set the blending mode to something appropriate, like screen.
Then just pick a color you like for the Tint, and adjust the glow intensity until you’re happy. Those are just the basic important controls, there are a ton more you can tweak for small changes.
Thanks James for the suggestion on how to use the particle system to create such an effect. With a particle system I can image how one could keyframe different vertex groups to create such an effect. And thanks for the video. Using weight paint together with dynamic paint opens a lot of other possibilities for this.
Your render looks pretty cool with all this light emitting dupliverts on the mesh. Your animation is going to be fascinating.
Thanks, Frobenius! I’m making good progress, and hope to have all my dupliverted shots completed by the end of this week. I’ve noticed some very strange errors or glitches occurring while animating these heavier scenes. Objects will seemingly rescale or rotate themselves when I’m not looking. Very strange, and it does cause things to take longer when I have to go back and reset them. But no matter, the first shots are finally being rendered.
I’ve continued to work on the GTA video every day (even on Christmas; in fact, that’s pretty much all I did on Christmas!) and I’m happy to announce that I’m nearing the end of the process. The last of the car shots are rendering now, and then I will be adding the finishing touches. I anticipate the final video will be uploaded within 10 days time.
Between now and then, I’ll be uploading some little teasers how and there, just to generate a little extra bit of anticipation for the film. It’s certainly not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I am proud of it, and I think it will be one of my best videos so far. I also want to thank everyone who’s been contributing to this thread and offering suggestions; your support is very much appreciated, and has been a great motivation to stick with the project for over three months now. Many nights, such as this one, have been spent working until morning.
Also, thank you to everyone who’s subscribed to Classy Dog! It’s great to know people appreciate our hard work and actually want to see more of our videos (I know I still can’t believe it!). Thank you, and stay tuned for some sneak peaks in the coming days!
It sounds like your happy with how it is coming out James, that is a good sign of things to come, because often with these projects, there is no one harder on any flaws than the creator.
Thank you, harley, I have to agree with you. It makes me worry that I am being overconfident of my work, but not too much. I’ll continue to try to do the best I can on this project until it’s completed, and then hopefully be able to build on that experience with my next videos. And hopefully my speed of work will improve a little, too!
Thank you as well, minoribus, here is today’s teaser!
Here are some tips I learned as well, while trying to create this particular effect: When using dynamic paint to create vertex groups to control particles, I had to use an older version of Blender (in this case Blender 2.67). Otherwise, (at least in Blender 2.68) particles will not render when you set an object or a group of objects as the rendered particle. I’ve not tested it with 2.69, maybe this bug is fixed.
Additionally, you must use hair particles; emission particles do not work with vertex maps from dynamic paint. This does not seem to be a bug, but rather is simply how the particle system works, for whatever reason. I was disappointed, as I’d wanted the particles to float up into the air as they spawned, rather than just sticking to the body. Maybe in the future I will find another way to create this effect (perhaps something in After Effects is also a possibility).
Just to clarify what I’m seeing… Maybe you can clarify, just so I can understand the effect better in this still image
Does the car start out with just the glowing pink particles, than spawn or morph into the real car… or does it start as the real car?
If the pink particles are first ones seen… are they visable all at once, or do they morph/transition into the wireframe?
-If the real car is fully visable at the beginning of the effect… do the bluish particles drive the animation and as they push forward, the pink particles are revealed?
-The only thing that seems a little strange, is the regular shadow which would be under the real car remains after the regular car is disappearing. Is there a way to capture only the shadows of the pink emmission lights?
So many questions Obviously I haven’t played many video games.
I’ve been watching this project since the beginning, but haven’t commented on it until now for some reason. The whole project looks great, and I can’t wait for it to be finished!
harley- In the actual GTA games, I know when a vehicle is spawned, they just instantly appear. Since I wanted to do something more interesting and cinematic, I took “artistic license” and tried to create my own version. Essentially, the wireframe of the car body appears first (not actually a wireframe, but rather the duplivert version of the car, which is supposed to look like the Trapcode Particular effect). Then the other objects of the car (tires, lights, seats, etc) appear, using the build modifier to create them gradually, also in dupliverts just like the body. Once the whole car is existing as dupliverts/pink particles, the bigger blue particles start appearing. These blue particles start at the front bumper, and pass through all the way through to the rear bumper. As they pass through the car, the actual realistic car begins to appear. I’ve used the technique from post #8 to create this transparency effect for the realistic car nodes.
I hope this makes the image above a little more clear. And the dupliverts/pink particles are actually orange, or at least they’re supposed to be. Because I’m using the Add blending mode on them, they seem to change color depending on the pixels in the layers underneath them. Hopefully their color will be more clear in the other shots.
ctdabomb- Thanks for the support, I’m very glad you like the project! I’ve seen many of your vehicle projects, your work is very good!
Also, many thanks to everyone who’s been subscribing to Classy Dog lately. Just 5 more and we’ll reach 400 subscribers, a big milestone for us indeed! Thank you!
James, this is a real teaser. It’s an appetizer for muuuch more and this animation will be really cool. Once you’ve finished that you should do a tutorial on this effect
I’m happy you like it, minoribus! I will certainly consider creating a tutorial, especially if people would be interested in seeing it. The actual workflow is pretty easy to learn, it’s just setting it up which can be tedious. I wish there was a way to set the default keyframe interpolation in the preferences menu! (Is there?)
Wow, I wish I had bothered to look for it now, I would have saved myself a lot of time! Thank you for posting this, minoribus! Yes, many thanks to the Blender devs!
Here’s another teaser from the video. Maybe it’s not quite as sexy as seeing the CG car, but I don’t want to give away ALL the cool shots before the movie is released. So instead you get to look at me.
By the way, does anyone recognize the code on the billboard?
A fellow filmmaker and friend of mine needed some last minute VFX work done for her own short film, ASAP, so that has put some extra work on my plate the past few days. However, Tuesday, January 14th is when I plan to upload the video, so I’m very excited about that.
Wow, I’m excited now and look forward to seeing your teasers!
