CGTalk - Moscow 2375(UPDATE)

Doobeh

06-28-2002, 12:53 PM

That is quite an amazing feat that it doesn't use GI, can you comment a bit more on how you got the light to be so subtle

I feel compelled to ask for a shot of the wireframes, and a closeup of the walkway where it joins the front of the buildings 'porch' and one of the gargoyles, be interesting to see how much detail you used to get such a wonderful final image.

Truely cinematic quality. If they ever get around to making a fifth element II, I wouldn't be surprised if they headhunted you for some of the architectual visualisations :) When are you gonna upload the fly-by version? ;)

Hats off to you,

Regards,
Doobeh...

wyktor

06-28-2002, 02:25 PM

Absolutely amazing atmosphere :love:

Do you have also other shots? Or perhaps small fly-by movie?

ps> Why you don't use azbuka on traffic signs?

OrestesMantra

06-28-2002, 03:41 PM

The atmosphere is truly awesome.

Jacko Cohen

06-28-2002, 03:52 PM

I'd like to see some flying cars in there. LOTS of them.
And lots more traffic lights, wires from one building to the next.
make it over-crowded.

Looks kinda deserted. No people on the walk-way. All windows shut. Very few with lights on.

Looks lonely.

telecaustic

06-28-2002, 04:35 PM

Hey Dennis,

This LOOKS AWESOME, really awesome, I wish I had a poster of this.

As I am sure you already know, I am NOT a 3D modeler as much as I am a 3D dabbler. I am into moving pictures. That said I noticed one thing. If you quarter this frame I think the lower right hand side, it looks a little off somehow. Mainly, to the right of the first building and below the crosswalk. The square area behind the traffic light. I think the darkness/shadow on the lower half of the first building is awesome. But in this little square area the image detail just sorta falls apart in a way I wouldn't expect it to in real life. It sort of turns into a 80's matte painting down there. I really hate to nick pick, especially when I COULD NOT do this myself. And on top of that I am not sure ANYONE else would feel the same way as I do. I will deffinatly be watching for more pictures on the cityscape, they look F@#$ing Pimp.

c.w

Edit:
BTW, would it be possible for you to show a wireframe of this, mainly for the lighting layout, I have always been curious how you guys get these stellar lighting layouts.

Lesen*

06-28-2002, 06:57 PM

This is a Master Piece.............Insane.

Lesen*

3dflasher

06-28-2002, 07:55 PM

Your progress has been amazing to say the least. This image knocked me off my chair. I love it. It is just breathtaking. Maybe you can ditry up the traffic light a little bit more. add some rain residue or something on it to give it more history...right now its the only thing calling my eyes, that and the 2 yellow curtains. I saw the animatic you posted ...man I cant wait to see it in action. This is damn close to a film quality pic. Keep up the excellent work and keep us posted...spend more days without eating if this is the result :)

you truly deserve 5 stars...I think I will vote :)

The Magic Pen

06-28-2002, 07:56 PM

Damn looking good so far man :thumbsup:

hellblade

06-28-2002, 08:15 PM

Damn nice work man, congrats. One thing I notice though is that if it's supposed to be Moscow, why are the signs that designate left-turn "ONLY" in English as opposed to Russian? The Russian signs don't even look like that as far as I know :)
Again, nice work.

DSedov

06-28-2002, 09:11 PM

Jeah.... I didn't think it would generate that many responces in one night.

Thanks alot everyone!

I will fix everything that happened to be not russian. I just had those textures of signes, but Im finishing off russian version of textures. Also I will change traffic lights as weel as they are from dark plastic and lighting up using diods.

As for lighting it is really simple but I was tweaking it for quite a while. There are only 3 lights so far: ambience light which is an area light, a key light surving mostly as backlighting atmospherick light (sun scattering through clouds) you can bearly see it on this picture but it adds a lot of realism.

amd some fill light on the building wich is a point light.

Most of the highlights a true highlights done with reflections.

And here is wireframe:
http://www.newlifecentury.com/dennis/screenshot.gif

hypercube

06-28-2002, 10:05 PM

Damn, you keep spawning new threads, it's hard to keep up :D

Looking really fantastic..I think it's only the strongly saturated blue parts on the awnings that read as fake..the darker ones work great. Building itself is looking really convincing now, and great lighting..sometimes simpler is better.

Only thing I'd say is it seems a little architecturally confused towards the top of the image..like there's the sidewalk-level door/window size..then another size..then another..that's all that struck me as strange. Also is it my imagination or does the balcony still have an 'end' on it even though it goes into the walkway? The light and signs are a great addition, too. More stuff like that would be great..'street' lights, etc. maybe some new strange kinds of traffic signs and signals that would be needed to cope with multilevel flying traffic, like along with left and right turns, would you have an up and down turn signal as well?

Look forward to more, and cars, and animation, and and and :)

xynaria

06-28-2002, 11:39 PM

Great atmosphere, lighting is really working well.

Please .. no flying cars.. why turn it into a cliche :)

DSedov

06-29-2002, 12:00 AM

well.. this is quite a big city with quite tall buildings. Considering that cars wont fitt on a single level streets hence they should fly =)

I think I will come up with something original on how they should fly

SheepFactory

06-29-2002, 06:02 AM

This is truely wonderful , I love the athmosphere. Please post a link to the animation as soon as its complete , i cant wait to see it.

GRMac13

06-29-2002, 06:15 AM

How about instead of flying cars, have a system of suspended cars that ride along cables. Kind of like a ski-lift. Anyway, looks great, I agree w/ hypercube about toning down those blue awnings tho.

kyphur

06-29-2002, 06:32 AM

With the awnings I think you should make them kinda slack in the center to kinda give them weight. They look as if they're a bit stiff and it just doesn't look like the way their made is supposed to give that type of look.

Kyph

Dis

06-29-2002, 07:59 AM

w00t w00t - cgchannel frontpage !! :airguitar

really great work so far. cant wait to see the next update !

Dis

DSedov

06-29-2002, 09:16 AM

Wow... the frontpage.. I talked with Leo about that and I thought it would worth it once it is superfinished, but thanks everyone in trusting this project. This means much to me!!!

Im working on the awnings right now. One thing I found out that they were not casting shadows at all =) so now they should look more real though I'll work a little on the shape.

As I promised I have done animation and it is rendering as type this 3 min a frame total of 150 frames. But I will retime it to make a total of 300. It has a little surprse =)) so stay tuned for that updated. I hope to post it tommorow like 12 -13pm pacific time.

here is a little update though
http://www.newlifecentury.com/dennis/update.jpg

dark_lotus

06-29-2002, 10:11 AM

:drool:

Why does everyone have to show up and make me look bad. <sigh>

Oh well, I could always pursue a career in plumbing.

Fantastic work though.
I'm just going to go and sit in the corner and cry.:cry:

Dennik

06-29-2002, 01:42 PM

Very well done Dennis.
Don't forget to put a lot of dirt on the walls though.
I'm looking forward for the flying cars!

:thumbsup:

Julez4001

06-29-2002, 02:49 PM

what happen to the images?

hypercube

06-29-2002, 03:03 PM

Ah, it made it to the front page, I think that's what happened to the images. Being on the front page is like a nuclear bandwidth bomb.

Anyway, congrats on the front page and hope it gets sorted, want to see the rest :)

telecaustic

06-29-2002, 04:52 PM

Time to change the wallpaper :applause:

c.w

Facial Deluxe

06-29-2002, 04:57 PM

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

A Fan.

DSedov

06-29-2002, 08:00 PM

okey =) wow... I have to thank my mom and producers... and =)))

I just moved to the new server so that one should hol for a while.
hopefully =)))

there are 20 frames left in animation to render so stay tuned!!!!!

DSedov

06-29-2002, 11:11 PM

okey. HERE is the long waiting animation flythrough test!!!

DIV-X 5.02 (http://www.findate.com/dennis/rendertest.avi)

hook3d

06-29-2002, 11:22 PM

Hey DSedov...your stuff is looking great. What package are you using? I've been a Lightwave guy for years, but i've gotta start learning Maya. I've had pretty good success getting work in TV, and currently an X-Box game with LW skills, but I wanna get into film, and Maya and XSI pretty much have that market sewed up. BTW...I miss Santa Barbara so much...I am actually from Ojai, but went to Santa Barbara City College for a couple years...I'm in Chicago now for work...dang I miss home!! Keep it up.

-Hook

Julez4001

06-29-2002, 11:34 PM

Hey can someone host this for him...
his site is down and I wanna see this animation!

DSedov

06-29-2002, 11:46 PM

hook3d: I am using LW and it is up to individual to choose software, but I come otherway arounf from Maya to LW. I used to work for AW when they were in SB but not anymore, so now I switched back to LW. BTW I finished SBCC too... such a nice place.. I will move in LA for CalArts soon and im pretty damn sure I will miss it =(

PS. I would appreciate if someone could give me FTP with space for 1 animation 11mb ( I can size it down its 640x480 150 frames DIVX5.02 I think I can compress it more if someone wants it. also 3 images ~150kb each)

jhook3d

06-30-2002, 12:11 AM

Haha...yeah, I lived in Valencia for a couple years...Used to work at Foundation Imaging. Valencia's not a bad place, it just gets hotter than hell in summer. However, looking back...I'd take Valencia 118 degree dry heat any day over Chicago 90 degree sopping wet heat...Good luck at CalArts...Won't you be going back to Maya there though? Anyway...I wish more places would let guys model in there package of choice, at least. LW's modeler rokks. But, I think I'm going to have to learn NURBS...Oh well, I just hope they aren't as painful as they look. By the way...going from Maya to LW, what are your impressions of the texturing differnces? Which do you prefer, and why? The texturing in Maya seems very very different...

-Hook

DSedov

06-30-2002, 12:29 AM

Okey fixed the images. but still need the server for animation

I found that subdivs are better most of the time then Nurbs, and LW is pretty good as far subd goes.

I have to agree that texturing process is quite more advanced in Maya then in LW but it just happen to do it in less time in LW because of ease of use. And some things that you have to build a complex node structure are there, built in LW.

Does Foundation Imaging uses LW ?

jhook3d

06-30-2002, 12:43 AM

Yes...FI was (is) a LW house. Everything was done in Lightwave, and various compositing packages. They aren't doing so well, but that's not Lightwave's fault! Actually, Foundation was really the first major Lightwave house out there. I don't know what the future hold's for them, as Ron Thornton (Awesome guy to work for!) left the company, which he co founded to become an independent VFX producer...

ryanjohnsonD

06-30-2002, 01:00 AM

I'm trying to watch your animation, but I'm getting a "Server Can't Process..." response.

Can you save out the render again?

Also, can you tell me why you switched back to LW? Why would their move from Santa Barbara make a difference?

Thanks,

Ryan

DSedov

06-30-2002, 01:12 AM

The problem is not with AVI but with a server, I guess frontpage of cgchannel did it's job =)

I aleady swiched two servers just to host images. =)

I switched back to LW because im not working anywhere now and thats what I have at home. I used to work for AW and we had some inhouse project that made sence as we had quite a team with couple programming guys. But Maya is not that efficient if you work alone. This is basically an in-home project and has only two peoeple working on it. Im an artist and another guy is a film major student that tells me weather or not picture does look real =)

Moving from SB would make a big difference as far as job and eduaction goes. Im planning to transfer to Calarts and possibly get an internship in LA.

DSedov

06-30-2002, 01:15 AM

uups i just read the post again. I guess you ment AW not me =)

They are restructuring the company and well.. I guess I still am under NDA but it has something to do with people not being able to work well with Tornoto office. Since im not working there anymore I can say that AW guys at Toronto are assholes =))

But the building is still there though there are only 5 people working there for Dreamworks R&D

Julez4001

06-30-2002, 04:52 AM

You didn't use GI on the object ... what did you use to get the soft look then.
150 spinning spotlights....
:buttrock:

Or multiple area lights?

very Nice animation. Really impressive.
Would you sell that scene and model?

Julez4001

06-30-2002, 04:56 AM

What was the render time on what machine?

ycf98

06-30-2002, 05:45 AM

you know wut u really need ? SPIDERMAN!!!!

DSedov

06-30-2002, 06:59 AM

It has only 3 lights and one is really not needed it just give a really subtle look. One area light and one spotlight thats it nothing else.

it takes that big image 8 minutes torender on my dual athlon 1800+ with 1gb of DDR ram

crazymopho

06-30-2002, 07:35 AM

I must say, this is really great work..

How much bandwidth are we talking that you need? I have a server that i might beable to give you a temp spot at. Email me here (crazy@mophos.com) if you are interested... and have an idea of how much bandwidth you might need.

Once again... great work. :thumbsup:

Calle

06-30-2002, 10:59 AM

I think you used the "sharpen" button to much. :) I know it's a nice way to get more details but this is to much, i think. :)

Wigaru Wiyamoto

06-30-2002, 11:00 AM

Originally posted by xynaria
Great atmosphere, lighting is really working well.

Please .. no flying cars.. why turn it into a cliche :)

Then what would the suspended stoplights be used for? :rolleyes:

xsilentpepe

06-30-2002, 12:02 PM

The animation test is really great!
The question i have is that do you love Softimage|XSI and Pepsi?( the advertisings on the buildings)
If yes, same here!!!!

digones

06-30-2002, 01:42 PM

hi dennis,

I can host your animation, if you still need it

send the animation to this e-mail, please:

rodrigo@design-o-rama.com.br (cause I cannot download it, i think your link is broken

see ya

Intruder

06-30-2002, 01:45 PM

if you need hosting i have 1 for ya :-) just mail me @ vanovermeire_bjorn@hotmail.com

ps i can give you 2gb(hd space) and unlimited broardband :-)

just mail me oke

ps nice work i love it

:love: :applause:

Cman

06-30-2002, 05:29 PM

Originally posted by xsilentpepe
The animation test is really great!
The question i have is that do you love Softimage|XSI and Pepsi?( the advertisings on the buildings)
If yes, same here!!!!

Hey yeah! :surprised
If you used Lightwave, why not put a LW sign in there too!? :wavey:
Yes I use LW and I think your model looks awesome.
Can't say I really love the fly thru, but it's still outstanding work! =)
Great job! :buttrock:

zappenduster

07-01-2002, 12:19 AM

looks really good

only things i dont like are the trafficlights they are too eyecatchy maybe you could age them or shrink a bit

btw could it be that you have no sky only a little gray background ? =)

and at last change the softimage add to a lw =)

GlasS-

07-01-2002, 01:38 AM

Well, this WOULD look cool if i just could see the damned pics.. Nothing is working, man fix your server pronto ;)

DSedov

07-01-2002, 05:01 AM

Thanks guys for reply. I don't think I will need hosting now =(

This morning I woke up and both of my hdd, main and backup were corrupt, I tried to recover any data but the main city file is corrupt and doesn't want to recover.. So I guess a month of work just ... ohh well.

No I'll be starting over again and I will have to thank you guys for all the comments, if someone didn't see the picture because I over exceed bandwidth on the server I can email it to you. Email me and I will get to you with the picture. here is my email
dsedov@newlifecetury.com (mailto:dsedov@newlifecentury.com)

Maybe I'll just hang my self :wavey: :argh:

3DZukini

07-01-2002, 05:58 AM

that really sucks... (that your computer crashed-not the images, they rock!)

I really liked your textures, they worked spectacular for making the model look really Hi-poly--I bet you're pretty good at making textures for racing games!! Maybe a "Fifth Element" style racing game is due for one of these new high-power consoles. Anyway, the scene was looking fantastic and could only end up better the second time around! Keep up the great work and PLEASE keep posting your new stuff.:beer:

spm

07-01-2002, 10:50 AM

Originally posted by DSedov
Thanks guys for reply. I don't think I will need hosting now =(

This morning I woke up and both of my hdd, main and backup were corrupt, I tried to recover any data but the main city file is corrupt and doesn't want to recover.. So I guess a month of work just ... ohh well.

No I'll be starting over again and I will have to thank you guys for all the comments, if someone didn't see the picture because I over exceed bandwidth on the server I can email it to you. Email me and I will get to you with the picture. here is my email
dsedov@newlifecetury.com (mailto:dsedov@newlifecentury.com)

Maybe I'll just hang my self :wavey: :argh:

somehow this happens very often, and even if it does the HD manufacturers still give you years and years of warranty on the disks...

angelman

07-01-2002, 11:39 AM

One thing that may help you especially in development stages is to render in passes. Rather than wait 8 minutes (admittedly not long) why not render the image in various passes. Then you can adjust things like reflectivity, depth, depth of field blur in a compositing package (which I think you said you had access to).

For instance a simple one would be to render a couple of projected grads on the image. ie. set the material of everything to constant and project (maybe from a light or something) a front back gradient (say red to blue) and a vertical top-bottom gradient (in different colours). YOu can then extract these channels and use it to create some nice depth passes. Quicker and easier than rendering it all in one.

Render reflections as seperate passes, you could even render a pass for each light and then adjust the lighting in 2d.
Its far quicker to tweak a slider than to keep re-rendering the image each time.

Dont worry if your 3d package doesnt render in passes, just set up some materials to do this for you...

I think this could help you alot... if youre not doing this already.

ramis

07-01-2002, 12:56 PM

Very good image man, but I've noticed something (maybe it has been made that way intentionally) but when you are driving, you must go by the right of the street (except in some countries like England, you know) but in your scene the traffic lights says that in one street the cars must go by the left and in the other by the right. Just a little detail :)

Go on with this awesome work :buttrock:

regards

digones

07-01-2002, 01:16 PM

wow dennis, whatta mess! :sad: :sad: :sad:

This is why I use MAC! :airguitar

If you need any help, or something, just ask for it

thanks,

rodrigo.ribeiro

angelman

07-01-2002, 01:18 PM

what the??
dijones... have you posted on the wrong board??

zappenduster

07-03-2002, 01:28 AM

maybe he means the hdd problem =)

Dis

07-03-2002, 03:55 AM

yeah ! mac hd's are much more ..... no wait

DSedov

07-03-2002, 03:56 AM

Ohh well.. but im working on a new city now.. that one is gonna be much better!

zappenduster

07-03-2002, 04:04 AM

i hope to see soon more of your "new" city maybe this time with some cars =)

btw i looked on your site and ok its in construction but on the about me page u have a little picture of you and your mom

That is my mam and me. I guess it says that on the top right corner on a picture :)

but the text is in the top left corner of the picture =)

DSedov

07-03-2002, 04:11 AM

I figured the idea with cars to be more originals. Since those buildings are really tall and it makes as much sence to move vertical as horisontal i will creates flying elevators small one are free (like regular elevators) and there gonna be some bigger ones taxi-like that will move in both directions.