This started as a test for an animated dragon. I cleaned up the animation by only using every fifth key. Before that the movement looked a bit like Ray Harryhausen's stop motion animations.
Then I created a scene around it. First the water was static, and it looked weird. I used a plane in 3ds Max and applied a flex modifier, which resulted in a simple water movement according to the dragon's action.
I added some water splash object sequences which I could perfectly place in time. Then I created a few particle systems for the water dropping when the wings come out of the water, and exported these as OBJ sequences as well.
The knight is animated as well. He's breathing. Very subtle, but he's alive!
So all in all there are three types of object animation in this scene: The dragon and the water plane are MDD-animated, the splashes, droplets and the knight are object sequences, and the trees are animated using mesh deformation by power fractals. The knight is an object sequence, and not animated by MDD, since there are several parts I added to the main body, that should not deform with the actual object, so I would have needed to create an MDD file for each part, and so I decided to make it easier for me.
Actually it was rendered in 800 X 450 px and then upscaled and enhanced using Topaz Video Enhance AI.
For those, who are interested, I also created a version with sound (don't expect too much, I haven't done this very often before...), but the final clip was too large to upload it here, and I didn't want to compress it too much, so I put it on Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/737574795
That was quite an undertaking. It took me loads and loads of attempts and rerendering, until I was happy.
Amazing.
particle systems for the water dropping from the wings is 3Ds Max?
absolutely amazing
Thanks Doug!!
Yes, the particle system was made in Max. Then I meshed it and exported it as obj sequence.
Wow, this is wonderful! Another sample of your great animations. I am in awe!
Thanks Ulco!!! Animating is great fun and a pain in the butt as well. It takes ages to finish a project, but in the end it's worth it. And using the fourth dimension (so to speak) helps you to see things from different perspectives. Literally. It's not that easy to cheat, when the camera is moving... ;)
I like it that you can pull things together from different softwares and put them together in a coherent fashion. And that you have such creative ideas. Just topwork.
Thanks again, Ulco! All this helps training my brain. Quite useful, when you're getting older... ;)
;D
Wow, this is one of the most impressive animations I've seen out of Terragen!
Thanks a lot!!! :)
This is very nice! But I am afraid you have to render the Dragons animation again. Its head penetrates its neck around frame 180... :P 8) ::)
CHeers, Klaus ;D ;D
Yes, you spotted it! ;)
Unfortunately I realized this right after the final render (which took a total of 80 hours). And I worked with this file numerous times without noticing it... :(
I don't think, I will rerender this... I have to take a break from this dragon.
Oh, wow - 80 hours :o
I only saw it because I had the video loaded in Fusion playing around with some particles for the dragon to spit fire and smoke.
It is not really very noticable.
Do you do this on a separate render computer or is your workstation blocked for the time being?
I wonder how long this kind of scene would take to render on my machine (see footnote).
CHeers, Klaus
No, I only have one computer:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz with 32 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, Windows 10
Since each frame took about 15-16 minutes it was no problem to pause the whole thing for a while and restart later. But surfing the web was no problem during the render process.
ok, thx.
CHeers, Klaus
Looks great and time consuming!
Well you've blown 💨my mind yet again Hannes! A perfectly timed animation (even if you don't watch the show) in sprit of the finale of "House of the Dragon." Well done Sir!
Thanks a lot!!! :)
Hannes, this is just crazy good! Doing this in Terragen is beautifully insane. ;D That you are doing this with fairly 'modest' hardware is even more crazily insane! :o !! I truly wish you had an unlimited access to a large render farm!
Quote from: zaxxon on October 29, 2022, 07:22:18 PMHannes, this is just crazy good! Doing this in Terragen is beautifully insane. ;D That you are doing this with fairly 'modest' hardware is even more crazily insane! :o !! I truly wish you had an unlimited access to a large render farm!
Thanks a lot!!!! Me too!!! ;D ;D ;D
This is a wonderful animation! After watching the dragon move its head side-to-side, I'm wondering if you are going to add flames coming from it's mouth?
Thank you!!
I guess the animation was meant to show a fire breathing dragon. But the thought of trying to make animated flames that move with the dragon's head in TG made me a bit nervous. So I decided to just let him scream... ;)