Planetside Software Forums

General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: Kranky on October 18, 2007, 06:41:19 AM

Title: Canyon animation
Post by: Kranky on October 18, 2007, 06:41:19 AM
Hello,

I created a small (30 seconds) test-animation. I wanted to test the animation system - I only moved the camera. But this was really hard. I set the start- and endpoint. The camera flew directly to the endpoint trought the canyon walls. Then I set more keys and the interpolation of the curve does not work correct anymore - the camera starts panning around and I cannot control it :(
So this animation has got only 2 or 3 keyframes.

www.jens-bringewatt.de/videos/canyon.zip (XVid codec)

I rendered on a AMD 2,3GHz dual core and the rendertime of the animation (750 frames, 640x480) was 363 hours for each core. ::)

In the near future I will only render still images ;D
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: cyphyr on October 18, 2007, 09:18:43 AM
Great work, I love seeing the reflections on the water.
Richard
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: zionner on October 18, 2007, 09:48:06 AM
Yeah, I agree.

There is a nice Colour to the water which makes it...kinda diffrent..Good diffrent!
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: old_blaggard on October 18, 2007, 10:25:16 AM
I really like the scene, although the camera could have used a bit more speed :D.  Would you mind telling us what the detail you used was?
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: dhavalmistry on October 18, 2007, 10:46:21 AM
good job.....although in the beginning you can see a light change in the fractal on the right side....but thats not your fault.....I have seen that in lot of TG2 animations.....hopefully planetside can fix this in next update....

did you use transparancy on water???....couldnt quite tell.....
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: Seth on October 18, 2007, 11:42:49 AM
very good job ! i like it !
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: efflux on October 18, 2007, 12:26:15 PM
Worth the render time just to see what TG2 can do. In my opinion TG2 animation is superb. the realism shines through. I like the way the camera moves slowly. This slow speed makes the canyon seem very large. Great work.
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: Oshyan on October 18, 2007, 01:18:58 PM
The results here are actually quite nice. I agree that the slow camera movement heightens the sense of scale. I think the lighting is a bit dull, but otherwise it's a great scene.

The camera controls and interpolation in TG2 definitely leave much to be desired right now. We do plan to improve this in the future, however it's also worth keeping in mind that sophisticated animation tools already exist in other applications and they can be used to setup an animation and export to TG2 in the .chan format. Obviously not everyone has the luxury or knowledge to do this, but to really get the best animated motion it will probably be preferable.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: Kranky on October 18, 2007, 02:04:53 PM
Thanks for your feedback :)

The render detail was 0.5 and anti aliasing at 4.

@Oshyan: Can you tell me, which programs create .chan files? Are there any freeware or open source tools?
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: Oshyan on October 18, 2007, 02:08:06 PM
The only freeware/open source tool I could think of that *might* support it would be Blender, but I don't know for sure if it does.

- Oshyan
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: zionner on October 18, 2007, 02:12:51 PM
I'm looking through blender now,

I cant see any support yet, the closest thing i can see is a possible way to play your animations through blender.
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: overlordchuck on October 18, 2007, 07:44:57 PM
Woah.  Very, very, very nice.
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: sjefen on October 18, 2007, 08:32:42 PM
Good work. Nice to see some more animations from Terragen 2 ;)
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: cyphyr on October 19, 2007, 07:08:55 AM
So far all I could find that exports the .chan file format are Houdini, Maya and Nuke, all a little pricey. I've posted over at CGTALK to see if anyone there can shed some light on an alternative.
Richard
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: HooDoo on October 19, 2007, 07:46:08 AM
Very nice one! Was the water also animated ie has the water animated waves or it just seems moving?
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: bigben on October 19, 2007, 11:08:30 AM
I have a workflow for converting TGS from Terranim to CHAN. I've linked my database solution in the file sharing section but there's not much documentation for this process. I don't mind converting the odd file for testing.  I haven't added support for Campath scripts yet but I'm going to be working on that as Campath also supports arbitrary planes which could be handy for converting TG2 keyframes to CHAN.
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: Mr_Lamppost on October 21, 2007, 11:16:38 AM
Nice job  ;D

I think the render times account for animations being few and far between; so far I have only done a few and none of them at high or even medium quality.

I think TG is going to need some form of integrated camera movement control.  I don't see how it is going to be possible to use an external application if you are moving your camera over an entirely procedural terrain where there is no heightfield to export, let alone the problem of stopping the camera from flying through instanced population objects. 

Here is a test I did ages ago:

www.ironworld.org/mr_lamppost/TG2/anim/ani_test_01.avi

I was really just wanting to test the moving clouds but while I was at it decided to add a population of trees and move the camera.  May as well try a couple of things at once, make the most of the render time.  Keeping the camera above ground  was just a case of setting the control points and checking the preview at various points through the animation.  Stopping the camera flying through the trees something else all together even with show instances turned on.  This was only a test after all so I gave up and just let it run.

Thoughts?

Don't bother saying the scene is rubbish I know that it was only a test  :D
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: dhavalmistry on October 21, 2007, 12:04:03 PM
WOW.....very nice animation Mr_Lamppost specially the clouds....good job man....
Title: Re: Canyon animation
Post by: Mr_Lamppost on October 21, 2007, 12:51:30 PM
Thanks dhavalmistry

As I said that was just a test  :D   There are loads of things wrong with it,  not least the flat green "Grass".