What would be the easiest way to do this? (from about the 1 minute mark) So far, all I’ve been able to do is simple keyframe animation, which would be incredibly hard for this(especially with a lot of missiles and ships flying everywhere). So, how could I do this?
put the missiles on paths and have them follow the paths would be the easiest way I reckon
the EASIEST way would be to make love, not war.
Or copy the DVD and get a good lawyer …
seriously, dude, there were like a freakin hundred special effects done in that little clip. Any one of them might take you a month to figure out, IF you had the blue screen footage. Like that monster ray coming out of that pit that flew up into space and blew up everything…u might start with Halos, like a billion of them, or halo particles and a vortex guidance thing…and get one two-second shot done in a week, and then move on to the next shot. A lot of times, it is a completely different anim for each shot, but when spliced together it makes a WOW footage.
Hmmm… RogerWickes’ got a good point.
Which effect specifically are you trying to create?
If you’re going for the whole shebang, I would suggest that you either start smaller or expect to see a result in about 2 years.
I’m not really expecting to ever get this done, I just wanted to try it out sometime. 
It would be really cool…
Anyway, with curves, it would be fairly easy to move stuff. I suppose my last question would be how do do the shield effect? So that when an object hits the shield you see the texture, but it’s invisible otherwise? (I don’t even think that this is possible at the moment, but I wanted to ask. :p)
EDIT: I’m just talking about re-creating the CG part, FYI 
Thanks.
This is a better one (Although the blend file mentioned there ain’t there no more no more!)
If you want I could try to dig it up again!
Thanks for the link Ammusionist. I was trying to do it with some lights, but that didn’t work too well. Here’s what it looks like. (note: I had to make 2 textures, one for the center of the blast and one for the outside. The center texture has ‘alpha’ and ‘emit’ on, the 2nd texture only has ‘emit’ on. If I used 1 texture the center would be light and the outer edge would be black)
There was a pretty simple animation you could do that was in the movie. Dig a hole in your back yard and take a picture of it. Use it as a background, and animate halos flying up. that was the start of that monster ray… have fun!!!
I should apologize for being negative. when I made my first commercial using Blender, I remember looking at the storyboard and being overwhelmed. But i just made the first shot, then the second, third…and eventually I had a full minute. So, as Goethe said, Boldness has Genius, Beauty and Magic in it. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, Begin it!
1 Like
Well, the scene jumps from one place to another anyway. I’m just going to render the stuff in Blender and then put it together with Windows Movie maker.
Last question for the moment. Is there any way to make more than 1 empty use the same texture stuff as the empty that currently lights up the shield? Unless I duplicate the texture a few times for each empty that will light up the shield, is there any way to use the same texture for several emptys?
Hmm - You’re trying to be difficult aren’t you 
If you add the blend texture a second time and map it to another empty I think it might work.
Give me a couple or hours to get home, get the kids fed and off to bed and I’ll have a go at it.
I’ve found it. Render this animation - it uses empties to create two hit locations on the shield. One stationary throughout the animation and one moves from place to place.
Have a careful look at the texture settings and you should get an insight into how I did it. (BTW, the shield texture moves because I have keyframed the Z-Offset of the texture. Don’t worry about this one for now!)