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General => Image Sharing => Topic started by: chris_x422 on January 25, 2010, 06:23:57 AM

Title: Sunrise animation
Post by: chris_x422 on January 25, 2010, 06:23:57 AM
Hi all,

I've just posted a sunrise animation and collection of short globe shots.
They were done for a tv ident.

http://vimeo.com/8965832

I'll try to get a proper hd version on my own site as soon as I get the time.

Chris


Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: cyphyr on January 25, 2010, 06:49:08 AM
Beautiful animations :)
Did you use any of NWDA's presets (global cloud cover and the planet pack) or did you brew this up your self ? Either way great work, render times?
Richard
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: inkydigit on January 25, 2010, 06:55:54 AM
agree with Richard, very nice!
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: chris_x422 on January 25, 2010, 07:03:44 AM
Thanks guys.

No presets were used.
Rendertimes were good for the globes, about 7 mins per frame, 2 mins for extra cloud pass.
Sunrise was heavy though, about 1 hour 10 mins per frame, on 8 core xeon machines.

Chris
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: Hetzen on January 25, 2010, 07:19:38 AM
Very nice work work there Chris. That sunrise is awesome, but also your weather paterns look very convincing.

That pyramids video is especially impressive. Were your dust clouds TG? Did you use several TG passes for the effect of building the city up, or was that all animated in one?
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: cyphyr on January 25, 2010, 07:30:59 AM
Extra Cloud Pass ? what do you mean by that ?
Not surprised by the Sunrise times, they can be very intensive :)
Richard
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: chris_x422 on January 25, 2010, 08:00:57 AM
QuoteExtra Cloud Pass ? what do you mean by that ?

The original piece combines a fluid effect created in maya, that passes between the earth and clouds.
The extra pass ( just clouds , over a constant black shader on the ground) was generated to use as a matte, and also to generate a little extra post glow / effects.
I also rendered a quick diffuse grey pass to relight the fluids in comp. (can't show this version yet)

The render-times are worth the investment with terragen, fortunately my bosses agree.
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: Henry Blewer on January 25, 2010, 08:08:21 AM
I bookmarked this on Vimeo. I want to look more closely a them. I think I could do something like this in a couple years on my machine. This is very impressive.
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: chris_x422 on January 25, 2010, 08:23:32 AM
QuoteThat pyramids video is especially impressive. Were your dust clouds TG? Did you use several TG passes for the effect of building the city up, or was that all animated in one?

Thanks Hetzen.

The pyramid shot had to be done in a very short time, normally I would have broken out several passes, but this was done all in one shot.
The dust clouds were also generated in Terragen, animation of the buildings also in Terragen.

Cheers

Chris

Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: domdib on January 25, 2010, 08:36:05 AM
I hope this question isn't too dumb, but were the clouds procedural, or image-mapped?
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: chris_x422 on January 25, 2010, 08:56:15 AM
Hi domdib, no such thing as a dumb question, in this game at least.

They are a mixture of painted masks, image maps, and density fractals.

As a workflow, I often start out with painted masks, then ortho render these out, work up more detailed maps in photoshop based on the ortho render, then bring these back in as masks.

Hope that helps

Chris
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: domdib on January 25, 2010, 09:07:31 AM
Thanks. Fantastic work by the way! It's really good to see TG2 being applied like this in a professional context. It gives hobbyists like me a sense of its real power.
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: Zairyn Arsyn on January 25, 2010, 10:01:18 AM
thats a wonderful, well done animation :)
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: EoinArmstrong on January 25, 2010, 10:19:17 AM
Yeah - you know your stuff - really well done :)
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: Kadri on January 25, 2010, 12:34:45 PM
Great  :)
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: Hetzen on January 25, 2010, 05:42:49 PM
Thanks for explaining that Chris. Must have been a bit of a bitch syncing that all up. I've got to say that those dust clouds are a real success, which gives me some good ideas. But not only that, syncing up the town displacment too. Did you use blue functions looking at frame numbers, use the keyframer within nodes, or use a distance shader attached to your camera? I'd guess the keyframes, even so, an excellent piece of work looking beyond into the depths of this apps abilities. Thanks for sharing.
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: chris_x422 on January 25, 2010, 05:55:15 PM
Hi Hetzen,

There was a lot of syncing, not least as it was part of the brief that it was timed to specific music, and I had to hit certain beats.

As to how, it was several distance shaders attached to a camera, driving different nodes at different times.
It just made the setup very straight forward, as once it was all tested and running, I only had to choreograph the camera, which made timing to the music much easier.
It will become easier still when the animation module arrives.

Hope that makes sense.
Title: Re: Sunrise animation
Post by: Hetzen on January 25, 2010, 06:10:34 PM
Certainly does. I can see how a distance shader will help trigger those displacements. Clever.