Kobol Studios Animation WIPs

[Adalla]

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



Greetings all, since I'm new to 3D and learning a lot of things by trial and error, I decided to create one thread to combine all these little works in progress, so I wouldnt flood the WIP forum with all my threads. A lot of it will be "tests" as I learn new techniques and what not. Anyways, enough blabbering.

For the record my other 2 WIP threads are My first 12 second Viper animation and my pitiful attempt at doing my first model, a Viper Mark 2. I'm done working on that first animation, but I'll keep updating my Viper modeling WIP thread if I ever get to it. I seem to produce work more easily in animation than modeling.

For the heck of it, I decided to create a blog and website where I'll be posting all my CG work, and called it Kobol Studios, and signed up on blip.tv to post my animations, as well as on youtube.

My Kobol Studios blog site
My Kobol Studios videos

Since modeling the Viper is taking forever and I dont seem to be very good at modeling, I decided to take a break and go back to animation. My first animation was a 12 second one that was my first ever 3D work. And I had more text and credits than actual animation lol. That wont happen again. And I was following a BSG tutorial word for word, and I think it limited me in many ways.

This time, I'm going to make a longer animation, it'll actually have somewhat of a story, and I'll be doing my own thing.

The animation will be called "A Great Sadness", and it'll be featuring a Colonial Recon Raptor jumping into low orbit above one of the Colonial planets that is being nuked by the Cylons. I will be trying to have nukes go off on the surface. And the rest, you'll just have to find out when you watch it

I'll be featuring Coxxon's low poly fleet. And if I can manage to import Hobbes high poly raptor into Lightwave and manage to texture it, I will use it for close up shots. Otherwise I'm going to have to settle for the low poly, and probably avoid close shots.

I have successfully importanted Coxxon's recon raptor, and after a little problem with it being too bright regardless of lightning, I managed to fix that and allow dark renders.

Here is a test shot I did to play aroudn with the lighting. I'll probably have less lighting than BSG, i.e no or very little fill lighting, because they are low poly models and well...we dont want to see the lack of detail

Anyways here's the shot.



That's not part of the animation, it's just a test render while I was playing around with lighting. I'm going to do a few other test renders as I go along, and then the next thing you'll probably see is the final product all done.

Doing animation WIPs is a bit different than the modeling wips done here, cant really show much "progress" as renders take time, plus, it's meant to be seen all in one go

Anyways, I talk too much I know. Stay tuned for those test renders.

[Adalla]

Well, I have selected the score for the animation. See, on BSG Bear McCreary writes the score for the scenes after they are done. At least that's my understanding as I read his blog. On the other hand, I have to work the other way around, since nobody is composing music for my animations

So basically I have selected the pieces that I'll use, and I'll be effectively creating shots FOR the music, rather than how the show does it, which creates music for the shots. It'll be an interesting approach, because I'll basically have to time the shots so that it goes well with the music, that means when there is a change in the music, there has to be a change in the shots to reflect that.

I could simply not use music at all, but I have found that animations without music are just not the same. In fact I'll try to have a few sound effects in there too, just a couple.

Anyways, I have divided the the animation into 3 Acts.

Prologue - Will have the main Title theme and a couple intro credits.
Act 1 - "A Great Sadness" which will feature "A Distant Sadness" piece from Season 3 of the BSG soundtrack.
Act 2 - "Escape" will feature re-arrangements of "Storming New Caprica" also from Season 3 to fit my animation.
Act 3 "No Surrender" will feature "One Year Later" from BSG soundtrack season 2.

I will be re-arranging bits and pieces of the tracks as I build the shots and try to match and fit them so it flows nicely. I have a felling it's going to be a tough challenge. I have tried to fit video to music in the past in some youtube trailers I made...and it's some work.

Anyways, next step will be to build myself a planet, and I think I'm going to redo my stars, and add more of them, as in my last animation I had too few.

I'll be posting renders of the stars and planet soon

My plan is something like this:

Model planet
Make stars
Construct nuclear blast light packages
Construct engine light packages
Do Battlestar flightpod lighting
Start animating

Wish me luck

[mattwitz]

good luck......can't wait to see it

[Adalla]

Thanx m8, I just gotta get over a few challenges, cause a lot of this stuff I have never done before. Like I've never created a planet, and so it's no surprise that I'm having some issues.

I was able to get a decent shot from this angle:



And these are two images that show that when I change the camera angle things dont work out.



If I lower the intensity of the sun, I get this:



My atmosphere is too dense. Either way, I found a tut which I'm gonna follow, and apparently you need like 10K resolution to have a good looking low orbit shot...so my 4K res is not gonna be enough. My clouds in fact are like 2K.

So...it's back to the drawing board...but that first shot of the sunrise in orbit aint too bad

And my stars are fine I think. I might add a few more and tweak some to make em brighter than others, but for now it'll do.

I'll post test renders of my new planet when I get through the new tut. Stay tuned

[Adalla]

I'm using 8K resolution maps now. Still gotta deal with the atmosphere, and I'll do that tomorrow



Also notice the stars dont show up in this shot. That's because they dont catch the sunlight. Yeah I know, stars are supposed to emit light right? Yeah...this just means I gotta render out the stars on a seperate pass with some sort of fill light, and composite the stars with the rest of the animation for the end product...in fact I might have to do a fill pass for the ships too...bah, was hoping not to do many passes this time. Each additional pass ads a ton of render time...oh well...worth it if it's gonna look decent in the end.

[spudmonkey]

Please check the rules on posting images with other people's models in them. You need to add credits even in the WIP forum. If it's all your own work then you only need to add credits to images in the gallery

[Adalla]

Roger that...

so I'd have to say "Textures by NASA" each time for the planets?

For the record, Low Poly Raptor Model and Textures by Coxxon. Viper Mark I Model and Textures by peabuddy. Textures by NASA.

I'm new to all this, I'm not trying to take credit for anybody's work. I always put credits on my finished products. I guess I never thought I'd have to put them for WIPs too. I'll go try find these rules you speak of :P

[Adalla]

Fixed the planet. Now moving onto engine light rigs, jump light rigs, battlestar flight pod light rigs, and then onto the animation



As you can see the stars are not bright enough...I'll have to render them out seperately with a fill light and composite it in, otherwise they'll be dark at times like in the above render.

[Lonewriter]

nice atmosphere, that's what I'm working on now with my planet mesh. What is the tut for the planet, I have one I am using from chrusion | FX - Tutorial: Photoreal 3D Earth but I am always looking for another.

[Adalla]

That's what I used