Earth-mars Cut Scenes

[Deimos]

Apart from my alien screen work I've also been updating work on the Earth-Mars animation.

 

All I can say is Drewid, its all your fault

 

For anyone that doesn't get what I'm talking about check the storyboard above.

 

Ok so why no screenshots? Simply put low poly human models don't cut the mustard close up so I've been learning all about skinning up and modelling high poly human rendering. All I'm gonna say to that is AAAAAGGGGGGHHHH!

 

Anyway back to the plot. In the mean time I've also been working on my Super ISS and now have an animation in the pipeline ready to be rendered. It features a docking port for the Avenger amongst other pretty effects. A lot of which will not be immediately apparent (unless you have an eye for detail )

 

Here's a couple of screenies.

 

{Attachement removed}

Edited March 13, 2004 by Deimos

[MagicAndy]

wow.

 

I've really got to get into 3d modeling

[Guest drewid]

Apart from my alien screen work I've also been updating work on the Earth-Mars animation.

 

All I can say is Drewid, its all your fault

 

For anyone that doesn't get what I'm talking about check the storyboard above.

 

Ok so why no screenshots? Simply put low poly human models don't cut the mustard close up so I've been learning all about skinning up and modelling high poly human rendering. All I'm gonna say to that is AAAAAGGGGGGHHHH!

 

Anyway back to the plot. In the mean time I've also been working on my Super ISS and now have an animation in the pipeline ready to be rendered. It features a docking port for the Avenger amongst other pretty effects. A lot of which will not be immediately apparent (unless you have an eye for detail )

 

Here's a couple of screenies.

For a start you could try taking a low poly guy and runing him through meshsmooth.

 

Hmmmm. hang on a minute. I might have soime high poly humans somewhere. I'll dredge through my old CDs.

 

Tell you what, That iridium sheen looks superb.

[Deimos]

For a start you could try taking a low poly guy and runing him through meshsmooth.

 

Hmmmm. hang on a minute.   I might have soime high poly humans somewhere. I'll dredge through my old CDs.

 

Tell you what, That iridium sheen looks superb.

Heh, I guess its just me wanting to rival Final Fantasy and The animatrix's Final flight of the Osiris. Well if we are gonna have rendered cutscenes, they should be better quality than the actual game

 

Ooh high poly humans, I'm suddenly gonna become your best friend I'm guessing they'll be without skins. Which suits me as I've been playing with them as well. Check the pic. The model isn't mine (its a stock model) but the skin textures are. Still a WIP.

 

The sheen does look special. You should see it in motion Once I've finished tweaking it I'll upload the anim to the thread.

 

{Attachement removed}

Edited March 13, 2004 by Deimos

[Deimos]

Hehe, I'm getting all excited over HDRI can't you tell

I best put up a normal render to show off the skin detail.

 

{Attachement removed}

Edited March 13, 2004 by Deimos

[Vaaish]

hehe HDRI is fun to play with, though for some instances you may have to just go with a fake glocal illumination light dome to get some of the same effect. Edited March 2, 2004 by Vaaish

[Breunor]

Those pics are looking great Deimos, at first didn't notice the wing of Starfires patroling the ISS. I'm looking forward to seeing that sheen in motion, saw a New VW Beetle with it applied over an off white base, and it drove past me at an intersection, very cool effect. The human renders look very good, nice eye detail. I agree that quality level of cutsceens looking better than the game is nice. Compare the cutscenes of Warcraft 3 to Diablo 2. The former uses the in-game models for everything (so-so quality) while Diablo used high poly models nicely rendered (very nice, even a few years later). Warcraft 3's commercial videos are nice detail levels too, I see your work fitting in at that level, it will be very nice to watch now and in the future.

[Deimos]

hehe HDRI is fun to play with, though for some instances you may have to just go with a fake glocal illumination light dome to get some of the same effect.

Yeah I don't think I'd be able to get a proper pic of local space for the cutscene. Hmm I wonder if Nasa would do me the favour of taking a chrome ball into orbit and take some shots

[Guest drewid]

3ds used to have a plugin that had the starfield from earth central. Did that get into Max?

 

Still hunting for those figures, I can't find the CD, Might be at work.

[Deimos]

Thats sounds likea cool plugin, shame I can't use it

 

I'll fake the lighting like Vaaish suggests with globals.

 

Anyway as promised here's the first ISS animation. Something I guarantee you won't spot all the details on the first watching.

 

Sorry about the jerkyness of the piece but for some reason windows movie maker didn't like the original file. Still I think its better than putting up the 6mb file it originally came out to.

 

What's missing from this animation is the Avenger launch, which I haven't fully worked out the bugs from yet. But at 23hrs to render this much I'm not about to keep test rendering to see if it looks right without being sure it all works. Yup my poor computer has been sat at 100% load for 23hrs and 17mins to bring you this and there's the other camera pass still to come.

 

Still here it is. I know it won't be making it into the game (just enjoy it for the eye candy it is) as I'm working on Drewids fine bit of storyboarding for the real cutscene. Now's the time to speak up if you guys don't like it or want it revised because its gonna take up most of my time to do and it'll be tough to change stuff the later its left.

 

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Edited March 13, 2004 by Deimos

[[[Micah]]]

All I can say is, wow

[Cpt. Boxershorts]

I've got a spare machine (pII 450, 256 RAM) I can probably dedicate to rendering (ie: send me a file, and I'll crunch it) if it would help. I don't much about it, but if someone wants to walk me through it...

 

-The Captain

[Deimos]

Thanks Cpt.B, I'll have to look into whats involved in network rendering but I'll keep you in mind

[Anthraxus]

Really impressive. Are you sure we can't work this in somewhere?

[Breunor]

It will be in the game, Deimos just means that this is the draft of the scene, right D? He'd like to get comments now rather than later, when a render might take a week and tweaks will be quite a hassle.

 

So what's the little ship that shoots by, as the camera pans? Is it another Starfire? Overall it's looking very nice. Is the earth also a model, or a background image?

[Deimos]

Thanks for all the kind comments so far

 

This particular scene with the ISS as is, I don't plan on being in the game, unless everyone shouts at me and then I'll change my mind

 

The plan was originally to include it but then Drewids fine storyboard hit a key in me and all my circuits are tuned into it for the Earth Mars cutscene. Its short, poingant, emotional and hits hard enough to make the player want to kick some alien behind. Oh and its gonna be a big challenge to get right so there's my motivation right there

 

The comments and discussion I'd like are for Drewid's storyboard. Rather now while I'm still learning character animation rather than later when I've committed myself to making it.

 

Breu, the little ship that does the handoff shot (not happy with the timing on that but its a bit late to change it now) is indeed a starfire.

Yup the Earth is a model as is the moon. In fact the only non model is the starfield.

 

For anyone that's interested the texture sizes are as follows:

[Avenger] 512x512

ISS multiple 128x128 and 256x256's

Starfire's 512x512

Earth textures 8192x4096 on the texture, bump, specularity and cloud layer. Note: Not the highest detail maps I have for the Earth. My max size maps for it are in the 1km range at 21600x10800 (weighs in at 173mb for the main texture)

Starfield 2880x1440

 

Total texture file size 71.6mb

Total model file size 14.1mb

 

So there you go fact fans

 

As a side point the second pan shot of the ISS is nearly ready and I should be able to upload it tomorrow. Then the practice for the work on Drew's storyboard can begin.

[Cpt. Boxershorts]

I didn't actually mean networked...unfortunately I don't have the equipment nor the means to put another machine online at the moment.

 

I was actually thinking for when we hit the point of a render taking several days, just send me the file, and I'll set it going in my basement where it can whir away happily until it's done, then I'd send to rendered file back.

 

-The Captain

[Deimos]

I didn't actually mean networked...unfortunately I don't have the equipment nor the means to put another machine online at the moment.

 

I was actually thinking for when we hit the point of a render taking several days, just send me the file, and I'll set it going in my basement where it can whir away happily until it's done, then I'd send to rendered file back.

 

-The Captain

Ah I get you now. Hmm if you know what you're offering then I can look into it.

 

Though apart from the file sizes of 86mb the rendering would take an eon on a 450. I'm using a P4 3.06ghz with a gig or dual channel DDR and it took that long so lord knows how long it'd take on yours

 

My other machine is an amd 1200 also with a gig of memory and I can network them together drop render times a bit but that would mean no access to the net :o

[Deimos]

Well here it is. The second and final render of the ISS scene. I know now what the problem is with the jerkiness and there isn't much I can do about it. The frame rate the vid was encoded at was 30fps (makes calculations really simple) and windows movie maker encodes at 25fps so there's a pulldown effect going on. I don't know what to do to fix it other than reencode the source at 25fps. Which I'm not gonna do :whatwhat:

 

{Attachement removed}

Edited March 13, 2004 by Deimos

[[[Micah]]]

Deimos, there are some programs that will encode at the fps you choose. Check your PMs.

[SupSuper]

VirtualDub is a nifty program for encoding

www.virtualdub.org

[Breunor]

Nice looking pass, I could hear the radio chatter of the techs preparing the launch sequence as I watched it...

[Breunor]

Sorry guys, but the moderator in me decided to move the dozen or so posts regarding changes in the game AI to the General Design forum, under a thread called 'Increase in UFOs/Terror Sites' so we can stay on topic here.

[Deimos]

Sorry this has been so long in coming but real life and my wife's laptop has intervened so here's the animatic of the storyboard to get the timing right. Sorry about the crappy voicework, but I didn't have anyone to voice the characters up how I envisioned them sounding.

 

Rest assured in the final I will get people who can voice act better than me to voice it.

 

56k'ers this is a 3mb file.

 

This hopefully if everyone agrees will be close to the timing of the end piece.

Mars_storyboard.zip

Edited March 25, 2004 by Deimos

[Vaaish]

very rough, but I think it's a very workable idea. Poignant scene right before ignition too.

[Breunor]

I think that's a decent length to it all, perhaps including at the beginning something about "recent comm trouble" at the ISS? What about using the hangar model to lift the craft to ground level at that point? Looks like a good concept without it though, and adding more on can become an open wishlist as we all know...

[Deimos]

Next stage in the movie is that I'm working on the characters. I've tried to get the characters eyes to follow a path I generated and its coming along but the movement of the eyes is too smooth at the moment. I'm working on that now. The eagle eyed amongst you might see that I'm also working on hair generation as well. Its slow going as they all have to be manually placed.

 

As I built and textured the eyes, they are high enough polycount and res for animation of the pupils so when she looks into the distance her pupils will contract and the closer the object her eyes dilate. The eye model on its own comes in at around 5000 polys as each part of the eye is modelled in as acurateley as I could. Boy does it help having access to Anatomy and phyisiolgy books

 

I tell you what the muscle structure in the face is loads more complex than I had ever imagined.

 

Anyway that's for a later date.

Enjoy and remember these are still only test pieces, they're not accurate... yet.

Meg.zip

[Vaaish]

You have a good start there and pleanty to start tacking down animation. IIRC there needs to be a softer edge to the iris(kind of like a dark ring or drop shadow) and it shouldn't be so thick where the iris joins the lens on the pupil. Do a quick search for tutorials on building and texturing photorealistic eyes, it think it will vastly improve the quality you have now.

 

 

What program are you using right now, if you are using Maya you could try using paint effects and a rough cage to shape the hair.

Edited April 6, 2004 by Vaaish

[Deimos]

I know about the thickness, its there for my ease of grabbing the verts to animate them. As I said above its a work in progress. Once I've nailed the animation I'm gonna thin them out so they look better.

 

I did research up on making eyes and the best resource was my book on human modelling and my anatomy books. All the net tutorials were for max or maya and though ok for a basic guide, for the in depth detailling I needed they were pretty much useless.

 

I think the trouble you're seeing has to do with the video res and compressor as the textures are based on high res photos of a real eye that I took.

 

There is a lot more than meets the eye (excuse the pun) in the model. As I said it is modelled from pictures in my anatomy and physiology books (The ones doctors get when studying) so I know its accurate.

 

There is a darker area around the iris, its just that it isn't easily visible in the animations. Remember things get blurred slightly when in motion. I've enclosed a pic to show the higher detail.

[Vaaish]

OK I see it in there now.

[Breunor]

That's looking very good Deimos, most impressive! Are blinking eyelids part of the plan as well?

[Deimos]

That's looking very good Deimos, most impressive! Are blinking eyelids part of the plan as well?

Isn't it funny how by omission one of the things we take most for granted makes a cg character looks so odd. Making the eyes blink will have to be done manually as a part of the tweaking of the animation as with scripted blinks they look too regular and timed. I didn't include them in the anims as I haven't set up the bone controls for them yet (still working on gross body movements) but most assuredly they will be in there.

 

As an aside point I have been playing around and come up with an early motion cycle for the female character (we're gonna have to name both her and the chief) which I've included below.

Chief.zip

[red knight]

Hey Deimos, that animation is going along very well. In short time we will have a fully animated character... I suggest to use a fractal script for the eye blinking (sort of random, but not that random - easy explanation -).

 

Greetings

Red Knight

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Uh...The chief file is supposed to have an image, right? It doesn't seem to show up on my system.

 

Anyway...How about we have Flight Officer Kenzie and Lieutenant (sp?) Freeman?

Edited April 7, 2004 by Cpl. Facehugger

[[[Micah]]]

Cpl. F, it's a .wmv movie file.

 

Lookin nice, Deimos.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Cpl. F, it's a .wmv movie file.

 

Lookin nice, Deimos.

I realize that, but when I try to open it with winamp is just says "Nullsoft Video" where the image should be.

 

And I get the same thing when I try to use windows media player.

[Cpt. Boxershorts]

You're ahead of me...all I get is a 0kb zipfile

[Deimos]

Cpl.F have you installed winamp recently as that's the extension for their movie files. You might wanna try going into wmp and checking the wmv is registered to wmp.

 

RK I'll look into fractal scripts, but for the purposes of the movie I'm thinking that hand animated blinking will be better as I've noticed people tend to blink when their eyes change direction quickly. So that will have to be factored into the animation. But I guess for the ingame characters scripting will be a cool idea.

[Cpl. Facehugger]

Actually, big D, my hard drive f00ked up recently, meaning that I've had to wipe the entire thing. So...yeah, I just installed winamp.

 

I'll check what you said though. Thanks for the advice.

 

Edit: Nope. Winamp is reading the file fine, but I'm not getting any video.

Edited April 8, 2004 by Cpl. Facehugger

[[[Micah]]]

Open it with media player, then.

[Puasonen]

Few points:

Great animation man! It looks pretty darn good

Good looking woman but I think it has just a bit too big youknowwhats, I suggest making them smaller if it isn't a big job. :wink:

BUT, the shadows have somekind of problem, they blink a lot

 

Is this just a test video or is this going to be in the game?

[SupSuper]

awesome video

i agree with Puasonen's points. also, i think she moves her eyes and blinks too fast.

[Breunor]

I can open the file in Media Player 9 with no problem, DivX player as well. Regarding the eye movement, perhaps if the eyes turn towards the target point a little faster than the head, and lock onto the target as the head catches up, it would look more realistic? But i think this was a test motion. I really agree with reducing the size of the breasts, at least 2 cup sizes to something closer to average. Or keep them, and drop work on the eye motion, 90% of the players will never notice the eyes...

 

Edit: As proof, for those who watched the clip, without watching it again try to remember the color of those moving eyes. You might remember as you were actually supposed to look at them, but if you can't remember... there you go!

Edited April 8, 2004 by Breunor

[Puasonen]

Yes, real one player get's an error when trying to view it but media player 9 plays it well. (I don't remember all the codecs I have installed though) I think .wmv should play with the mediaplayer without any extra codecs..

[Black Dash]

Well the latest version of the DivX player and codec can play the movie without problems. Try downloading the DivX codec for that...

 

By the way..REALLY GOOD ANIMATION DEIMOS!!

Edited April 8, 2004 by Black Dash

[Deimos]

Edit: As proof, for those who watched the clip, without watching it again try to remember the color of those moving eyes. You might remember as you were actually supposed to look at them, but if you can't remember... there you go! 

Err are they brown? To be honest I didn't even notice the size of her breasts until you guys pointed it out. My attention was elsewhere. I.E. the face

 

I think maybe the reason she looks large chested is because of the seated position she's in. I've placed her into a rough position that I think the seats in the craft would put her in. Notice how her body doesn't move when she turns her head. Usually that would be quite a serious faux par as turning the head at a large angle also moves the shoulders and chest. If the movement is great enough the whole torso moves all the way down to the hips.

 

But in this case she's strapped into the chair and is restrained, so the natural movement isn't allowed to follow through. Though there is a small amount of movement in the shoulders, I don't think its really noticable. Especially if you guys' attention was elsewhere

 

Seriously though this was just a rough test animation to get the gross body movements in the right proportions. At the moment she doesn't have any character to her and she isn't the model I'll be using for the 'Lieutenant'.

 

I want to get the emotions and character responses right before I go onto using the highres models for the cutscene. Then the animation data I've done with the test models can be transported over to the final models and rendered. I'm doing it this way so that it saves me time on rendering. The test models render up much quicker than the properly lit high res models.

 

Don't worry about the shafdows and all the other anomalies in these test renders, I promise that the final results will be at least on par with the ISS animation if not much greater.

[Guest drewid]

Hey Deimos, that animation is going along very well. In short time we will have a fully animated character... I suggest to use a fractal script for the eye blinking (sort of random, but not that random - easy explanation -).

 

Greetings

Red Knight

Eye blinks aren't random.

 

There is a certain amount of randomness to stop your eyeballs drying out, but also eyeblinks show when someone has reached a decision, or had a thought or changed their mind about something. They can be a powerful reinforcement of an emotional performance in you get the timing right

 

(read "in the blink of an eye" by Walter Murch).

[Breunor]

Was just updating the news page regarding this topic, and noticed all the earlier video clips are gone. Is there a folder they are located in, that I can link to?

[[[Micah]]]

I believe they were removed due to reasons that were discussed in a PM from Deimos on 13 March 2004. I think it would be fine to release them now, though. Deimos?

[Deimos]

Yeah. Sorry about that Breu.

If they're on the server somewhere then yeah go for it. If not pm me.