making a bsg 3dfanfilm to submit to the bsg scifichannel site(lightwaveusersonly)

[snowhill07]

Well the title of this thread speaks for itself. I am making a fanfilm based on tns Battlestar Galactica. On its official site they have a thing were users can submit fan movies. You are only aloud to use either footage you make or some clips and sound effects,and music that they have for you to help with your vid. You are aloud to do 3d movies. I know because there are a couple of really great 3d fan videos on the site. One is a bsg rap, and the other is a 3d cellshaded cartoony bsg vid. I am not trying to purposely exclude peoples help from this but I only want peoples help who have Lightwave. The reason is because thats the program I have and use and so it would make it possible to help,edit,and share files. I really only need help with one thing that I have not been able to do on my own. I would like someone to help by making a bsg rail gun style effect.Also if you are good with lightwave and know how to make good explosion effects I would like your help as well. Since this is a fanfilm I would abviously include credit to everyone that helped.

In case you were wondering the fanfilm is going to be set during the first Cylon War! I havnt even started a rough storyboard yet but it will be mainly centering on the legend of Roswell in 1947. Instead of little green men in bodie bags it will be the old Cylon centurions and the flying saucer will be a flying saucer but just in the form of the tos bsg cylon basestars which looked like two circles on top of each other.

[Andrew March]

Originally Posted by snowhill07

I would like someone to help by making a bsg rail gun style effect.Also if you are good with lightwave and know how to make good explosion effects I would like your help as well.

There's already a particle based rapid fire canon effect on the lightwave cd, explosions should be done either in post production or using stock footage planes with alpha channels in lightwave. Don't try and use HV's on thier own, use them with stock footage by all means but HV's on thier own are a nightmare to get right.

How long have you been using Lightwave?

[snowhill07]

There's already a particle based rapid fire canon effect on the lightwave cd

Do you no what sub folder its in on the cd? I looked through the scenes folder in both the classic content and the new content but havnt been able to find it.

How long have you been using Lightwave?

I started about a year ago. I am taking a movie production class in college so I was able to get the student discount for lightwave.

[Andrew March]

I lied,

You can find a rapid fire particle weapon here: Lightwave Group v3

You'll have to tweak the settings to get them just right.

[snowhill07]

I actualy have tried using that before. The only problem is that I have not been able to find any tutorials on how to recreate it. I kinda need a simple tutorial for this effect kinda soon because I am actualy doing this fanfilm also as a student project for my movie class. The deadline is in about 2 months. Could you mabey make a simple tutorial and submit it to one of the tutorial threads in this forum please?

I forgot one more thing that I need someone to do. You dont even need lightwave for this. I need voice overs! I just need someone who has a pc microphone and a good professional sound voice. I dont have a pc mic or headset so I cant do this. I just need a couple of lines said. Mainly "By Your Command","Action Stations,action stations,set condition one throughout the ship", also "Launch all Fighters", "Dradis contact,sir" "Fire aft cannons" "Planetary body detected".If you do want to do voiceovers just remember to speak in a loud voice (no yelling or screaming please) also when you say the lines "By Your Command","Fire aft cannons",and "Planetary body detected" try to sound sort of like the old Cylons. Even though I do have special voice changing software that can make it so you sound just like TOS BSG Cylons, talking in a deep robotic voice will make the sound editing a bit easier. If you decide you can do this please send me a private message and ill give you my email so you can send a recorded voice sample.

[billy-home]

This sounds like a great idea, though a Basestar crashing seems a bit extreme, there would either be literally thousands of Cylon bodies all over the place or the thing would completely vapourize on impact and take a huge chunk of the area around Roswell with it at the same time. Wouldn't a tos Raider be a simpler idea, it is fairly disc shaped and then you would only need 3 Centurions laying around the wreckage.

I know I have a rig I downloaded a while back that uses volumetric lights as pulse cannon shots, which might work for your lasers, I'll have a look for it and see if I can't find out where I got it from


Out of curiosity what are you using for the Centurions, I've built a fairly accurate LW model of one, but it's not rigged in LW, only in Poser, since my rigging skills are non existent in LW, I'm just in the process of updating the body for it, as the old one was totally rubbish, but the armour itself is fine.

I wish I could help with the voices, but I have a similar problem to yourself in that department, I've no way of recording stuff either unfortunately.

Anyway good luck with this, and if you decide to post a WIP thread let me know so I can follow your progress.

Cheers

Billy

[snowhill07]

Billy, are you the one that made the tos centurion for poser thats for download at colonial fleets? Thats the one im using. If you do have a different one id gladly love to use it! The reasone is because the one I downloaded from colonial fleets has its hip missing!

Also I have changed it from a basestar to a raider crashing. I will have the basestar mothership be destroyed and the explosion will have damaged the raiders ftl and it will accidentally make a jump over earth in 1947. Also here is how it is possible that the first cylon war was happening in 47. I did a little bit of math solving to figure this out. If the bsg miniseries actualy took place during 2003 and we know that the first cylon war ended 40 years earlier than the end of the cylon war would have happened in (2003-40=1963) 1963. In the new bsg they never mentioned how many years before that when the cylon war started. So I am going with around 20 or 25 years. That means it would have started in either 1938 or 1943. So as you can see the roswell incident would fit just nicely in that time frame between 1943 and 1963.

and if you decide to post a WIP thread let me know so I can follow your progress

I probaly will. Right now as im writing this I am rendering a couple of short clips.To bad its taking all day to render!

[billy-home]

Yep that's my Centurion over at CF, I made the mistake of having the genitals turned on when I used a pre-made rig, I've made a new body for it since and I'm in the process of getting it set up to replace the original body, then I'll re rig it properly, PM me your email addy, and when it's done I'll send you a copy of it. I might also attempt a rig in LW but the Poser one would be ready sooner.

But for now, the only work around for the beta version of the Cylon is to use it in Poser with genitals turned off.

The new idea sounds excellent, and the timeline you've come up with really works out well, I'm looking forward to seeing those clips your rendering at some point.

As for that light rig to simulate laser bolts, I've searched my system high and low and can't find it anywhere, it might be I've made a mistake and it's the HV rig that Andrew linked to, since I was certain I got it from LWG3D, but I'm certain it was done with volumetrics, it was made to look like the laser fire from a StarFury.

Cheers

Billy

[snowhill07]

I have put up my first pic of a test render I did for my project. It is a sequence where the cylon raider will be scene crash lading and it will go through the clouds and crash on land. This is supposed to be over Earth's clouds by the way.
This is just a test render so I will make improvements to it. I should have probaly added more of a motion blur and mabey shrink the raider down abit. The way I made the clouds was by using vue6 xstreame. I made the clouds in vue and exported the scene to lightwave and rendered it there. Anyway heres the pic.


heres another one I just did thats a little bit better.