Sketching down ideas for a scene...

stevecullum

stevecullum

Lightwave junkie
Just scribbling down a few ideas that might make a good scene. Got a couple of others to do before I decide which to develop further though.

Its only the last couple of days I've done things like this. Apart from thumbnail scrawls in my sketch book, most of the time I've either worked from someone else's concepts or just rushed in and got busy in Lightwave.

Good way to test ideas out before committing to polys and then finding out the composition sucked!

Thanks for getting this thread going Graham and giving me the inspiration to have a go :thumbsup:
 

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Excellent, thank you for the feedback.
Its difficult to convince people of this approach especially when they are used to their way. I think people think that it has to be "pretty" in order to be of benefit. Or they think, I can't draw so why would I do it.

Whats encouraging for me is that you've illustrated the crucial point about the exercise, its a pragmatic practical approach. A quick sketch allows almost immediate reference for composition, mood time line etc. Its just a means to an end, the crucial stage of a process in which to "plan your attack" on the task ahead. It saves unnecessary labor in the long run.

Once again, thank you for your valuable thread. :)
 
The great thing that I'm finding to, is that because your just putting ideas down on a blank canvas, little ideas can spring up you can try out that in a 3D scene might take forever to model and try.

For example in the Dam sketch, I had no intention of adding in the cable tower, but when I was doodling I thought about how the electric might get from the station to the city. 5 mins of brush strokes later I could see what it looked like, where the best placement should be or in fact it would be any good at all etc...

Doing that kind of experimental thing in 3D is crazy!
 
Started work turning a scene into a small 3D clip. Going to projection map the mid and background element and render the trees as a 3D pass.

Keep seeing things that I'm not quite happy with yet. Might need to haze out the far right rocks area a bit more and/or tweak hue...
 

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Your using Vue for the tress?

I'll have to play with that plugin at some point. I really curious to see how this turns out. :thumbsup:
 
Your using Vue for the tress?
Click to expand...

Yeah I am - first time I've used them for any animated scene. I like the way they turn out, but the render times are serious for even just a modest scene like this.

I rendered 160 frames at 640 x 360 and it took 29 hours on a modest workstation - dual opteron 244 system with 2 gig of ram. That's just with the standard lighting model too!

But even that probably wasn't enough time as I still got a little flicker in the trees, but cos they are lit quite dark it doesn't show too much - I can live with it. ;)
 
I really love the look of the emitter and how you've textured it with the hypervoxels...............bravo progression.

Is there a way somehow to get speckles of light or more ambience in the foreground. Maybe it won't work though and I'm talking rubbish :) .
 
Sorry to dissapoint, but the smoke is a complete cheat! :D

Its painted, cloned and copied from reference material. The thing is from this distance, a large column of smoke will hardly seem to move over the 6 second shot and alot of the time it will be obscured by the foreground trees. I'm going to try and use Dylan Coles technique for Return Of The king where he used a layered grid warping to fake the slow billowing effect. However things could change if I work out how to get the most from this dynamite plugin :)

The foreground is adjustable, so I'll play a little and see how it will look.
 
stevecullum,
Hey smart cheat, its totally effective. Its so well integrated with its environment. Thanks for sharing the technical aspects and how you intend to animate it. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
 
Another week, another small update. Finally got some animation rendered off, but Vue was a complete disaster! Broken buffers, flickering like a nutter...I had to abandon it and re-design the tree section in Lightwave and render it with Fprime. I actually prefer the way things have come out, more flexible and somehow a little richer IMO.

Still some work to do on this, but its getting there!
 

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Thanks for sharing movie with us.

Was Vue really that much of a problem for you.

In a previous screen shot the shadow was a bit darker, perhaps to dark in fact I thought. This one is very light, inbetween with some color saturation would lift it even more.

Plume of smoke from volcano is very convincing. :bowdown:
 
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah sadly Vue has been a right pain to render from, perhaps I just don't understand the program well enough to get the best from it, but the knackered buffer exports really killed it for me.

I think the codec is effecting the contrast somewhat, so here is the still. I've also added a little extra lighting to try and lift the foreground out a bit. Let me know if you think the shadow area still needs darkening.

I got quite alot of scope for changing things the render is quite broken down, so keep the feedback coming :):thumbsup:
 

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Thats mad...the monitor I'm working from and this one I'm writing from has a totally different gamma!

Not sure how this is coming out now 8~ - Just darkened things a little more...
 

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Hehe...for my sanity, its probably best avoided :cursin:

AsileFX just released a vid about using Lightwave and Vue 6 Xstream. There is a section in there about getting flicker free renders, so its a tempting purchase just to see how they have got round the various issues.
 
Thanks for posting up this desert scene Steve.

Look forward to seeing the development of this also. Sorry I only noticed it now.
 
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