New Galactica Animation

[neilfsmith]

I've begun work on an animation featuring a battle scene with the Colonials and the Cylons. I'm starting with this image I made a while ago as my jumping off point:

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/Image.jpg

I'm working in Cinema 4D using the Galactica model from Wil Jaspers, the Viper from Sean Kennedy, and the Raider also from Wil Jaspers. All of the compositing and FX will be done in After Effects and Motion. And I'll probably use quite a bit of Photoshop as well.

OK, first up is to get the camera working properly for the shot. I'm trying to mimic the handheld look of the series. So with some camera snap zooms in Cinema 4D and some additional camera shake in After Effects, I think I've got it where I want it so far.

NOTE: THE MOVIE FILES ARE IN QUICKTIME FORMAT. To view the movies you will need the latest version of the Quicktime Player available for free from Apple.

The first pass is the Galactica. Please note thhat these are just low resolution renders and that the final piece will hopefully be much sharper and less noisy.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/BSG01.mov


The next pass is most of the Vipers.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/BSG02.mov


Next I add a starfield environment in 4D and composite the three plates in After Effects.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/BSG02a.mov


I hope to be able to work on this more over the weekend, but it might tale a while longer than I had planned. I'll do my best to keep up to date with the progress.

- neilfsmith :Nsalute:

[Gideon]

I'm just getting boxes with "X"s in them. I'd love to see, man!

[neilfsmith]

I'm just getting boxes with "X"s in them. I'd love to see, man!

Try it now, Gideon. I've fixed the links.

- neilfsmith :Nsalute:

[Gideon]

Try it now, Gideon. I've fixed the links.

- neilfsmith :Nsalute:
Thanks! I'll let you know soon.

[gmd3d]

Very Dramatic neilfsmith... I have only seen the Picture so far but thats enough to see it cool .. nice one

[video567]

all i can say is wow thanks for sharing, great work

[neilfsmith]

Started working on the Raiders today. I quickly realized that with so many ships in the same space, they mix too much - at one point a Raider will be in front of a Viper and sometimes it'll be behind one. The only way to ensure proper placement in the scene was to render both the Raiders and the Vipers together.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/BSG03.mov


Once I was satisfied with the placement and flight paths of both Vipers and Raiders, it was time for a long render. During this time I jumped into Motion and created a particle effect for the weapons fire. I'll eventually track and composite the gun fire in After Effects. This was just for the Vipers - I may end up doing some missles for the Raiders.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/MotionScreen.jpg


Once the render of the Vipers and Raiders was completed, it was back into After Effects for another test composite.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/BSG04a.mov


- neilfsmith :Nsalute:

[gmd3d]

Sweet .. again I see I have to spend more time improving on my own work .. can waith to see more

[martok2112]

Fracking sweet!!!! Well done!


Respectfully,
Martok2112 :Nsalute:

[neilfsmith]

I'm back into 4D to animate the exploding Viper. It took me a while because I needed to figure out how to do this. I exploded the Viper by breaking it down to it's component pieces and then having them all blow apart and spin out of control at the point of impact with a Cylon missle. Once I got that to where I wanted it, I had to nest that animation into the main scene in order to maintain the handheld camera look. On it's own it doesn't look like much, but I'm hoping that with the addition of some FX it'll turn out better.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/BSG05.mov


Back in After Effects, I masked out several pieces of explosion footage taken from a royalty-free stock video DVD. Once I masked them all out, I composited them into the scene. And as I had hoped, it really put some life into the exploding Viper.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/BSG06.mov


Finally, the exploding Viper was composited into the entire scene in After Effects.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/BSG06a.mov


Well, tomorrow is Monday and it's going to be a crazy week at work - but hopefully I'll be able to do some more work on this in the next few days. I still have all the gun fire to do, the Cylon missles as well as the pilot being thrown out of the Viper... not to mention all of the final compositing, motion blurs, color correction and let's not forget the time I'll be spending waiting on the final high-resolution renders. But, all in all, I'm about half way done I think.

- neilfsmith :Nsalute:

[video567]

i have to say wow you are using Cinema 4D for this, that is awesome! i've been trying to learn to use it for use it for years as a hobby, ive modeled a few things, but when i see work like this makes me wish i could spend more time with it. man your work is good love them videos. keep them comming thats really great. Whatversion of C4D are you using? i'm still in ver 6 i got it as a gift from my dad years ago, but never done much with it, what system is it running on?

[rjandron]

Looks very cool. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this.

[neilfsmith]

Thanks for the nice commments everyone.

i have to say wow you are using Cinema 4D for this, that is awesome! i've been trying to learn to use it for use it for years as a hobby, ive modeled a few things, but when i see work like this makes me wish i could spend more time with it. man your work is good love them videos. keep them comming thats really great. Whatversion of C4D are you using? i'm still in ver 6 i got it as a gift from my dad years ago, but never done much with it, what system is it running on?

I am using version 6 of Cinema 4D also. Don't have the $ to upgrade yet, but I'm seriously looking at it with the latest version they've released. I'm running on a PowerBook G4 with OSX 10.39. It's no Lightwave or anything, but it gets the job done and it's been fairly easy to learn over the years. I work in video production and although I don't do a lot of 3D work, it's always been more than enough for what I need. Plus, I get to do this type of stuff in my free time.

- neilfsmith :Nsalute:

[neilfsmith]

The Cylon missles are done in After Effects. It's a basic particle effect with little or no gravity applied. It'll look tons better once it's compsited in the final version, but you'll get the idea.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/AEScreen.jpg


After tracking in the gun fire and missles and a few other explosions, I am finished with the modelling and animation - minus some tweaking, of course.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/BSG07.mov


From here, I'll go into Cinema 4D to render out all of the high resolution passes. I will composite everything back into After Effects and then output the final render.

- neilfsmith :Nsalute:

[starmaster]

A 3d battle 2d composited, gotta love it :)

[ernie90125]

Sadly....I can't open these files, I have tried several of them. It says that my Quicktime Player doesn't have the nessesary software, and it is not available on the Quicktime server....

Can you re-publish them in another file format, such as MPEG ? Thanks in advance......

[Titon]

Daniel, if you can download the latest quicktime player, that should do the trick.

:)

[ernie90125]

Thank you Titon....I wasn't aware that a newer version was available. I'm surprised the error message saying it can't be found on the server did not say a new version may be available...should it have found there was one on the server ? Never mind, as it now works....

Congratulations on the work you've done....It's very 'odd' to see 3D rendered as 2D, bot somthing I've seen before... Whilst this is a TNS piece, it shows you have a talent starting there, and I hope you will nuture and continue to have success....especially if you start to tackle TOS :)

Thanks for posting this file.....

[Tabitha]

Now you see, if youd been running a Mac, it would have DL that QT for ya hahaha but you PC guys just GOTTA do it the hard way dont ya!

Tabbi (A proud Mac fangirl)

[ernie90125]

Tabbi...... You use a MAC.....? :barf:

A friend of mine and I were working on a music project. He was a MAC user and I a PC user. We had quite a few problems. I managed to diagnose the reason.

I had a Proper Computer

He had a Madly Annoying Contraption

Besides, as MACs develop, they are being styled on PCs more and more, processor and operating system wise....

[Tabitha]

Is that why Bill Gates even joked how he likes the new OS-10.4 and plans to model his new OS after it? Hmm, I think maybe you might have it backwards. Microsoft has long used the Macintosh market as a test bed of ideas. What works in the Mac world is often cloned and put into a new version of Windows. Every since Mr. Gates bought a huge percentage of Mac, the two companies are intertwined to a high degree. MS needs Apple to stay in business to keep from having a monopoly, so why not use that percentage market to explore ideas and see what floats and what sinks. The i-pod is a prime example of how Apple is trying new ideas and attempting to break new ground in a market that is stagnant of PC driven ideas.
As far as a superior operating system, I would sooner surf the internet a month with NO VIRUS PROTECTION at all with my Mac G4 than I would with even YOUR pc. And lets talk about graphics. The same graphic concepts that made the Amiga such an awesome graphics monster were built into the Mac. On the PC side, it took another decade to rival what Mac users were enjoying all along.
You see, I started life as a PC fangirl. I started my computer education on a 486/250. I didnt get my first pentium till I was 14. But by then, my mom had let me play on her Performa often enough that I preferred it over the clunky Windows OS and I started to be a two camp kinda girl. When I was around daddy, it was all PC/Win but when i was with mom and on my own, I was strictly a Mac girl. So I understand both, which is why my senior year project for science was to create a 3-D version of Pong, where the paddels were like your hands on a soccer ball. Imagine they could travel all around the ball and that the pong ball was inside, and the object was to keep the ball inside the invisible soccer ball. It was challenging. I of course, lost the sciente fair to a boy who made an exploding rocket. Yea, bang.. big deal.
I did that btw using Delphi. So after school, I went to college and guess what, MORE PC's, but in the dorms, its all about Mac. Every student here, practically, uses Macs. They dont get the latest state of the art software as soon, but when we do, its rock solid and doesnt crash. We dont get the latest doo dads and thingamabobbers, but what we have works right the first time every time. So its a trade off. Do you want neato stuff that noone else has, or do you want what is guaranteed to work?

tabbi

[ernie90125]

Yikes !

I can't reply to that essay and think I could convince you....so I think I'll have to hand the thread back to neilfsmith....

:)

[starmaster]

"The i-pod is a prime example of how Apple is trying new ideas and attempting to break new ground in a market that is stagnant of PC driven ideas."

You are bringing in the I-pod as a MAC VS PC argument? How does that work? Apples and organes compared to the needs what I need a desktop computer to do. The I-pod dosen't do anything that isn't found in a competing product somewhere else in the sector. Feel free to compare on contrast the I-pod versus creative, sony, rio or whatever media players, but not my computer. It's like me comparing your computer to my car. My car gets better miles to gallon but what hell does that have to do with anything? It's just a tendy gadget that is all the rage right now. I remember when everybody and their grandma were using tomagotchi's and teachers were confiscating them right and left. It's called a fad. 10 years later, I haven't seen one and untill 10 years from now, we won't know if the I-pod is or not.

As for your arguement about Virus, it's because `90% of desktop pc's run windows that there are so many. Firefox used to be considered the safe choice because it had so few security holes. But when downloads and use picked up, articles keep popping up about flaws in it. It's because when it was on the backburner, so much less interested was payed to it. I think its fair to say that if OS-10.4 was running on 90% of the world's desktop PC's, you have have hundreds of times the amount of people trying to find cracks in it.. and are you willing to say that your fangirl software will hold up 100% to that?

Hey, I not found of Microsoft anymore then the next person and I don't mind people who prefer mac's, but these are weak arguements at best.

[Tabitha]

Obviously youve never seen an i-pod or you would realize that the i-tunes software it uses is quickly becomming a standard in the industry. The new phone/mp3 player is proof of it. You see, you can judge innovation by the effect it has on our world. It may supprise you to know that at one time turn signals on cars was considered a fringe idea and not worth mention, but look how it caught on, and now its standard on ALL vehicles (since you brought the car analagy into this)
Sure my arguements may seem weak to you, but they are my opinions and thats all. If you dont like them, your free to not read my posts, but some people here seem to think that sometimes I just might have something of substance to say, and I certainly think I do too. Welcome to Colonial Fleets. Im always interested in hearing what YOU have to say, and I may just challenge you from time to time, but in the end, its all good, I go home and do my thing and dont think about CF or anything said here. Its all good ok?

tabbi

[starmaster]

You have a point with the turn signal, but still dosen't show a MAC VS PC argument. Yes, perhaps new the software works quite well on MP3 phones, but I am using a PC for graphics, I need hard drives, gigabytes of system memory, monitors bigger then that 2 inches to complete my work. So if I can run my applications stable on mp3 phones that have 19+inch monitors, then I concede to you. That would be quite innovative. But then if that were the cause, would it not become a MAC and not an i-pod? Hmm, and you didn't touch the virus comment.

Yes, I prefer PC's and you perfer macs and yes you almost certainly have used PC's 100x more then I have macs. That's fine I have no problem with that. What works for some dosen't work for others, but your arguments still don't hold up. As for stability, my computer has been up for over 61 days now, dosen't seem like I am crashing all the time. Mac's do benefit from proprietary architexture though, so it is easy on the compatiabilty part, but then again, try swappin out that mob on your mac for a new cpu...or don't...

[Tabitha]

61 days up on a PC, Im impressed. Im not sure how many days my G4 was up before I damaged it. It was my fault, i was doin stuff that I sholdnt have been, stuff that would destroy any machine. Loading an OS with Linux support onto an OS with Linux support, but had X-11 which is a true Linus CLI, using BA$H as its command interpreter. Up till then it had been on and in steady use with no crashs for however many days there are in three years. Im not sure of the math there.

tabbi

[neilfsmith]

Sorry about the lack of updates over the last week or so... but it looks as if the thread has been busy nonetheless.

Anyway, I've completed all of the final renders and composited them all in After Effects. BTW - a note regarding the comments about compositing a 3D scene in 2D: this is the way most productions are done. It's considered by most effects houses to be too impractical to output all elements of a scene in one gigantic render. Individual elements are output separately and then composited into the final shot. This way, if there is a change or alteration needed to be made, one doesn't have to re-render the entire thing... just one small piece of it. Not to mention how much it helps in balancing colors and lighting, depth of field adjustments, etc.

But now that I've annoyed everyone with my rants on video production... back to the project...

The final renders were brought into After Effects and composited with some additional color adjustments and effects. A slight additional overall camera shake was also added.

http://homepage.mac.com/nfsmith/BSGFinal.mov


The last step is to add the sound. I'm planning on taking some of the sound effects from my Season One DVD and some music from the miniseries soundtrack. Hopefully, I'll have some time to do that this week or this weekend. I'll keep you all posted.

- neilfsmith :Nsalute:

[starmaster]

Hmm, it's only that because well, I do tend to install new video card drivers every once in a while. I admit to playing a game or to. I am happy to see that you don't ever upgrade or install new hardware......ever. I am also happy to see that you never install any operating system updates...you know Apple has released many fixes and yes...some require you to reboot so if you did you couldn't have installed them. Kudos to you.

oh and 365x3=1095 saved you some time

[Tabitha]

Powerbook... cant really install anything, and its sorta just the way it is... and actually we were talking about how long in between crashs, not how long between upgrades.

tabbi

[starmaster]

"As for stability, my computer has been up for over 61 days now, dosen't seem like I am crashing all the time."

Nope, I was talking up as being on and never off at all for 61 days. If it's on its up, and if its off its down and since it has been up for 61 days, guess it wasn't down, unless you count if you go upstairs in my house, then its down I suppose, and well frankly gravity is relitive and probably a poor choice to describe a computer's state that can mean both a physical location and a state of being. Also, I wonder what the meaning of crash is. You can crash a car. Can you crash a computer? Is it a prerequist to drive something to crash it? Or can you crash a car by giving bad drivers? Are we talking about a program crash or just a crash of the system. Do I need liabilty on my computer? Collsion?

Hmmm, and my linux box turned router turned myth TV box has been up for 93 days... I should really update the software.

I am saying your arguments suck, while you say PCs suck. I have not uttered a word about macs being bad, except upgrading your cpu. As soon as your can install windows XP on a MAC, it becomes no longer a battle of MAC VS PC, but MAC OS VS PC's OS

[Tabitha]

Uh, yea.. ok you win...

tabbi

[Lt. Merak]

First:
I love the Movie, great job Neilfsmith.

Second:
I have both a PC and a MAC and love them both.
I've had the PC about a year and a half and had to restore twice, restart from the computer freezing too many times and Completely reinstall everything once. I've had my MAC for over 2 years and I have had to quit programs that froze a couple times, but have had no other problems.

[Foomandoonian]

I've got to say the end result is far more impressive than I thought it would be from just seeing the composite elements on their own. Great work, and I love the jumping off point image you posted first. :)

One small crit: I don't think the hard-light effect really suits the BSG style, but it's subtle enough not to really detract. :salute: