As Mark Twain said: the report of my death was an exaggeration ;)

Started by DocCharly65, April 20, 2018, 04:00:39 AM

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DocCharly65

Thank you very much :)

But don't forget: As I said the procedural textures are based on the materials from Hannes (https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,22695.msg229045.html#msg229045)

In Fact I did two things (eg the surface of the bomb and canon) with the surface: I chose two basic surfaces I wanted to use like silver and the burning wood. I merged them and animated the "Mix to A slider". Additionally I set some Power fractal shaders (don't remember which one at the moment) to 4D noise and animated the color- and luminosity shader of the orange shader.

The Terminators "bathwater" ;) got an additional 4D noise in another powerfractal.

A quite big challenge and many sucessless tries was the ideal sizing of the displacement feature scale and to find out the best animation speed of the merge shader and the 4D noise.


Some words about flickering:
I still have many problems with flickering in special situations:
Reflections and illumination by luminosity/luminosity images) in object part shaders (usually renamed surface default shaders).

I see some possibilities to reduce them so far:
Reflections flicker a bit less if you reduce the highlight intensity of the reflection shader.
Also it is helpful in reflection shaders and specular settings of default shaders to set the specular roughness higher.
But the costs are reduced "glamour and dynamics" of your render.
Big populations of e.g. grass flicker less if you do the same: Reduce the reflectivity and the reflectivity tint - best to 0.

Illuminations flicker more the higher the luminosity value is set and/or the more far away (smaller) they are - avoid both...
This is one reason why I prefer real light sources instead of masked illumination in objects. But it is not possible if you e.g. have hundreds of little illuminated windows in a space ship :)

For both (illumination and reflections): In tests I saw that flickering was reduced sometimes down to 0 when I increased image resolution and/or increased anti aliasing.
This would avoid that you loose dynamics of your render by e.g. reducing highlights but it increases render times up to unrealistic values ;)

I hope I could help and I didn't tell to much rubbish - it's all just my experiences. Perhaps there are other better solutions.

DocCharly65

A completely new experience and parallel running project:

Just watch the Screenshot and guess ;)
After 2 weeks it seems that I have managed a basic rigging of "The Countess" (The witch of the Serentity-episode in my film)

Cross your fingers - this will be a hard job but also an exciting experiment.

[attach=1]

I already prepared the textures and some detailwork for a good look in Terragen.
Just to compare:

Old:
[attach=2]

New:
[attach=3]

Additionally she will get snake eyes instead of the glowing eyes. I'll see in 1-2 hours if that looks good too.

Dune



DocCharly65

Thanks :)

Now the last post for this weekend.
The last test image of the animation and some testanimations are ready.

May I introduce: "The new Countess"

Old:
[attach=1]

New:
[attach=2]

I think the snake eyes look more natural than the "car lights"  ;)

The new one has a slightly different camera angle so I need not render so many clouds - good for the render time.
The animation of Head torso and arm works ok so far:

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AvEpmvBUHi6qgqEdTQPILf0XpKhUWw


But I have started re-rigging and animating the legs because the walking test looks horrible.
I think I have understood the principle of walking ;) :D but untill it looks as I want, I'll have to do more experiments.

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AvEpmvBUHi6qgqEehQr2AXAx0RuL1A



Dune


Hannes




DocCharly65

Thanks all :)

But I had to try another improved animation from the beginning... And I think this time I've got it now.
Shoulders and hips rotate around two axes now and I had to add some more bone details. So I could improve the swinging back and forth of the skirt hem.

Later I'll care about the dekoltee where the two object parts "skin" and "cloth" pass through each other.
For more exact animating I don't have the patience and the knowlegde so far so I will "hold out" the skinparts with an alpha mask in Terragen. But that will happen in some weeks at the earliest. For the moment I am satisfied.

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AvEpmvBUHi6qgqEfubNi6QoY0hUfHQ


Dune

Indeed! It would be easier if the model consisted of one layer.

DocCharly65

Let's call it "Pre Alpha"... But anyway it's the first time that I tried to cut the film for the complete story.
Now I am quite sure that it I will give the project at least 2 - perhaps even 3 parts.

Have fun and thanks again to Bobby, who spent 2 of his songs for the "Kansas scene" :)

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AvEpmvBUHi6qgqElA67BXDcYzBivcw


This first part I post here is still very raw but as close to the final story as possible.
At first I only wanted to see if the story works in general and to find out what is missing, what is too much. But then I had to much fun in testing some sound effects as well. But not all scenes are finished and are only put together with some music.

Many render jobs are still running and some scenes are still missing (the witch in Kansas, the crash between the Starwars TIE fighters and the Enterprise...)

Some scenes I must (want ;) )  re-render like the Borgs ship, where the flickering I spent so much energy on is unnecessary and doesn't look good. Also I am still re-rendering all scenes with the Enterprise. The ship has now over 40 lightsources and the bluish warp-glow is "offline" in the drydock. The earth is completely new, too and needed almost two years until I was satisfied.


One of my actual thoughts is to reduce the babytalk (in this version missing) only to the Klingons (yes you're right - it's me with a turtle on my head ;D )
Most of the rest conversation could work nice with a female and a male narrator as in lord of the rings or some films noir.

You see still very much to do. Even only this part will need more than a year work.

Dune

Genius! I've said it before, but this is absolutely fantastic. Something to watch several times, and still small details to discover. Great work, Nils!

Kadri


Phew!You have done quite a work really. Very nice indeed and fun :)
There are many nice scenes but i liked especially some shoots with the Serenity, Nils.