Hi, This is my first big animation project. I have been on blender for maybe a year now and I really love it! Of course I started out playing around with water sims and stuff, but now I want to try a animation that’s not a ‘‘test video’’ that you see on youtube. Here’s a render [ best render I ever made] of what I’m going for. {Sorry if its too big, I’m new.}
What gave me the idea was a video on Youtube {link} about a stick figure that gets pissed off and starts to attack the mouse cursor. Mine will kinda be similar, I’m still not sure on a lot of things, I’ll need to learn a little more of the things I already sorta know.
Need to work on/learn…
Rendering: I’ll need to learn about nodes. I hear nodes and renderlayers/passes will help me save render time, which I really need cause of all the grass.
Mountains: They just don’t look right to me…don’t know what I need for that.
Clouds: maybe bring out the clouds from the background and make them 3d.
Sun: I think I might need a sun or a flayer like thing when the cam is looking at the sky.
GUNS!: I got a model of an AK47 assault rifle off a web site and I’m wondering on how I’d animate the flash when shot?
I can go on but I feel like I start to ramble or take up a lot of time for someone to read it all. Some tutorials/tips on the stuff I needed to work on would be appreciated.
For the mountains, they all curve exactly the same way. They vary in height, but not enough in shape. Try experimenting with different kinds of fallof in proportional edit to get different shapes. For the AK-47, a trick I’ve used in the past is: parent an intense light, perhaps a single vertex halo with lines or a four sided star, and a plane with a gunfire sprite image to the end of the gun, but keep them in a seperate layer. When you want the gun to fire, jump these three elements between layers to flash them in and out of view.
Other than that, not much else. The lense flair is a good idea, and I think you might be able to do that with nodes. I think your grass looks phenomenal! Did make the ground a partice emitter and make it emit grass or something? Great job.
Ithepie55: Thanks for the tip, the intense light thing gave me a good image in my mind, Like when the stick figure is shooting I’ll have a medium close up and I can see the flashing of light on the face with every shot. Sorta like in a cool action movie thing. Also I love the grass too! I followed this tutorial and gave awesome picture. Here was the first render I made with it.
SUBSCRIBED!! and I’ve seen that animation before and immediately clicked on this thread when I read the title. I will love to see the method you use for gun fire because it will be a problem I will be coming up against soon enough. LOVING THE GRASS!! I had already followed that tutorial myself but I hadn’t gotten it to look nearly as nice and long and sway-y as yours Plus I really like the golden tops of only some of the grass. Lastly heres a tutorial on clouds http://www.cgcookie.com/articles/non-photorealistic-cumulus-clouds-in-blender
This tutorial is very cool, and the clouds still look good if you don’t want your entire scene to be painstakingly rendered in the manner that it takes to produce the effect (painting with polygons-articles right here http://www.outside-hollywood.com/siggraph/). So you can set it all up and just not use the motion blur. I’ll be awaiting the next update
I’m glad your looking forward to see my animation. Thank you very much for the tutorial, I’m watching it now. The good thing is I will use DOF like in my posted render. so stuff far away won’t need to be so highly detailed.
The grass is awesome!!!
I am still a newbie, but in order to help these mountains look more mountainy - id recommed the falloff, but without subsurf. dodgy though, but atleast itll be pointy and gives more falls and rises.
for the flare - I will suggest using a mesh with a halo - this is simple texture animation.
and the sun - i found using a spot with a flare does the job
BUT like I said - im still a newbie
Well I ran in to that problem. In order to have the realistic clouds. I got to have that motion blur on. I thought I could fix that will nodes. I was thinking of rendering it separate and have the back ground green and just add that in. but I have no Idea how to do that with the nodes. I know how with Sony Vegas. But I did some tests, and re-rendering any movie lowers the quality. anyone know how to solve this? also here’s what I got for the clouds.
Ya your right, so I think I got the shape right this time, here’s an update.
I’m not so sure on how to texture it or if it looks fine. I also made great progress with the gun flash! I’ll give a test render soon. Just need to figure out how to make the shell casings fly out.
Nice gunfire, but a bit stationary. I see the guy holding it and firing the gun but no movement upon the gun or the figure. I like how it’s coming along though!
Plus I really like the golden tops of only some of the grass. Lastly heres a tutorial on clouds 
, It looks sorta better. but I think I’ll add on snow on the pecks.
