Animation Test of Cylons

rjandron · July 16th, 2005, 09:42 AM

Here's a quick animation of the Cylon Raider Mesh that I rendered out last night. C&C appreciated.

A still from the animation:

And the link to the animation (approx 4 MB, Quicktime required. Use Right-click-Save Target As to download the image to your system).

peter noble · July 16th, 2005, 10:16 AM

I liked it very much.

The light looks like it was coming from the front so when the Raiders fly over the big asteroid a shadow moving over it would make it morer realistic. Also some sort of movement of the asteroids within the field might help make the scene more kinetic.

That's my two cents anyway.

Best,

Peter

gmd3d · July 16th, 2005, 10:41 AM

Downloading it right now...

Eerazor · July 16th, 2005, 03:54 PM

Looks good so far. I hope you are open for suggestions:

1. Reduce the amount of asteroids in the background. There are too many of the same size and it makes the field look extremly unrealistic. I would suggest using about 6-10 large moving asteroids (6-8 in the background, 1 forground full shot, 1 foreground mid-shot) and several randomized smaller ones filling the rest of the scene.

2. Motion blurr the asteroids as well as everything else in the scene.

3. If you are trying to create the camera feel of the new show, use a high setting noise filter on the camera, steady it half way through and use a little zoom out right at the start. Might want to add a distance filter as well (Killer on rendering times but helps disorientate the sharpness of the picture with the two rocks in front of it creating an "amateur-style" view.

4. Ships are cool though as is the background

Hope this helps!

rjandron · July 16th, 2005, 10:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eerazor

Looks good so far. I hope you are open for suggestions:

1. Reduce the amount of asteroids in the background.

2. Motion blurr the asteroids as well as everything else in the scene.

3. If you are trying to create the camera feel of the new show...

4. Ships are cool though as is the background

Hope this helps!

I'm definitely open for suggestions...that's one of the reasons for posting is to gain input on what would make an animation better.

The asteroids were created using Hypervoxels, and rendered in a separate camera pass. They were set up quickly, and the asteroid field still needs some refinement. It does need some variance, as you suggest. In addition, I'll add in a shadow pass as Peter has suggested.

There is some motion blur on the asteroids applied in post. I can crank up the blur amount as you suggest.

I experimented with the shaky camera by auto-keyframing a jiggle in the camera heading and pitch while the animation was being previewed. I'll definitely try your suggestion about the noise in the camera motion, but I'm not going for a NuBSG Camera style. The shaky style was intended to simulate someone trying to focus on a trailing ship--in this case the Cylon Raiders--in a shot inspired more by Top Gun than by BSG.

Thanks for the suggestions.

gmd3d · July 17th, 2005, 04:29 AM

I would like to see the Raiders bank and roll in differant directions as they move through the field .. nothing extream just a slight differance ... I think it look great

Titon · July 17th, 2005, 06:40 AM

Great work RJ. I liked it alot.

Top notch.

Like other's said a bit more movement from both the asteriods and raiders would make it great. But it's up to the preference of the artist. Again that's what this perticular forum is for, works in progress....

Personally i'm not much of an animator. My strength's are modeling.

Love the asteriod field.

martok2112 · July 17th, 2005, 08:20 AM

Damn fine work.....well done.

Still envious,
Martok2112

gmd3d · July 17th, 2005, 09:43 AM

I too like the astroids and its details ..did you make them your self or download them. if you download them from where did you get them from..

Darrell Lawrence · July 17th, 2005, 11:39 AM

T, he said the asteroids were created using Hypervoxels. That's a part of your LW

rjandron · July 17th, 2005, 11:55 AM

Taranis, you can find the tutorial on creating the asteroids I used on Newtek's Site.

Hypervoxels create a massive render hit, so be prepared for slow render times. To put it in perspective, this was a 120-frame animation which was broken into 4 separate passes -- Raiders, Asteroids, Nebula, and Starfield. Each was a separate series of still frames that was composited together in After Effects.

Render time for Raiders, Stars, and Nebula passes was roughly 5-6 seconds per frame (totalling about 30+ minutes for all three passes). Render time for the asteroids was on the order of 3 minutes per frame (for a total render time of 6+ hours for the asteroids alone). I let my machine render overnight for that one.

In other words, use Hypervoxels with caution.

gpdesigner · July 18th, 2005, 09:58 AM

awesome vid,
there are some things of issue but everyone seems to have made those suggestions already. I agee with Taranis on rotating the ships throughout their run, this would increase the reality of it.
I like the concept of the shot ships navigating the belt . . cool indeed.
3d

gmd3d · July 18th, 2005, 10:03 AM

its a cool site .. I got the site from some one before .. it could have been Warrior.

I will work on them ..

doomer · July 25th, 2005, 11:33 PM

I cant download it is there another link?

rjandron · July 26th, 2005, 09:02 AM

Keep trying doomer. The link does appear to be working.

doomer · July 26th, 2005, 09:18 AM

Now it worked hehe

Spike The Cylon · July 26th, 2005, 12:19 PM

pretty awesome!

kapollo · July 27th, 2005, 01:56 PM

Pretty nice,
I'm aiming at something similiar to this work here when I'll get some results I'll show them too

kapollo · July 27th, 2005, 02:22 PM

you could try to add a one or two asteroids beatween camera and models it would make the animation more authentic look

best regards
kapollo

mikala · August 15th, 2005, 11:13 PM

Just saw the vid. I hope you remake using some of the input given so far. Great start that can only become better on the second run.

neilfsmith · August 18th, 2005, 06:25 PM

Nice work. In addition to the comments on motion blur, you might want to blur the asteroids a little bit more. Not a lot, but just enough to suggest some depth of field. Great lighting work.

Zinjo · September 19th, 2005, 08:37 PM

WOW, nice work!!

Can't wait to see more!

rjandron · September 19th, 2005, 09:02 PM

Thanks for the comments everyone. Just so you know, I've managed to get one project completed to the point where I can start working on BSG animation again. I'll post what I can as soon as I have something ready to share.

madmikeee · September 21st, 2005, 01:07 PM

VERY nice, I see some really talented people in this place!!

Scutter_2 · October 26th, 2005, 04:19 AM

Very nice man

mind you, whether or not it was intentional or not, i liked the handheld camera effect, much like in the new BSG

Foomandoonian · November 14th, 2005, 04:06 PM

Oddly enough I've been working on a BSG animation with vipers in a hypervoxel asteroid field.

Rough Anim of first few shots: 4Meg (DivX)

I had trouble making the asteroids random shapes. Like your background rocks, they all seem to come out uniformly round. Are your foreground asteroids made from several points? They look really good.

I like your lighting too: quite subtle and realistic. Good stuff all round

--
EDIT:

Oh, and I should credit the Viper to Treybor.

ernie90125 · November 15th, 2005, 04:40 AM

Foomandoonian,

Firstly.......welcome to Fleets !

You may wish to delete this post and start a new topic, otherwise your work could get lost in RJandron's thread.

It was nice to see your test sequence...although I would advise you to publish it much higher resolution when making the final version. The pizelation spoiled the detail of your work.

I see what you mean about the asteroids...I can't advise you on how to change them (As I'm not a CGI animator) but it is probably something others can help with.

I run a website, about to be launched any day now, linking to all the BSG fanfilms out there. Unfortuantely you have made a fanfilm based on The New Series, and the website will only support The Original Series fanfilms. If you make an alternate version of the animation, with classic era ships I would very much like to include a link to it.....please consider it.....

Best of Luck with your animation efforts and once again....welcome to Fleets !

rjandron · November 15th, 2005, 08:17 AM

Very nicely done animation.

In answer to your question, the foreground rocks did use multiple points which allowed the Hypervoxels to blend together into more interesting shapes.

Welcome to the fleets.

gpdesigner · November 15th, 2005, 08:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Foomandoonian

I had trouble making the asteroids random shapes. Like your background rocks, they all seem to come out uniformly round. Are your foreground asteroids made from several points?

Foomandoonian, that is a frackin awesome film short you have there, you definately have cinematic skills dude . . . my hat is off to you.

ernie90125 is right about one thing and that is you should pump up the quality of the renders as you are loosing a lot of that awesome detail you slaved over. (and I can tell you put some time in it)

About the asteroids, I made a tutorial on asteroids that should help you a bit http://www.graphicproduction.org/tut...asteroids.html
(shameless plug)

in the tute I show you how to vary the size of the 'roids so they don't all appear the same. However for close up shots in your scene, you should consider modeling separate asteroids here and there to get that random effect you want.

Also in my tute, if you play around with the "bump" settings increasing the size variables of the bump channel on the different axis's, you will notice that the bump application will deform the particle into other than "round" shapes.
I didn't go into that in the tute because it is just a guidline tutorial.

And may I say (without pissing any body off )
There are plenty of new series fans out there who will appreiciate this brilliant piece of animation you made, don't change the models you used to be accepted somewhere, Your vision of that animation was TNS . . . . . leave it.
gp

p.s. RJ sorry about the thread hyjack . . . . it wont happen again

ernie90125 · November 15th, 2005, 09:08 AM

Quote:

And may I say (without pissing any body off )
There are plenty of new series fans out there who will appreiciate this brilliant piece of animation you made, don't change the models you used to be accepted somewhere, Your vision of that animation was TNS . . . . . leave it.

I strongly suspect this was said in response to my comments. Don't worry, I'm not pi**ed off, not at all. I am not suggesting he tear his work to bits to please me. He's put a lot of work into it, I respect that. My suggestion was to create 2 versions...one for TNS fans and one for TOS fans. Some may enjoy both. He's welcome to decline to consider the suggestion if he so wishes, its a democracy.

Either way, and as you will see in my post, in Fleets people are supportive of all artistic creativity, based on either series or other sci-fi altogether. And on that basis I as a member here, support him in his efforts to explore his talents, and welcome him here.