Canyon/space animation

[antti]

Here is the animation I have been rendering most of the summer. There are still some issues I am not completely happy with, e.g. some flickering, but there are other things to do, so this will do - at least for the time being:

http://antti.pictures.fi/kuvat/Animation/CanyonAni_small.mp4

The background story for the animations is this. I am doing a hobbyist film with my friends and this is going to be the opening scene for the film. The rest of the film will be normal video/acting with some special effects. For the film, the animation will include sound effects, which are at present totally missing, and some text, which is also missing at present. Most of the animation was done with Terragen. The part where the camera is chasing the tie fighter was done together with Cinema 4D. Tie animation was done in C4D and camera flight in Terragen. Also the last part where the tie jumps to hyperspace was done together with C4D. Terragen and C4D parts were combined in Adobe After Effects. After Effects was also used to add some effects, e.g. lense flare. The first part of the animation, where the camera is flying thru the canyon, was time manipulated in After Effects with timewarp effect. The goal was to speed up things a bit and to reduce the flicker which has been a constant problem (even though I have been using detail blending = 1) . I am not completely happy with this as, even though the flicker was reduced a bit, the effect added some new artifacts. I may still try to play with the timewarp parameters and see if I can improve that. The original animation was rendered at 1280x720 but the video linked above was downscaled to 1024x576.

At the end of the video you will see more detailed credits, but above all I have to acknowledge the NWDA preset packs "Canyon and Rock Surface Pack by TU", "Nvseal Planets Pack" and "Nvseal Global Clouds Pack". Without them, this video would not have been possible. I also used the water animation technique suggested by Hetzen here at the Planetside forums. Thanks! The animation also includes several very nice 3D models downloaded from www.scifi3d.com.       

[FrankB]

Whoa - this is definitely one of the best animations I've seen done with TG2 yet. Thank you for crediting the NWDA Canyon and Planet packs!

Regards,
Frank

[domdib]

Extremely cool. The star field is excellent.

[Dune]

Thanks for showing this, really nice!

[Volker Harun]

Very good work ... thumbs up!

[Kadri]

Antti the animation is as a hobby user or first try fine !

But i think the least problem you have now is the flicker. The other problems are bigger in my opinion.
The moves are too rapid and too stiff ! The Canyon part could be a little better if you can lower the speed a little especially on the turns.
The animation on the space ships are stiff and artificial . The Tie Fighter at the and of the canyon goes first back and then forward etc.
The last part of the animation looks to much comped . The elements do  not merge very good. The animation of the space ship isn't good here  too.

If you ask me you tried too much things at ones!
If you are not very good at all the things needed it is very hard to try to make a long one shot like you did here.
I think this is were you have the principal problem.
I would break this shot in at least 3 parts and try it with a less stricter approach.

I do not want to demoralize you! What you want to archive is not easy as it seems.
So please take these as a sincere constructive criticism Antti  

[antti]

Thank you very much for all the kind comments. Frank, I will happily give credit to the NWDA packs I used because they really did most of the artistic job. Especially I have to acknowledge TU's Canyon pack, which created great scenes just out of the box. I used the painting option to sculpt my own canyon shape and I added the water, but after that the scene was ready to be rendered.

I have now uploaded a slightly modified version of the animation. I did play with the timewarp settings and I corrected a few frames that were misbehaving and I now used the original resolution so the animation is in 1280x720:

http://antti.pictures.fi/kuvat/Animation/CanyonAni.mp4

I guess I now have to turn my attention to the sound effects part and to the rest of the film. Thanks again for all your support.


   

[Tangled-Universe]

Very nice animation!
Great to see the canyon pack being used for this, I'm proud of it

May I ask at which settings you rendered this animation? I'm doing one now as well at the moment, so it might be handy to know.
Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Martin

[antti]

Kadri, thanks for your comments and I agree with most of what you said. I know that the animation has 'rhythm issues' with the pacing of things and I am aware of the abrupt and jerky movements. The problems here, with the obvious lack of experience and skill with animations and 3D software in general, are the time limits I am under concerning the length of the animation and the deadline. One minute is the maximum length I can have for the animation and maybe yes, I tried to squeeze too much into the animation - but I was just so fascinated with I can do and wanted to try it all. The other problem is the rendering time. I have actually already re-done many parts of the animation and added new frames when I have noticed (even bigger) problems with the rhythm/jerkiness but I know that things are still quite hasty. And one problem is of course the accurate control of movements, which could be improved by trial and error, i.e. with time, but for this purpose this will have to do. The bad thing is that many of the problems you notice only when you combine the frames and view the animation and at that time, it is very saddening to start all over again and wait a couple of days for the next result. Luckily the film itself will be kind of a comedy so I am quite confident that the animation will play its part    

[Kadri]

I use free TG2 so i don't know the limits of the animation module. But what i have read and seen here looks mostly very limited(for now) .
I am sure if you could do the animation in another package it would be very much better. But then they can not do what TG2 do 

You should see my first animations that i did in the past. I was so proud of them at first.
But then in time  i begun to see my faults. There were many of them believe me ! And that doesn't mean that i am very good at it now 
Criticizing is not the same as doing the thing itself.

It is hard to read the feelings of someone who writes on a forum but i really wanted only to show you the points you have to make better.
I don't think that the Renderosity kind of WOW  posts would be good to the real artists  But being rude is the last thing i want to be too!

I think you understand what i mean ! I am waiting for your future animations . This one will make the next ones really better i am sure , Antti !

[antti]

Martin,

The whole animation was a bit wild effort so I didn't have any fixed set of render settings for the whole animation but I changed things at different parts - mainly just to speed up things a bit without reducing quality too much. I didn't either fully test all the setting combinations as I was too eager to start even though that might have helped to save some time. However, the settings shown in the attached image were used, I think, for the most of the animation, including most of the canyon flight and the village part where the tie fighter is sitting on the platform. The beginning of the animation, before the flying starts, was rendered at higher settings (detail 0.72, AA 5, GI 2/4). I also used the "detail blending" = 1 even though it increased the render time considerably, but with a lower setting the flickering was just too bad. For the drop into the canyon (at the beginning when the flying starts), I also had to use "ray detail region padding" = 1 to get rid of things popping in and out in the reflections shown on the water surface.

PS. the Canyon pack is really good, thanks, I look forward to doing some stills with it.     

[antti]

Kadri,

Yes, I understand what you mean and I did not find any of your comments rude. And yes, I agree, honest opinions are the most valuable ones. 

[ra]

Hehe, this is really cool The flight through the canyon is great!