1000 birds (Final 1080p animation on page 5!)

Started by Hannes, January 16, 2013, 12:44:46 PM

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Hannes

Both methods have their pros and cons. If you have the objects inside your scene, you don't have to worry about camera matching or matching the lighting conditions. BUT: there's no object motion blur (yet), you have large file sizes for obj. sequences and you can't change anything except PW when the rendering is done.
Compositing gives you a lot of freedom to change things later, but you need a composition software and the knowledge how to do that.

Btw (I love to say "by the way", it seems), I created an animation of a wind blown tree the same way like I did my birds animation. I'll show it as soon as possible.

Hannes

I discovered something weird. When I am importing an .obj sequence everything is fine, but the parts shader is empty. So I have to copy the shaders out of a previously created TGO and put it into the empty parts shader. Then it works. Probably there is some issue with the .mtl file 3ds max creates. As long as I find a solution it's OK.

Hannes

Nebenbei bemerkt (I won't say btw any more): how can I see this Toscars event thing. Seems there is no way to get access at the moment. Has anybody the video of friday?

Hannes

I know, this seems to become a monologue, but here is a test animation of my imported wind blown tree.

Tangled-Universe

That's ridiculously cool Hannes!

Oshyan

Tree looks good Hannes, nice to see that.

The "Toscars" event was part of the paid Terralive Conference that's going on this weekend. But it does make sense to me that it should be available (at least after the fact) for free viewing by the community. An event ceremony isn't really worth much without publicity for the winners. ;) I'll talk to Paul Bussey, the organizer, and see what can be done.

- Oshyan

Hannes

Thank you, TU and Oshyan! Unfortunately I had to take a break from my Planetside forum activities, so I saw the Toscars thing one day before the voting ended. I'd love to see something of that. Thank you in advance, Oshyan for your efforts!

TheBadger

#37
Quote from: Oshyan on January 19, 2013, 04:44:28 AM
Or you could just composite the output from TG and the output from 3DS Max/Maya/whatever, like the pros do. They seem to get pretty good results. ;) Either way has its challenges, but the compositing workflow is probably more well documented, and better facilitated by the recently-added FBX support.

- Oshyan

On this I cant agree with you Oshyan. For Hannes' bird test, yes you are right. But imagine fireflies or butterflies in a prairie, with camera parallel to the tips of the wiled grasses. The creatures flutter in float up and down, in and out... The amount of masking and rotoscoping alone would make me puke. Add to that everything else, and forget it.

Even just take the OP image that started all of this. The usual way means that Hannes has to mask all of that foreground stuff out, and then set up multiple blend layers over edges. Or he would have to do a bunch of different passes in each software. Do we have z-pass yet?

Without development in this area, TG2 is background or foreground (in part) but not both at the same time, unless its pure landscape.

Remember chris_x422's post on his work in snowWhite. THat works just like you say, but only because nothing in the foreground is obstructing the view of the background. And I think even big productions don't like spending time on masking and roto, if they don't have to.

This is a bridge! If it can be made to work well up close in complex ways, it will mean one render sequence, not two. And a ton of other work cut out also. See? Or am I forgetting something important?
It has been eaten.

Oshyan

I think you can present *common* scenarios that are more advantageous to either approach. The fireflies one is perhaps a bit contrived, I'm not even sure I'd recommend Terragen as the best tool for that in any case. But depth pass and other render element outputs basically address all those issues anyway, and we'll have that in the future. Of course if you are doing something right now with current Terragen capabilities then the decision is perhaps more weighted toward having everything rendered in TG, if possible.

- Oshyan

TheBadger

lol, yes you are right ;D
I am making fireflies models to share with the community, also wanted to make butterflies. I had wanted to make a stock video with alphas for easy compositing for community members in their summer scene renders. Do you remember Wallies "non TG render thread" in open-D. He had a view of a house near a pond in the twilight hours... And thats what made me want to make lightning bugs to share.... It would be easy just to use glowing spheres, but not for close ups.

But I also wanted to have a camera follow a butterfly through a terrain in my "mushroom forest" project. The butterfly eventually descends to a plant in the front yard of the mushroom house render I posted. I wanted it to be the opening shot, and use the idea repeatedly as a way to transition from one edit sequence to another.

I am building both the mazeworld thing and the mushroom thing, simultaneously in Tg2 and Maya. So Hannes' work here means a lot to me. Because obviously, I am not an expert, and do not have the resources of a production house :-[
It has been eaten.

Oshyan

Yeah, I understand. So it sounds like your particular scenario would benefit a lot from doing as much as possible in Terragen. I don't think that's the "wrong" approach, but I do think you just need to strike a balance and make sensible decisions about how much difficulty you will put up with in some areas to avoid difficulty in others. It's all trade-offs here and there, a balancing act. Fortunately you have a story to tell, and a great artistic sense, so I'm sure you'll get there over time, and the results will be great. :)

- Oshyan

TheBadger

Yes. In truth, the way I am going about this is terribly unprofessional. But its a great way to learn; the hard way. Thanks for your vote of confidence Oshyan.

Sorry for hijacking (again) Hannes. Apologies.
It has been eaten.

Hannes

No problem. This is quite interesting.
Here is a low quality 140 frame animation of my scene with the birds and the foreground tree animated. I had to use heavy postwork to reduce noise and flicker, since this was rendered with the quick render settings (Valley 51 is a working title).

Oshyan


mhaze