Kobol Studios Animation WIPs

[Adalla]

Test render on what is actually a Viper engine light rig which I've attached to the Raptor for now to test it.



And right now I gotta fix the problem on the image below:



As you can see something that shouldnt be happening is happening around the engine exhaust. If anyone knows what it is, let me know pls

[Lonewriter]

looks like banding in the light rig. see if this tut helps. Using Vector Motion Blur - Tutorials - LightWave 3D®

[Adalla]

Thanx m8. Though I dont think that's the problem. I've been trying to figure this out for...well longer than it's good for me lol and I think the problem is the interaction between the exhaust lights and the spill light.

Here is a shot with the lights seperated, and you can see the left exhaust is fine, the right exhaust has issues when it interacts with the spill light.



When I remove the spill light, it looks better, though you can still see some of the light's countour.



If anyone has any idea how to fix this (again, this is Lightwave) let me know pls

[Adalla]

Well, it seems like things are not going smoothly for me with this project. Everytime I solve one problem, 2 other new ones pop up.

Still have not fixed the engine light issue, though I discovered that it has problems interacting with the spill light.

Here is a shot with spill light:



And here is one without spill light:



As you can observe, the left exhaust light has no issues. The right exhaust has severe issues with the spill light, but it's ok without it (though still not perfect).

So I gotta figure that out.

Also, I had just noticed my clouds were not showing up in my planet renders. I fixed that now, though as I said, new problems always pop up, and now I have random black circles appear on the render, like in the image below:



So this project is going to take longer than anticipate to complete...which is not cool, as I'd like to get on with it and deliver at least some sort of results soon.

No pain no gain I guess...

Edit: Crap forgot to credit. Credits are same as all the other images posted so far.

[al3d]

small comments, all your render are missing an occlusion pass...there's not ambiant light, looks like you're using only one keylight

[Adalla]

Yeah I'm only using one key light and 0 ambient. What's an occlusion pass?

[Adalla]

Ok, after the pain came the gain. I finally fixed the problems I was having, or went around them.

Basically, the spill and flame lights of the engine exhaust dont like each other. They were designed to be composited...so well, I'm gonna have to composite, even though I was trying to avoid compositing.

Here is a shot of a 1 pass render.



And here is a 5 pass render composited (stars, planet, raptor key, raptor spill, raptor flame). As you can see, problem solved :P



Notice the stars are brighter in the composited shot. That's cause I turned ambient light to 100% so they actually shone independently of the sun light bouncing off of them. After all...they are supposed to emit light. This simulated that well.

Last but not least, my planet is finally fixed.



Now I can actually move on with new content, rather than trying to fix old content.

Next, I'll be constructing nuclear blast light rigs...

:P

[Lonewriter]

I don't think I have evver seen that issue with clouds before, was it the cloud map size causing it? How did you fix this? The planet looks great now.

[Adalla]

Somebody at CGtalk suggested I try turning "receives shadows" off, and it worked. I have absolutely no idea what was casting shadows in it, but it was. Turning that off fixed it.

And thanx. Lighting is a bit crappy on that last render, but at least not darn black dots now :P

[Adalla]

Well, a little update on my nuclear light rig work. I pretty much decided to do a shot from far enough so that I wont have to have anything detailed. Much like the nukes on Firefly's opening shot. Though it's still a WIP and things can change.

So here is a test render of me playing around with things.



Ignore the line that shows up, these will be composited and I wont have to deal with that problem. So as you can see, very simple rigs, after all you cant have much detail from that orbit. Of course, to have to make it look all right I'll have to place them in a bit of a cloudless area, cause otherwise it wont be realistic to have clouds unaffected by nuclear blasts. So that'll have to determine where these nukes go off.

I have been using 3 main references. Nuke shots from low earth orbit on Battlestar Galactica (Caprica nuking), Firefly opening scene and Terminator 3. Firefly has the least detail, and furthest away shot, like I'm planning on. Terminator 3 has a medium detail setup. They have basic particle FX like smoke, but nothing like the Caprica being nuked shot on BSG. That, I couldnt possible create right now, that's insane, once again Zoic made BSG go above and beyond anyone else, though I really like Terminator 3's shot too.

Anyways, here are images so you can see for yourself.

Firefly Opening shot - far away, like I'm planning to do, simple


Terminator 3 shot - closer up to the surface, medium smoke/particle FX, with missile contrails though which is nice


And finally the crazy BSG shot with particle FX all over the place.


I'll mention the credits right now, for my render (first image) textures by NASA the rest by me.

The others are screenshots from Firefly, BSG and Terminator 3...and of course not my work :P

I'm using those as guidelines, but of course I wont be able to do anything like T3 or BSG, maybe something close to T3 shot, but that's why I'm gonna avoid it alltogether by doing a far out shot, far enough that I can do away without particle FX, cause I am not good at it yet.

I'd like to do missiles, but I in order to see missile contrails you'd have to be close enough to see the smoke from the nuke blast...so it's a catch 22...maybe I'll just do the nuke as a light...we'll see I guess.

See, I have the "get things done before I lose motivation" syndome, and yet I also have the philosophy of "quality over quantity and speed"...

I guess my particle FX skills will determine the shot...we'll see what i can do.

Also, I have updated the first post in this thread with a status report for the project. I'll be updating it as I go along. Looks something like this right now:

Project Status: (green means completed, yellow means WIP)

Pre-Animation Stage:
Ideas Brainstorming
Music Selection
Planet
Sun
Stars
Coxxon Low Poly Fleet import
Engine Light Rig Modifications
Nuclear blast light rig
Nuclear missile smoke effects
Ship nav lights
RCS thruster light rig
Jump Light Rig
Coxxon Galactica w/ ribs and plates import and texturing
Galactica Flight Pod Lighting
Battle Damage Modifications to Models

Animation, Editing and Testing:
Act 1 Previz Shots matched to Act 1 music
Act 2 Previz Shots matched to Act 2 music
Act 3 Previz Shots matched to Act 3 music
Low Res Editing, Test Animations and Revisions

Renders, Credits and Final Editing
Opening and Closing Credits
Standard Resolution Final Product
720p HD Renders and Final Product
Selected still image renders

Publishing:
YouTube upload
blip.tv upload
SFM post
Kobol Studios detailed blog post