NWDA & Planetside Animation Contest Announcement!

[otakar]

I think the hardest thing here may be the requirement that the scene is supposed to hold up under various camera settings. That pretty much requires you to do 360 degree renders all along your camera path and calls for the use of static masks rather than dynamic and very carefully placed population boundaries. Very different from what I am used to (for image renders). In that regard, the painted shader will come very handy

[sjefen]

I agree with you otakar. Populations will be a lot more challenging and will have to be placed very thoughtful.

- Terje

[Tangled-Universe]

Indeed Otakar, this is probably the most challenging aspect of the contest

I'd suggest just to get started, lay out an idea you like in your head and start with the rough terrain. Choose 6 positions along a potential anim path and try to get some nice POV's.
The start detailing the terrain, checking it on all 6 POV's. After that do the same with the objects.
At least, that's how I'd approach this challenge.

Good luck and hope to see your WIP soon

Martin

[neuspadrin]

Few just general questions:

July 15th -- Time/Timezone? Prob good for clarity We do have a worldwide community such that July 15th can be July 16th for others etc.

Also what if they already own tg2/animation/etcs?

[FrankB]

End of day 15th, CET.
That's 23:00 GMT, 18:00 EST, ....

If you already have any of the prizes, then you own a second copy which you're free to do with whatever you want.... well, keep it or give it to someone else.

Cheers,
Frank

[Tangled-Universe]

Ha, you were just one step ahead of me Frank
The prize-packages are the prize-packages. Like in other contests like on CGSociety there's a possibility you already own some of the prizes.
See it as the lottery: you already have money, if you win you've got a bit more

Cheers,
Martin

[Goms]

Just in case i want to contribute....
How about a changing terrain if its a heightmap? Like a time lapse that shows geological time scales.
If i use world-machine to create terrains that are eroded more and more, would it still be possible to animate it?
Or, the better question as it is somehow possible with a huge amount of terrains, is there a possibility to win if the animation would mean this huge amount of terrain-calculation in world-machine (or even in tg2 internal)?

I'm thinking about something like attached, w/o the edges of the terrain.


amazing contest btw

[FrankB]

this looks super cool, but to keep things fair, you can only animate what is animateable in TG2. So if you want to erode something more and more, you can only use the built in heightfield erode. However, this animation would probably take a looong time to complete. So it's probably sensible to refrain from animating erosion.
However, as Osyhan is proving the animation prize, I'll let him speak to that.

Personally, I would really look forward to seeing you submit an entry, Goms!

Cheers,
Frank

[Oshyan]

I think you may be able to animate something similar to what you want to do with terrains by blending multiple heightfields together over time. You ought to be able to keyframe this in one or more different ways...

Bottom line as long as you provide all the assets (terrains, objects, etc.) and the animation itself actually happens in TG2, I can render it. I won't necessarily have access to any given 3rd party program though.

- Oshyan

[Goms]

Hi Oshyan. I thought about this too. I will see what i can get with the internal erosion tg2 offers and how it looks with blended terrains.
Thx for your answer, i will see what i can do

edit: looks quite good. This is a test with two height-fields blended from 0 to 1 in 10 steps. It will take a while to load

[domdib]

Intriguing idea!

[dandelO]

Another quick ?uestion...

For a minute's worth of animation, is 1500(25fps) frames acceptable for a smooth looking output? I have dabbled with animations before(4 or 5 seconds max') but never actually set out a full length project like this. I could certainly set up the anim' but the rendering could become a real stopper for me on my dual core. I don't want to create more rendering than need be done(because I know I'll need to resort to rendering it myself! ) but I'd like it to appear nice and smooth. Is this a reasonable frame rate?

Hee hee! I feel like a TG noob again!

Cheers!

[Tangled-Universe]

You won't have to animate the project and you definitely won't need to render it, hence the prize
We're absolutely o.k. with animating it yourself, if you find time, but it is not in the scope of the contest and submission rules.

[dandelO]

Aye, I know that, Martin.
It's a great project challenge that has motivated me to take advantage of the animation side of TG that I've really never played with in depth. But, I don't expect to win so, if I see this project through, I'll ultimately want to animate it myself, seems a wasted effort not to. Know?

I just meant is 25fps a good number to use for smooth results? Do I need to use 30fps, could I get away with 20fps for animations, in general? Just a general inquiry, really.
I'm unsure about my final camera movements, I have a few potentials but nothing solid, as yet. I am, however, animating other scene parameters, regardless.
Even if I don't enter after all(which I really hope won't be the case), I've started on a couple of projects that I'd like to see through to completion. I was going on Oshyan's post saying we are free to animate other scene parameters, not just camera, but we'd be best doing the animation for those parameters ourselves.

Cheers, man.

[Goms]

I think this is a good point. I can imagine many people never have tried to animate something in tg2.
I don't even have the animation version.
It would be great to have some details on how far we need to go in the animation part.
It's "easy" to make 6 images that would look cool as an animation, but maybe its very hard to animate them.
Is this our challenge, to find ways to animate is or is this something that will be worked out later?
For example, MGebhart's first impressions show some birds flying. And the only way i see this done as animation is with like 30 models of birds for different movements during flying.
Also the water I've seen in some images could make trouble...
And I for example don't even really know how to change the parameters during time, exept that i need some txt file...