Dug this up from my old WIPs

[detbear]

I ran into this old WIP that I shelved a while back. It wasn't turning out the way I had hoped so I stored it away until I have time to go back and give it another go.

 

Final_Dragon_Shot_.mov

 

William

[Gerry]

Whoo! What about that wasn't working out?

[John Bigboote]

EXCELLENT! The DOF shift was a little weird, but overall... fun!

[3DArtZ]

I take it the dragons are the good guys???

[robcat2075]

Very Cool! I like that!

[largento]

Awesome!

[robcat2075]

"Meet the Fokker!"

[johnl3d]

Nice

[Maniac]

nice work

[itsjustme]

Great stuff, William!

[Mechadelphia]

detbear,

 

How did you assemble this scene in your choreography?

 

I'm also animating a few aerial sequences and I'm a bit stumped on how to get the type of visual that you posted here.

 

Thanks.

[detbear]

Hey Everyone,

 

Thanks for your comments. I hope to improve some things on the dragon's motion and to the (Eindecker)planes overall feel. It kind-of loses it's flow of motion just before the dragon makes contact. One of the major challenges was to get the

Dragon and plane to believable fly at a similar speed with the Dragon only relying on its glide and flap thrust. Once you get a

certain amount of animation and staging built into this type of shot, it's hard to go back and change even the smallest things without actually starting over.

 

Originally I had a different background with the plane going close over treetops and then swooping down into a Valley.

 

Mechadelphia..... I started very basic with shapes under the plane in order to get the speed looking somewhat believable. Although I could have approached it a different way, I decided to actually have the plane moving through the air rather than

stationary with only a moving background. I had an ILM animator tell me that they used this same approach for the aerial shots in the movie "Iron Man."

I'll see if I can dig up some shots and post shots of the WIP stages.

I modelled the Plane & Zepplins in A:M. The dragon is of course from one of the A:M CD's. I had to re-rig the dragon at a few places in order to get the motions I wanted(Just my preferences). Each individual model was rendered in A:M and then loaded into After Effects. for final composite.

 

The Breaking up of the plane was done by hand/ key animation rather than by simulations. I think I added a small effect in post to smooth it over though.

 

The background is a single still image that I created in Vue. I hand keyed it to add the look of movement at that high of an altitude. Clouds were created with a particle simulator, rendered separately with a "Mask" and added into the composite along with everything else. Smoke trail was also a separate sprite based creation. I chose to use partical illusion for that. BUT A:M can produce incredible sprite smoke as well.

 

William

[detbear]

Ok.... I went back and dug up some of the old composite layers. ALSO....There is a scratch...test animation with the "ground" objects I used to try and get the speed of the plane looking right.

 

 

Here's the scratch animation test: Dragon_Fokker_Try_N_dynamic_tail_.mov

 

Cheers,

 

William

[robcat2075]

I like the cubical clouds!

 

I recall the story of William Wellman having to wait weeks to shoot plane shots for "Wings" because there were no clouds in the sky and without clouds the planes didn't look like they were moving. And of course in 1927 there was no CG to fill in.

 

I with some R&D we could better those clouds and smoke with A:M effects.

[Mechadelphia]

Hey Everyone,

 

Thanks for your comments. I hope to improve some things on the dragon's motion and to the (Eindecker)planes overall feel. It kind-of loses it's flow of motion just before the dragon makes contact. One of the major challenges was to get the

Dragon and plane to believable fly at a similar speed with the Dragon only relying on its glide and flap thrust. Once you get a

certain amount of animation and staging built into this type of shot, it's hard to go back and change even the smallest things without actually starting over.

 

Originally I had a different background with the plane going close over treetops and then swooping down into a Valley.

 

Mechadelphia..... I started very basic with shapes under the plane in order to get the speed looking somewhat believable. Although I could have approached it a different way, I decided to actually have the plane moving through the air rather than

stationary with only a moving background. I had an ILM animator tell me that they used this same approach for the aerial shots in the movie "Iron Man."

I'll see if I can dig up some shots and post shots of the WIP stages.

I modelled the Plane & Zepplins in A:M. The dragon is of course from one of the A:M CD's. I had to re-rig the dragon at a few places in order to get the motions I wanted(Just my preferences). Each individual model was rendered in A:M and then loaded into After Effects. for final composite.

 

The Breaking up of the plane was done by hand/ key animation rather than by simulations. I think I added a small effect in post to smooth it over though.

 

The background is a single still image that I created in Vue. I hand keyed it to add the look of movement at that high of an altitude. Clouds were created with a particle simulator, rendered separately with a "Mask" and added into the composite along with everything else. Smoke trail was also a separate sprite based creation. I chose to use partical illusion for that. BUT A:M can produce incredible sprite smoke as well.

 

William

 

detbear,

 

Thank you very much for your detailed breakdown.

 

I definitely will be putting those techniques to use very soon.

 

Take care.

[thejobe]

i see things like this and smile because i know that one day A:M will be used to make Feature length pictures like some bigger studios with ease.

[Walter Baker]

WOW

[Rodney]

Yes indeed. That is an impressive piece of work.

 

I was just casually watching, thinking... cool plane... nice smoke... really liking that camera work...

Then the dragon moves into the scene.

 

Oh yeah.

Awesome.

[aen916]

excellent work, I hope you will continue the story!

[Wildsided]

Love it. Dragon kicked that Fokker's ass