John Bigboote Posted June 30, 2011 Posted June 30, 2011 This 'Manhattan Project' I am doing for Shawn Rogers (NewGuy) is coming along really nice... I decided that to do a proper NYC you need to also model what lies across the rivers... which is Staten Island, Brooklyn, Jersey, the Bronx and the Atlantic Ocean... among others. (Bridges, Statue of Liberty, ships...) The project is for the Major League Soccer's New York Red Bulls... and next I will be modeling their stadium... so the zoom can continue right into midfield! Texturing is minimal... all is heavily stylized... just needed to capture the 'feel' of the city. I will render a high res over the holiday weekend with particle trees, reflections and shadows at 720P... DIG! (Thanks to Shawn for the patience, the permission to share with the forum, and the gig!) NYC1.mov Quote
paradymx Posted June 30, 2011 Posted June 30, 2011 Wow that is nice! Even without textures that looks great. Did you populate the buildings using some kind of duplicator or sweeper? If not then, even more kudos to you. Quote
Bruce Del Porte Posted June 30, 2011 Posted June 30, 2011 Very cool! Try not to land in the Hudson. Quote
John Bigboote Posted June 30, 2011 Author Posted June 30, 2011 Frame 1 done... so I junked it up with text. No duplicator wizard used, just good old copy and paste and heavy usage of action objects. There is a skydome with a gradient material (white to blue) and there is a Darksim material called 'Division' on the ground to add more boxxy subdivided urban junglry. I am thinking about adding clouds... Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted June 30, 2011 Hash Fellow Posted June 30, 2011 wow, that looks very detailed! Quote
serg2 Posted June 30, 2011 Posted June 30, 2011 This is done in the AM? At first I assumed it CityEngine or GoogleEarth Stunningly! Quote
new guy Posted June 30, 2011 Posted June 30, 2011 My eyes are bugging out as I slowly pick my jaw off the floor! DANG!!!! Quote
Paul Forwood Posted June 30, 2011 Posted June 30, 2011 Wowzers, Matt!!! That is great! Did you bevel? Quote
NancyGormezano Posted June 30, 2011 Posted June 30, 2011 Wow Weee. Neat, fabulous, impressive job! Are you going to follow the same "flight path" for the final result? And if so, I am wondering if you plan to do something to minimize the obvious temporal scintillation? Quote
John Bigboote Posted June 30, 2011 Author Posted June 30, 2011 Thanks everyone...! Nancy, temporal scintantilization-bickus-dickus? Lost me on that one... it is a proxy flight plan... Shawn and Co. will do with the camera whatever as they wush.... where's my dictionary...? Did I bevel? Heck no. Quote
NancyGormezano Posted June 30, 2011 Posted June 30, 2011 temporal scintantilization-bickus-dickus? The flickering bickus-dickus = the scantiscinty sparkly effect as one flies over time (I repeat - amazing job!) Quote
Admin Rodney Posted June 30, 2011 Admin Posted June 30, 2011 Very impressive Matt! I've always wanted to do something like that with a large city but could never muster the patience for it. Your hard work is on full display here. Most excellent. Note: Perhaps one way to defeat the flickering bickus-dickus would be to render significant portions of the sequence out as a still frame (for those areas where the camera will allow it) and run your camera work on that still frame. It'd be a bit like animating from Pose to Pose to Pose with a whole lot of Inbetweens where your key buildings are the main objects being inbetweened. Think in terms of the old Multiplane camera technique where the background can rotate and pan as the camera moves in. When and where appropriate switch to high speed (blurred or denoised?) 3D. Now that I think about it... this might be a great opportunity to push the frames out on 2s where each image is repeated. That's a guess.. but it might be enough to break the sequence out of the standard CG feel while avoiding the FBD. Quote
frosteternal Posted June 30, 2011 Posted June 30, 2011 Nice city model - very VERY nice! Regarding the flickering bickus-dickus ™ : If, as I suspect, the flickering bickus-dickus ™ refers to the flicker of high-detail tiny objects as they move across limited resolution, then most of it will disappear with higher resolutions. The other solution would be using a depth map to blur objects at distance > n (where n is an arbitrary distance from the viewer at which details alias) slightly to help clear up the flicker (a type of temporal aliasing) Great stuff! Quote
John Bigboote Posted June 30, 2011 Author Posted June 30, 2011 Oh... THAT flickering-bickus dickus! Yeah- this is a quarter-res 1 pass render... possibly tomorrow I will have a full res to share, it's rendering right now at 1280 X 720 with 5 passes @ 7-8 min per frame. I really-really-really need a rendering solution... long renders are KILLING me. I will look into using DOF eventually... also might be neat to use some FakeAO on this scene. Quote
pixelplucker Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 That is awesome... how many keyboards did you wear out on that with the copy/paste? My hands ache looking at that hehe. Quote
John Bigboote Posted July 1, 2011 Author Posted July 1, 2011 Progress: I added clouds at the last minute before render last night... also, you can now see the particle trees that dot the landscape. This is with 5 passes multipass, I'll let it go over the weekend and we'll see it animate on Tuesday! Quote
Paul Forwood Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 Amazing! I assume you are using displacement maps for some of that detail? Quote
John Bigboote Posted July 1, 2011 Author Posted July 1, 2011 Amazing! I assume you are using displacement maps for some of that detail? That was the 1st thing I considered and tested, I mean- it would be great to simply make a 64bit grayscale patch image with varying levels of gray boxes to make buildings of various heights... no? Well, I could not get favorable results... and render time goes up with displacements as well as other issues... like how close can you put the camera to a displaced surface (not very) without problems. I found a Darktree material called 'Division' that I tweeked to get the 2ndary level of suburban chaos below the copy/paste boxes- not perfect by any means but a good cheat. It employs a bump for fake depth and renders quickly. Here is one single patch with and without Division: Quote
John Bigboote Posted July 1, 2011 Author Posted July 1, 2011 This being a patriotic holiday here in the US... HAPPY 4th of July to my fellow Americans. (The Statue of Liberty model seen here was a 3DS model I found on a free model site and I used the AM Importer to convert it to a hash model, worked well... needs the base. These images used my 'Fisheye Lens' model and a Photoshop filter.) Quote
mtpeak2 Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 Impressive, Matt! Looking forward to the flyby final render. Quote
jakerupert Posted July 2, 2011 Posted July 2, 2011 --------------------------- ---------------------------- ----------- --------- ------ -- -------------------------- Quote
jakerupert Posted July 2, 2011 Posted July 2, 2011 after finding my words again, I just can draw my hat!!! And you seem to have approximidated the building to the actual buildings also, right? What pictures did you use for that? Quote
Gerry Posted July 2, 2011 Posted July 2, 2011 I can see my house from up here! Amazing work, Matt. Quote
Meowx Posted July 3, 2011 Posted July 3, 2011 That's some pretty impressive looking stuff! Really nicely done! Quote
John Bigboote Posted July 4, 2011 Author Posted July 4, 2011 It needs work in the 'scaling' department... somehow the Empire State building is not the tallest, and the Chrysler building is WAY too short. Rendertimes for the above movie(post #1) were 7 seconds per frame... the 1280 X 720 5 multi-pass with trees, shadows and reflections are taking an average of 7 minutes per frame... not too bad. Quote
John Bigboote Posted July 6, 2011 Author Posted July 6, 2011 I've uploaded to A:M Films but await approval... here is a more finished 'WIP'. NYC1small.mov Quote
Bruce Del Porte Posted July 6, 2011 Posted July 6, 2011 Great job! A very effective tour of New York harbour at supersonic speed! Quote
tbenefi33 Posted July 6, 2011 Posted July 6, 2011 awesome detail work, I like the fly by over the cities. Quote
Zaryin Posted July 6, 2011 Posted July 6, 2011 This is freakin' nuts! Excellent work. I don't know how you have the patience (sp?) to do this kind of detail. Quote
NancyGormezano Posted July 6, 2011 Posted July 6, 2011 Wow! That turned out fabulously! Amazing ! Not a bickus-dickus to be seen anywhere! Quote
Glob Studios Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 That is really wonderful! What did you use for the water? A material or something more involved? -Vance Quote
John Bigboote Posted July 12, 2011 Author Posted July 12, 2011 Hi Vance- The water is even more simpler than a material... it is done with the group's 'roughness' and 'roughness scale' properties... set at very very low values... then the plane that was the water surface was keyframe moved/rotated over the length of the chor. It is a week point in the project that could be addressed, it was kept simple for the render time's benefit. THANKS! Quote
Glob Studios Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 Clever! The ripples and the motion really make the water convincing. -Vance Quote
agep Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 So... when are you going to texture the buildings?.. haha, just kidding. It looks wonderful, I love the style! Great work Quote
John Bigboote Posted July 13, 2011 Author Posted July 13, 2011 So... when are you going to texture the buildings?.. haha, just kidding. It looks wonderful, I love the style! Great work I am actually thinking of shortcuts for slapping textures on there... like random patch images or something. Quote
Meowx Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Water looks cool, but I'd scale the ripples waaaaayyy down! Right now it goes from looking really cool and full-sized to looking like a tiny model in a fishtank when you zoom up to the stadium - the waves are too big! Out of curiosity, how big is the skydome/cloud layer in relation to the city? Would you mind posting, like, a wireframe screenshot of the whole shebang from the side? Quote
John Bigboote Posted July 13, 2011 Author Posted July 13, 2011 Hey Meowx- Here is an alt view of the chor. The water size is a tradeoff, too small and you don't see it from the flyover... too big and the Passaic River is 'surf's up!'... I tried adjusting it on the fly, but the scaling is based off the water patch's center point which looked odd... so I went for a happy medium. It needs work, but I don't want anything that will add a lot to render times, because they are already a bit high. Quote
John Bigboote Posted July 13, 2011 Author Posted July 13, 2011 Forgot to mention the skydome has 'Ignore Fog' turned ON and CAST REFLECTIONS off and FLAT SHADED on and CAST SHADOWS off... Quote
rekh Posted November 5, 2012 Posted November 5, 2012 I've often wondered if AM could handle this type of project. Nice! Quote
Kamikaze Posted November 24, 2012 Posted November 24, 2012 Been going thru older post that I missed when away from AM...just wanted to say how impressed I was at this project.......freakn' awesome !!! Quote
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