I feel like the stills look okay (though feedback is welcome on them as well!). However, when I try to do some test animations with the ship, it doesn’t feel like the vastness of space and the size of the planet relative to the spaceship is being communicated. Here’s the animation:
This is a very rough first test of the animation, but I could use some direction on how to improve the sense of scale. Thanks so much for any help!
The scale between the planet and the spaceship seems strange, I feel like the spaceship is too big.
Are the relative distance between the planet, spaceship and the camera correct?
The spaceship shadow cast on the planet seems too big, which makes the spaceship seems too close to the planet, what type of light are you using?
The movement speed of the spaceship seems too fast, and the planet seems to move too much as well (for the planet i think the problem is in the camera movement + focal length setting)
The DoF of the camera seems to narrow for a space scene (but this is closely related to the camera setting and the relative distance i mentioned above)
If you could take a screenshot of your scene (especially the position of the spaceship, the planets and the camera), it would be really helpful.
Thanks so much for the feedback–this is already hugely helpful.
The spaceship is about 40 times smaller than a planet. This is of course unrealistic, but it was easier to manage in the viewport. Should I aim for more realistic sizes/distances?
The relative distances/sizes are definitely not correct, which you’re right is probably a problem. A real planet is about 900,000-1 million times larger than a spaceship; can Blender handle representing these kinds of scales accurately? I wasn’t sure which is why I was looking for tricks, but if that’s the best way to go I can definitely try that!
I just noticed the shadow, which was weird because the spaceship actually isn’t close enough. It turns out that’s an artifact from how I’m generating the spaceship exhaust. Its a great catch, you’re totally right about it making it seem like the spaceship is too close!! I’ll remove that and see if it substantially improves it.
Can you elaborate on the camera movement+focal length setting bit? I can adjust those–how should I try to fix this? Should I be using a very long focal length (currently its at 50 mm, should I go full telephoto?) with very little camera movement?
As best as I can tell I have not enabled any depth of field in the settings; is there some other effect you’re noticing?
Ah, based on your reply and the screenshot, now I understand why something feels off when I watch the animation. I will try to keep it short and simple, but if you need further details, feel free to ask😃
The answer to no. 1 and 2 is closely related, so I will answer both at the same time:
In short, something that feels off is the perspective. In photography (maybe also in cinematography), the position of the camera (relative to the subject/spaceship and the background/planet) defines the perspective, and the focal length controls the framing. Because the distance from the camera to the spaceship is so close (on top of the fact that the spaceship is bigger than reality), the relative movement/speed between those 2 objects inside the frame is kinda strange.
Maybe you could fake the scale to make it more manageable, but it’ll need some camera planning/calculation first (I only got a rough idea about what to adjust, but I’m still not sure and have to try it first).
I see, so it’s not a shadow, but the artifact from the heat effect from the exhaust.
I think 50mm is too wide for a space scene, i guess a very long telephoto lens is more suitable so that it could also compress the perspective. And btw, focal length FOV depends on the sensor size, what size is your camera sensor in that scene?
As for the movement, i think a subtle directional movement would be more suitable because you want to convey the vastness of space (think about the movement of an astronaut in space in a movie), and i definitely don’t recommend using a camera shake (random movement) here. Maybe you can try moving the pivot point of the camera slightly forward to make the parallax fx more pronounced.
A for the position of the camera, it depends on which point of view you want to use, is it from another ship behind the subject spaceship? or from the director’s point of view, which usually from far far far far far away (but do remember my answer on no. 2)
If you didn’t enable the DoF, then it’s already the right choice IMO, even if it’s enabled, shooting a scene like this would be using a Hyperfocal distance (infinite DoF / everything is in focus).
I asked about this because I noticed that the spaceship is far sharper than the planet, that’s why I feel like your 1st image is more realistic than your 3rd image. I don’t know if the difference in sharpness is because of the texture resolution (maybe it is already fully procedural), bloom fx, atmospheric distance, or anything else. It won’t be on the same sharpness, but surely not this far apart as in the animation/3rd image.
Hope that helps!
If it’s possible, can I look at the blend file? you can remove all the shading/material, and change the spaceship to a proxy or placeholder shape. I only want to look at the camera setting and movement.
This is absolutely brilliant advice–thank you so much for your patience and help!
I will try fixing the perspective and the other points you’ve raised, and I’ll let you know how that goes.
In the meantime, for your requests, the size of the camera sensor is 35 mm. Here is a link to the blend file: https://file.io/MXx5BCC4BAKJ I don’t mind sharing but I removed some of the larger image textures and such for convenience! The file is already quite large for some reason haha
Thank you again for all your advice! I’m excited to incorporate it.
Ah, I see that you already deleted the file, maybe you thought that I already downloaded the file when I give a like to your post (I’ve liked your post on my mobile while on lunch😅)
Maybe you could DM me if you don’t mind sharing it privately (you could also compress the blend file if the size is still big even if you already removed the large textures).
I could recreate the scene by looking at your screenshot but I also want to look at the spaceship animation path too.
Work to scale and you’ll never go wrong. Be methodical with your initial setup. I’ve no idea what your setup is, but speaking as a former 3D matte painter who frequently worked with client camera tracks, I always converted the camera track to path animation and put it all in a heirachy so I could scale, rotate and translate the “rig” parent appropriately in my scene. You can then reduce/enlarge the scale of the heirarchy/scene to a known predetermined scale (I did that by factors of 10 as a rule) so you’re not guessing and stressing about the movement looking right. Matching Terragen (which works in real world scales), for example, to XSI/Maya tracks and elements was a breeze thereafter, and I could concentrate on getting the rest looking good.
Maybe obvious advice, but look at how big sci-fi movies do it. Take, for example, this scene from Star Wars:
I think one of the big differences to your animation is that in the clip above we can see the spaceships getting smaller as they approach the planet, while in yours the ship disappears from the camera as soon as it starts to get closer.
I can’t find the scene now, but in some other movie they make the ship com from behind the camera, flying in an arc towards the planet until it becomes a single pixel. This makes the planet look huge compared to the ship.
You might also want to mimic the “curvature” of the planet from those movies. Regardless of real proportions, most people will only know how big a planet is compared to a spaceship from other sci-fi movies. If the proportions in your movie are different, they will feel wrong.
my bad! that’s so strange, I wonder if the link expired. I was using some janky online file-sharing haha, I’ll try creating a google drive link in a moment.
@Millani@Tarby Thanks so much for the references and suggestions! As part of the next attempt, I’ll try to make everything to scale and mimic cinematic camera tracks–I’ve been using a few from The Mandalorian as a reference that I can lean more into. I really appreciate all the help!
Btw, i don’t know if you’re already solved the issue with the scale, but if you want to use a non realistic scale on the scene, you can trick it as long they are not scaled by an arbitrary number.
for example (assuming that the planet is the reference scale):
If the spaceship is twice as big, then use half speed for the spaceship animation, if the distance is also 2x closer than the original distance, then use 1/4 speed for the animation.
The camera follows the same logic for sensor size, focal length and movement speed adjustment if the distance is scaled up/down (and don’t forget that sensor size is affected by blender unit scale).
Just wanted to say another HUGE thanks to you guys. I reworked the scene using all the tips and tricks you suggested, and I am much, much happier with the results I’ve been seeing. What definitely helped the most was referencing a real movie scene and actually scaling the scene properly (i.e., not using tricks to try to convey scale). Lots of work to do but I feel the scale problem has been effectively addressed. Here’s my latest attempt with some sound effects from an existing movie:
I am way happier with the way the scale feels now and its completely thanks to your extremely helpful comments. Will definitely be posting more here to take advantage of the wisdom of the forum; what an excellent resource you all are.
