VFX_C301_WIP_JohnnyBlaze

[JohnnyBlaze]

Hi!

Here's my first try at the first challenge of the new C3xx-series.
Coming more from a VFX-background, I chose to do most of it in 3D (Autodesk Maya) and use Combustion for compositing + Photoshop for the 2D-work.

I'm imagining a rather dark shot, raining, stormy ocean with higher waves. Of course the waterlevel in the year 3000 will be a lot higher than it is now ;) , so i built the ocean to be a few meters higher than in the original photo. In the background will be a skyline built into the ocean (maybe followed up by an hint of an underwater city, if there's time :) ) . Over time and with the invention of cheap, flying vehicles for everybody, the hotel was rebuilt into a landing pod. Keeping the top 3 floors for sentimentality reasons. More details will be added to this idea as i go :) .

So far i (to the best of my abilities) camera-matched the hotel, built the ocean including particle-based foam on the ocean's crests, created an early version of rain, included dummy vehicles coming out of the hotel and landing there, "trains" commuting on the outer shell of the new skyline in the BG. Next i'll definitely include the rocks, that are seen beneath the hotel and make a new cloud layer matching the stormy scene. Following that will be the creation of the final skyline-structures (still having problems with that, bringing my ideas to paper/PS :( )

Playblast of the current Maya-scene... LINK (http://misc.christopherpuchta.com/vfxtalk301_preview01_JohnnyBlaze.mov)

Greets
Chris

[CGnews]

can you post a screenshot and any raw WIP's to psyche us up? also would help for people who want to check it out on the fly...

[ShadowMaker SdR]

Oh boy...this is gonna be a tough one to beat. I can tell already. I really like the idea of the particle based foam. Is there a 'trick' to it, or a preset or do just really know what you're doing?

[haz]

wow this is going to look cool! it would be cool to tell us how you did the ocean and the foam effects in maya....

Looking forward to seeing this developed... damn id better start mine now!

HaZ

[JohnnyBlaze]

I attached a quick render-WIP to my post above. Quickly put together in PS. I'll post more screens soon and post composite-screenshots when i start putting together the layers.

The ocean itself is basically a modified preset. I created the foam-particles, using a technique i learnt from a Siggraph Maya Master Class presentation. They are created dynamically, driven by an expression, by birthing particles where the waves reach a certain height. Also they know about the color-information from the place where the particles were created, though giving them the "correct" color, as if they were really torn out of the ocean by the strong winds :) . Additionally there are some extra attributes like wind, so i can control how far or how fast the foam moves above the ocean-surface.

[unxetas]

wow that ocean thing is really starting to look great.. I got tired of 3D very quickly (don't ask) but I really want to get back to maya or houdini and start learning some more particle and dynamic simulation stuff..

Great stuff, keep us posted!

[Silver]

All i can say is: very cool! Wish i knew how to camera map!

Regards,

Kenneth M

[JohnnyBlaze]

Just to keep you guys updated...i'm having a hard time finding time to work on VFX301 at the moment, as my actual job is more time-consuming than i had predicted (when isn't it, when closing in on a deadline? ;) ).
I'll try to finish the vital parts this weekend, polish it up as far as i can until somewhere mid-week'ish and then render+composite it all 'til saturday. Tough timetable, but that's what our job is all about, right? :) After that it's all
:sleepy: and :chillpill for a few days...


Cheers
Chris

[Silver]

Hey Johnny (Chris) Blaze

You have to!!! Think everyone excited to see your final comp! Just quit your dayjob and work on this till the last min (heh)

Regards,

Kenneth M

[JohnnyBlaze]

Another WIP-pic before i start putting it all together. Tomorrow i'll put some more work into that landing-pod-thingie and have a few simple vehicles fly in and out of it.
Not seen on this pic is the rain+ocean-foam which is still there. Another plus will be the extra splashes that happen where the waves hit the rock...dunno how that will look, when it's comped, yet :) .

[JohnnyBlaze]

Adding a last playblast before i start finishing it all up on Saturday. I modified the skyline a bit, added vehicles coming in and out of the dock beneath the hotel and vehicles driving alongside the skyline-front-"railsystem". Now i'm still working on the dock itself, adding lil details here and there and on the splashes that happen between rock and ocean. I hope my renderlayers will work out like i planned it, since i haven't tested the full compositing-setup until now ;) . We'll see about that on Saturday...

LINK (http://misc.christopherpuchta.com/vfxtalk301_preview02_JohnnyBlaze_QT6.mov)


Cheers
Chris

[JohnnyBlaze]

Thanks to the extended deadline i had a little more time to fix a few things that still needed fixing. I noticed those "flaws" only today when i rendered a short sequence and put it all together for the first time (see the QT below). With the shorter deadline i couldn't have done that.
For compositing i switched to Fusion5. Simply because the box was unattended at the moment and i'm way quicker there, arranging all the different layers+effects, than i am in combustion.
For the final submission i'll probably redo the rain, model out the rock (right now it looks more a like a big, brown lump to me :( ) a lil more, add some vegetation on top and add more details to the BG-skyline and to the gliders.

LINK (http://misc.christopherpuchta.com/vfxtalk301_preview03_JohnnyBlaze.mov)
LINK_2 (http://misc.christopherpuchta.com/vfxtalk301_preview04_JohnnyBlaze.mov) ...slightly different version, making the rain to move more sideways, following the direction the waves are making, suggesting a strong wind going from left to right.

Hope you like it so far :)


Chris

[ForceMd]

Looks Awsome!! this is indeed going to be hard to beat!



one small suggestion I would like to add is it would be cool if you varied the speed of the different vehicles.

Mabe even have the (Trams?) slow down and speed up as they pass behind or come from behind the hotel respectively (as if there were a Tram stop just beyond the hotel).

I wish I had an ounce of your knowledge of 3D.

Best of luck to you.

[JohnnyBlaze]

Thanx for your suggestion. I already changed the speed of the trams and also of the gliders. But i won't make the trams stop, or else i'd have to model something where they actually could stop :) . Another reason is, that this layer is already being rendered... ;)

[JohnnyBlaze]

Finally finished and submitted my entry.

So here's two more screenshots from Fusion and Maya. Maybe i'll even do a breakdown-vid of the scene :)

[drswoboda]

Great work on the water, really nice piece!
-David

[drswoboda]

Hi again,

I forgot to ask was your water rendering straight out of stock MAYA, or did you use a third party plugin for that water? Looks like some particles for wave caps?

Thanks,
-David

[JohnnyBlaze]

Hi again,

I forgot to ask was your water rendering straight out of stock MAYA, or did you use a third party plugin for that water? Looks like some particles for wave caps?

Thanks,
-David


Yep, the wave caps are particles coming from the ocean surface (using its color+height at the particle's location) and the ocean surface itself is the stock Maya Ocean, with a few modifications of course :) .