Galactica MAX BAttle

[Thunderstruck]

Well, Am working on new space battle, but have got reference material to use for camera work and
animations etc.
Should be really good, with as many Capital ships and fighters ships as comp can handle.
Am using the space battles videos as references.

Was working on some kind of imaging for nebula or BG for battle scene.

Got just a few basic images done in Photoshop and rendered out a few test images.
--no flares or stars or added work, then MY GFX CARD QUIT!


MAde some quik nebula-galaxy type images in PS, then put into C4d
to test them out. They need lil more work or finesse but am trying to find the right kind of BG image to make. So here are some test renders.

but since my dedicated gfx card just went blink- things are going to move a lot slower

[Matador]

Nice work on the Nebula stuff. Looking good.. Can't wait to see.

I'm currently working on animating the weapons myself.

Your scenes look awesome and dynamic.

[Thunderstruck]

Thought I would share the first rendered clip.


this image is temporary.


to my dismay, I cannot even come close to the reference I am using.
MAX is right on, Only got 4 Capital and 9 vipers. I had so much in it, took me 4ever to strip it down, from all the emitters I put on the ships etc.
-must have had 6- galacticas and at least 30 vipers.
was all that was left that would work and render. Not enough RAM or comp power. was hoping to add as many basestars and raiders for a massive battle.

So, the pan across to basestars and raiders i will have to try and rethink how to do it. and the crossfire etc I do not think I can do with this comp.

Am thinking of another angle-

The Colonials Strike Back ???

Return of the "fleet-warriors-vipers-colonials"? yuk yuk


Will have to re ponder how to do this massive battle without it being massive.

[Thunderstruck]

back to the drawing board.


Using PS and AE made a good looking Galaxy-Nebula to use.
though I cannot make a complete background for scenes,
due to min size 4000x4000 and my comp cannot handle these,
am doing it individually to add into separately. This will make adding the
single stars and the flares much more tedious than I was hoping.
Since I cannot do it all in one image.

1st ready image


Is just one of the images am making for BG for BSG scene

[Thunderstruck]

WIP is Scrapped



2nd ready image.




This Short is going to be much different than any of my previous ones.

[Goliath]

More more more!

That looks cool.

Is that a crossover battle or a battle vs. cylons?

[Apolloisall]

Q, you ROCK.

[Thunderstruck]

Originally Posted by Goliath

More more more!

That looks cool.

Is that a crossover battle or a battle vs. cylons?

well, I had to scrap this one, my comp just cant handle it.
but it wa-is a battle with the cylons.

See A new Dawn colonials strike back- is the follow up new wip.
had to change my strategy to try and pull off a big battle

See here
http://www.colonialfleets.com/forums...ad.php?t=17896

[martok2112]

Queenhunter, those were great looking reference shots for the limitations you had to work with.

Now, may I suggest an old-school favorite trick of mine?

Chroma-keying.
This takes a little forethought with how you want to lay out your ships, squadrons, and camera passes, but with a little patience, it really pays off.

See, I had the same problem with avatar/character population in my "bridge of Galactica" test video. Too many avatars bogged down the app (iClone) and I could not render but a couple of seconds of a two minute video.

How did I then resolve the problem, you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked that question.

First, I put all the characters and cameras in their places, made their animations, and did final placement corrections.

Second, I ran a greenscreen plane down the middle of the bridge, from the back of the bridge to the middle of the main viewport.

Third, I saved the entirety of it as a project that I could come back to for each pass and shot.

Fourth, I turned off the app, and then rebooted the saved project. Then I eliminated all the characters I did not need for the first pass (i.e. everyone who was behind the greenscreen when erected). So my first pass was with Athena walking onto the bridge, and seeing the female warrior immediately to her right as she entered, and getting a quick glimpse of Sheba in the background. I set my video output settings to 720p, High Quality Video and High Quality Audio, at 24 frames per second. After rendering the video and making sure it all took, I then...

Shut down the app (without saving), and rebooted the project. This time, I took down the virtual greenscreen, eliminated Athena, Sheba, and the female warrior, and left the other characters (except for Rigel and Flight Officer, who were obfuscated by other objects anyway), and shot the scene again. Since my camera pass was already stored, I didn't have to do any resetting of the cameras.

Now, I have two camera passes that I can composite in Magix Movie Edit Pro...and the output was seamless. You couldn't even tell that it was two seperate camera passes of the same shot.

Using the methods I described above, you should be able to get the same effect for your fleet. In fact, I had to do the same thing when I created my "fleet passing" avatar. I can only film one battlestar (because it's so highly detailed), but thanks to virtual greenscreening, I can set up my camera pass on the initial battlestar (the Atlantia), and then with later passes, set up another battlestar, shoot it, then set up another battlestar, shoot it...lather, rinse, repeat. Again, seamless results.

In your case, as with my fleet passing shot, make your background a greenscreen. Set up your all your battlestars and Vipers, set up your camera pass(es), make sure it runs, and then save the project.

For your first pass, you should probably shoot your most distant battlestar, and the Vipers surrounding it (eliminating the unneeded battlestars and Vipers). Check to make sure the render took. (Processing should be MUCH easier with only one battlestar and a few Vipers.) If the output video did render properly, then shut down the app (without saving), and reboot it. (You might even want to consider rebooting your computer, just to make sure the memory is freed up.)
Lather, rinse repeat untill you've covered all the ships.

Then, use an external movie editor with chroma-key or alpha channel capability (most good ones do) , and composite your shots.

Sorry so rushed....be glad to help with more detailed instruction via PM if you need it.

[Thunderstruck]

well, yes I have thought of using Green screen BG,
but am unrehearsed at using it C4d. or in general.

Also, it is the fact I have to do another pass and my comp is Sloooowww :-(
Another is I have Chroma keying in Vegas which is good, but do not have the Keylight feature for after effects- keying out in AE with default is very limited and imo does not do the job well.

But, I have thought of trying it using passes and might as well try it since you suggested it, I could then do massive fleets

Also have now the exchange plug in for AE to do multipass for After effects,
which is entirely new to me, but it imports all of the things into AE and looks to be a very useful tool to use (Multipass rendering for AE) but again, do not have the keylight for keying out.

Thanks for that description and Information. Am currently taking a break from BSG CGI for a spell to catch my breath , But I do have the Moon base mostly built and will take some time,trials,effort to start exploding , animating and composting or adding effects, so am on a Pre-Work Break


you can see what I have so far in this thread- A New Dawn Colonials Strike Back
http://www.colonialfleets.com/forums...ad.php?t=17896

or see the Latest Demo Video here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xAo_DAgO4Q

[borjis]

that AE plugin for cinema4d is one of the best reasons to have cinema4d. It integrates everything so well.

I'm working on a "classic battle" as well, utilizing the vfx shots from the series as a guide then accenting with a style of my own.
The viper/raider dog fights in the final act of "Hand of God" has a good number of the shots used often.

I'm also animating the ships exactly as they were done by John Dykstra & team with the Dykstraflex.
I keep a viper for example in 0,0,0 3d space, then create multiple cameras for different angles and only move the cameras. The model is only rotated on it's horizontal axis, when needed, just like it was done back then.

Might I suggest that instead of putting all of your ships in a single c4d scene, that you render them individually. This is much more practical and will speed up your rendering considerably. Render them out as .png sequences with an alpha channel. That way you don't need to blue-screen, as suggested above since the entire point of blue-screen is to achieve a clean alpha channel, which you will get by rendering with that option on. The .png file format has the added luxury of being a very small file size without compression artifacts.

A D1 widescreen frame of a viper animation I did was averaging about 26k per frame.


You could then bring all of these individual shots into after effects and comp them in easily.

I also might suggest that although your nebula's look really good, there is a lot of this stuff already available at the Nasa site that you can use, that way you can spend more time on the animations....just a suggestion.

It's good to see your posts and that you're keeping the original BSG cg animation genre alive on this forum!

I'll be posting some of my work soon.

[Thunderstruck]

Thanks for reply. Any info is help.

Yeah, slowly been realizing it, lately been doing the still ship and just using the cam to fake movement .

And I have tried Nasa and cannnot find any good orbital or nebula or any good images have asked a good number of peeps that do use them and it sems to be a held secret the actual page-list-link.

Am still a net noob mostly lol

also, have learned the long hard way on many things, but have been doing just about anything and everything in a .png seq.

For one, if I get comp errors and fits I still have what was done. and can start back where I left off.
Thanks for the info.

Rerally appreciate the assist

Regards,

[borjis]

Finding them at NASA is hard, just do a google image search for what it is you are looking for. Plenty of high resolution images will come up.