NWDA & Planetside Animation Contest Announcement!

[TheBlackHole]

One question:
I started working on Epic Planet (search it) after I heard of this contest (when it was still in "If this contest works, blah blah blah..." stage ). Then I posted a few (early) renders of it in Image Sharing. Is it still OK to submit it?

[sjefen]

...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?

I don't know if the same rules apply for renderings since it (for some unintelligible reasons) don't for games, but for movies, one thing is for sure.... 25fps is way to few. Movies are unpleasant to watch unless you have a SONY with it's brilliant "MotionFlow". It's not perfect even then, but it is at least smooth and comfortable enough for me to relax. I guess that with "MotionFlow" you have, in a way, 48fps and this is what I would consider enough.
But I also said that I don't know if these same rules apply for renderings.

PS: I know there are more televisions out there that has the same as SONY's MotionFlow only they are named differently, but I have seen most of them in action and nothing can touch SONY and their technology.

Regards,
Terje

[neuspadrin]

Generally I think 25-30 fps is acceptable.  Almost every video you see will prob be running at 24-25fps. So 25 is probably good to use, 30 if you really wanted.

Gaming generally requires a faster rate (30-60 or so being a usual rate preferred) due to how most computer graphics happen while rendering what is going on in a game and make it look more fluid as often their isn't a motion blur so to create the more fluid "move" it needs a faster rate to give the illusion without being choppy.  Though now some game engines are even adding blurs in etc as it gets more advanced.  (At least I'm pretty sure this is along the reasons why fps for games generally needs to run faster. There is also the fact you want to see the latest network and/or ai changes as soon as they happen)

Terragen can account for motion blur though, which helps blend and make motions look fluid and that you are actually moving.

[dandelO]

Cheers for the tips, guys.
Like I said, I've only done smaller animations so far so haven't really delved into the depths yet. I just wanted a rough guide of how much I could get away with while still keeping it fluid enough. I'm doing small res' tests at the moment, I might post to the WIP thread at some point...

[Kadri]

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/TempRate.mspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_of_vision
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate

Long reads! If you ask me shortly i would say if you like what you see in cinemas you can go for 24 fps or so .
But most animations are not 24 (as drawings of course) and are lower.
But in case you haven't a render farm there are other concerns ; time to render for example .
I would go from 20 up to 60p if i can. It is up to you.
In the past i did animations with 15 fps and it was enough ; then of course  

[nikita]

http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm

Interesting!

But in the digital world it should be possible to find the optimal amount of motion blur by making it exactly as long as the time between two frames. Although there's still the problem of finding a good motion blur algorithm.
(Maybe there's a standard algorithm, I don't know.)

[Kadri]

This site was an eye opener for me then , Nikita . Please look at the other pages too.
I think there isn't so much new things ( sadly! ) but what there is , is mostly very good.

[FrankB]

Good morning,

@Goms: Again, I'll leave this up to Osyhan, but if you ask me, you can really only expect Osyhan to re-construct the camera path, if he only has 6 shots to work from. It would be too much to also expect him to animate the water for you, or a flock of birds, or anyting else really. So IF you have the animation version, feel free to animate other things already, but if you don't, you can only animate the camera.

@black hole: yes you can use whatever scene you want, as long as it meets the other contest rules, such as "must be finished work and not WIP quality".

Cheers,
Frank

[Tangled-Universe]

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.

This is one of the reasons you don't have to animate it yourself, so that you don't have to worry about and spend time on it.
Generally one animates at 24fps, but for instance, I know that Oshyan likes 30fps over 24fps because they're just smoother.

The winner of the contest will have his storyboard animated, which means that the winner, Oshyan and perhaps some of us NWDA guys will be animating parameters guided by the contest winner's input.

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...

Same answer here. You don't have to worry about it. The contest is already complex/difficult enough
For the birds, you're talking about object-sequences and they are not supported in TG2. The scene must be natively rendered in TG2 (see contest rules).
Animating water isn't that extremely hard, except when it comes to rolling waves and foam etc. A basic movement of calm water can easily be done by vertical movement of the water-shader. You won't need a text-file for animating parameters. You set keyframes for parameters and TG2 will interpolate the change in parameters in between the key-frames settings.
But like I said. You don't have to know these things. Design a scene, make it work at different camera positions and angles and render 6 images which form an animation path you like/find most appealing.

Martin

[Oshyan]

24-30fps is what to shoot for (for those animating the scene themselves). I'm ok with anywhere in that range. Movies are always 24fps (anything that is "48fps" is just showing each frame twice, so it's not better in motion quality, just slightly less "ficker"!), most TV and home-made movies are 30fps.

- Oshyan

[FrankB]

on a side note, I would like to give our "pioneers" a thank you for having already publicized your WIPs on the WIP board.

So thanks to:

Goms
Mor
Otakar
MGebhart
neuspadrin
zaai999
sjefen

Your WIPs are a great inspiration, and I would like to encourage all others that are currently working on their entries to use the opportunity and show off your work in your own WIP threads. It doesn't matter how early a stage you're in, or if you are already happy with what you've got or not, because exposing your work early will help you make a great finish

Cheers,
Frank

[FrankB]

By the way, we've created a NWDA Facebook page, and promote this contest as a "facebook event"

It would be cool if you could connect with us there and "attend" this "event".

[cyphyr]

By the way, we've created a NWDA Facebook page, and promote this contest as a "facebook event"

It would be cool if you could connect with us there and "attend" this "event".

"Liked"


Richard

[dandelO]

Gotcha!

[FrankB]

I was getting a question around what is actually expected for the contest. To put it into a single sentence: you render six shots from various positions, of the same scene. So in essence, it's similar to last year's contest, except that you make 6 smaller renders of the same thing, from various positions.

Cheers,
Frank