RobertoOrtiz
12-09-2004, 01:42 AM
____________________________________________________________________
Dont forget to suggest topic for our next challenge:
CgTalk:FXWars!Topics (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=155219)
The next challenge will be a comp challenge.
____________________________________________________________________
Ok I added the votes:
Here are the winners!
Best Simulation:
FXWars! Roller Coaster!: Frank Firsching (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=182992)
Best Animation:
F (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)FXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180386)
Best Thrill Ride:
F (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)FXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180386)
Best Design:
F (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)FXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180386)
AND THE winner!
http://66.242.144.2/cupFX.gif
Best Overall ENTRY!:
F (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)FXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180386)
Congrats to the winners!
-R
______________________________________________________________
Ok here are the Rules for the current challenge:
CgTalk:FXWars! Roller Coaster Challenge:3 (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180291)
Ok here we go time to vote, please pick what you believe
is the best entry for each category:
Best Simulation
Best Animation
Best Trill Ride (NEW!)
Best Design (NEW!)
Best Overall Entry
Ill post the results next Monday.
MConte05 (http://www.cgtalk.com/member.php?u=56555)__________________________________________________ _
Thread: FXWars! Roller Coaster!: MConte05 (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=183888)
Preview:
http://www.cgtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=61237
Comments:
After pretty much giving up on this project, I had a realization last night on how to get it work, got everything assembeled, and sent it around the track, and to my suprise it actually worked. Then realizing I only had a couple hours left to get this contest entry done, I have been rendering in low detail with horrible lighting, but it does the job of showing the track. Its a little rough because there is some space between the object and the rails, which causes shuffling. I didn't have the time to remake the object, re-sim it, then render....
Also, in the video it seems that the rails intersect the train. I only simulated the train and the rails, and when I went to un-hide the spine and supports I found that I had deleted those. So I ended up just taking my model and trying to line it up as best as I could. Keep in mind I was pushed for time, so its sorta sloppy :blush:
Anyways, here is my entry.....
POV: http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05_FXWARS(320X240).mov
Exterior Shots: http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05...320X240)EXT.mov (http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05_FXWARS(320X240)EXT.mov)
WireFrame: http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05...20X240)WIRE.mov (http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05_FXWARS(320X240)WIRE.mov)
Sir_Vulcan __________________________________________________ _
Thread: FXWars! RollerCoaster!: Sir_Vulcan (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180952&page=2)
Preview:
http://www.cgtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=62117
Comments:
Ok, here is one of the Final Movies. This one is On board the train with the enviroment. Ill post the wireframe one soon(just the coater and the track)
It took me many hours to make and many more waiting for things to calculate. I started it a few days after the competition started and worked on it a few hours a day until yesterday.
This one took 23 hours to render on my poor computer and the compression pretty much wasted the texturing. But it's still cool to watch.
Its 640x480 and filesize is 14.8 Mb FIXED!
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/vulcan/SirVuclan-FXW-RollerCoaster-Mov01.mov
If you like seeing the wireframe part of an animation, then this one is for you. It only show the peices I used in reactor for the simulation and theres no mesh smoothing or anything like that. Its exactly what was used for calculations.
Heres the link:
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/v...oaster-Wire.mov (http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/vulcan/Sir_Vuclan-FXW-RollerCoaster-Wire.mov)
For those that are interested, I'll post the number of polys for each piece
Each train car - - 2280 faces
Each Wheel - - 2090 faces
Total for the Track - 167264 faces
COLT (http://www.cgtalk.com/member.php?u=56555)__________________________________________________ _
Thread: F (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)FXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180386)
Preview:
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/challenge/CoasterBig.jpg
Comment:
Coaster Hellride. (very strongly inspired by Indy :) )
Edited and rendered with all the bells and whistles: (Quicktime, 19 Mbyte)
Coaster Final (http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/challenge/colt_FXWARS_rc_640.mov)
A plain shaded animation: (Quicktime, 11 Mbyte)
Coaster plain (http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/challenge/colt_FXWARS_rc_plain_640.mov)
I used Maya for all the stuff. It took me quite some time to come up with the simulations and for the final every cave took about 2 days from scratch to finish (plus a lot of rendering time).
The only keyframes are on the lift in the beginning and of course the cameras.
The whole simulation is divided into 8 parts, sometimes the break is clearly visible since I didn't match the speeds correctly, shame on me. (you'll see all the the cuts in the plain animation)
I used two different approaches to simulate the train. Here is a picture of the actual simulated geometry:
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/challenge/CoasterSims.jpg
The upper sim is entirely gravity based, the "wagons" are sliding over the tracks and connected to each other. They are not connected to the track, therefore I use this sim for the jumps and gaps in the tracks. I would have used it for the whole animation, but Maya has got some serious problems with collisions, which make this sim really buggy and unusable for long and complicated tracks. See my wip for some details.
So I came up with the second one, which is a little bit more complicated. Here I use a custom expression for the movement of the locators along the track-spline. The expression calculates speed and position based on the incline/decline. The 8 boxes are connected to these locators and the "cars" sit losely through collsion on them, allowing some freedom for the cars - you will see them nearly fall over or jump of the tracks in hard curves or bends with close to 0g.
The wheels rotate using an expression calculating the covered distance in world space, that's why they also rotate while the lift is going up.
All this freedom took a lot of trial and error for the track design, you don't want to know how often it flew off my track. :argh: And it creates the strong shaking you see at high speeds in the curves. Part of the problem is, that the track is still made of polygons with their limited tesselation.
As always there is sooooo much still to fix (especially the edit, which ruins some things), but I hope you like it. I had a lot of fun creating it.
Nico
YAN (http://www.cgtalk.com/member.php?u=56555)__________________________________________________ _
Thread: FXWars! Roller Coaster!: Yan (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)
Preview:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/yann.goument/perso/rollercoaster/test_08.jpg
Comments:
so, i cant finish this, as i dont have time since few weeks to work on it...
so will post the last preview as my "not finish, not rendered so not really" final entry for this rollercoaster contest :D
sorry for the bad preview...
so heres it it, http://perso.wanadoo.fr/yann.goumen...LLERCOASTER.mov (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/yann.goument/perso/rollercoaster/YannGoument_FXWARS_ROLLERCOASTER.mov) (12 Mo)
so as explain before, full dynamic simulation for the first wagon, full gravity based, simulation run from the beginning to the end without cut.
and a follower for the other wagon and voila :)
FrankFirsching__________________________________________________ _
Thread: FXWars! Roller Coaster!: Frank Firsching (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=182992)
Preview:
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/coasterWagons.jpg
Well, here is my final animaton. Since I don't have access to the Sorenson pro codec, I had to compress my movies with the standard edition (which has no way to control the encoding). Therefore I provide some alternative AVI-files using xvid/divx codecs. The quicktimes are 320x240 and the AVIs are 640x480 (bigger image size and smaller file size :argh: ).
Edit: CoryC has recompressed my DivX videos using the Sorenson Pro Codec.Thank you very much! The links now point to the new versions.
Complete ride of the rollercoaster with an on-wagon cam:
Quicktime (8.8 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Full.mov)
avi (19.6 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Full.avi)
A short piece of the track from a 3rd person view
Quicktime (2.1 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_3rdPerson.mov)
avi (6.8 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_3rdPerson.avi)
A wireframe view (simplified geometry as seen in the viewport of Houdini)
Quicktime (4.4 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_WiresSmall.mov)
avi (2.9 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_WiresSmall.avi)
And the last video shows the procedural pillar generation. The distance between the pillars is decreased over time. The track crosses itself and the pylon, that would cross the lower piece of the track will be removed, if it would intersect it. In the background you see some other pillars removed, too. This is due to the fact, that two pillars would stand too close together in the hard turn of the track. Then one of them will be removed.
Quicktime (0.5 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Pillars.mov)
avi (0.5 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Pillars.avi)
Summary:
Completly procedural roller coaster system (animation and build up).
Interactive simulation (including scrubbing of the timeline and adjusting simulation parameters like gravity in realtime). This is a great advantage: You can view the end of the animation and tune the drag coefficient, so that the coaster is just about the reach the end of the track and not stick somewhere in a minimum.
Not a single keyframe set (except in the 3rd person movie for the camera)
Animation length 1685 frames.
Animation length 1min 7 sec.
Here are the four steps how to build a coaster (shown using the short piece of track of my first test animation):
1st step: Draw a NURBS curve:
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build1.jpg
2nd step:
Apply an operator, that starts the orientation editing. Here the coaster is always oriented upwards (even in the top of the looping).
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build2.jpg
3rd step:
Orient the small u-shaped objects to resemble the orientation of the coaster you want (create loopings, twists, ...)
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build3.jpg
4th step:
Apply again an operator, that recreates the curve you have drawn. This time the curve has a point attribute coaster_orientation. This tells the build system how to orient the tracks.
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build4.jpg
The rest is all procedural. The coaster is made of some basic building blocks:
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/pillarParts.jpg
which will be place at the appropriate positions and orientations.
Dont forget to suggest topic for our next challenge:
CgTalk:FXWars!Topics (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=155219)
The next challenge will be a comp challenge.
____________________________________________________________________
Ok I added the votes:
Here are the winners!
Best Simulation:
FXWars! Roller Coaster!: Frank Firsching (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=182992)
Best Animation:
F (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)FXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180386)
Best Thrill Ride:
F (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)FXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180386)
Best Design:
F (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)FXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180386)
AND THE winner!
http://66.242.144.2/cupFX.gif
Best Overall ENTRY!:
F (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)FXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180386)
Congrats to the winners!
-R
______________________________________________________________
Ok here are the Rules for the current challenge:
CgTalk:FXWars! Roller Coaster Challenge:3 (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180291)
Ok here we go time to vote, please pick what you believe
is the best entry for each category:
Best Simulation
Best Animation
Best Trill Ride (NEW!)
Best Design (NEW!)
Best Overall Entry
Ill post the results next Monday.
MConte05 (http://www.cgtalk.com/member.php?u=56555)__________________________________________________ _
Thread: FXWars! Roller Coaster!: MConte05 (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=183888)
Preview:
http://www.cgtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=61237
Comments:
After pretty much giving up on this project, I had a realization last night on how to get it work, got everything assembeled, and sent it around the track, and to my suprise it actually worked. Then realizing I only had a couple hours left to get this contest entry done, I have been rendering in low detail with horrible lighting, but it does the job of showing the track. Its a little rough because there is some space between the object and the rails, which causes shuffling. I didn't have the time to remake the object, re-sim it, then render....
Also, in the video it seems that the rails intersect the train. I only simulated the train and the rails, and when I went to un-hide the spine and supports I found that I had deleted those. So I ended up just taking my model and trying to line it up as best as I could. Keep in mind I was pushed for time, so its sorta sloppy :blush:
Anyways, here is my entry.....
POV: http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05_FXWARS(320X240).mov
Exterior Shots: http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05...320X240)EXT.mov (http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05_FXWARS(320X240)EXT.mov)
WireFrame: http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05...20X240)WIRE.mov (http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05_FXWARS(320X240)WIRE.mov)
Sir_Vulcan __________________________________________________ _
Thread: FXWars! RollerCoaster!: Sir_Vulcan (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180952&page=2)
Preview:
http://www.cgtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=62117
Comments:
Ok, here is one of the Final Movies. This one is On board the train with the enviroment. Ill post the wireframe one soon(just the coater and the track)
It took me many hours to make and many more waiting for things to calculate. I started it a few days after the competition started and worked on it a few hours a day until yesterday.
This one took 23 hours to render on my poor computer and the compression pretty much wasted the texturing. But it's still cool to watch.
Its 640x480 and filesize is 14.8 Mb FIXED!
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/vulcan/SirVuclan-FXW-RollerCoaster-Mov01.mov
If you like seeing the wireframe part of an animation, then this one is for you. It only show the peices I used in reactor for the simulation and theres no mesh smoothing or anything like that. Its exactly what was used for calculations.
Heres the link:
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/v...oaster-Wire.mov (http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/vulcan/Sir_Vuclan-FXW-RollerCoaster-Wire.mov)
For those that are interested, I'll post the number of polys for each piece
Each train car - - 2280 faces
Each Wheel - - 2090 faces
Total for the Track - 167264 faces
COLT (http://www.cgtalk.com/member.php?u=56555)__________________________________________________ _
Thread: F (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)FXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180386)
Preview:
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/challenge/CoasterBig.jpg
Comment:
Coaster Hellride. (very strongly inspired by Indy :) )
Edited and rendered with all the bells and whistles: (Quicktime, 19 Mbyte)
Coaster Final (http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/challenge/colt_FXWARS_rc_640.mov)
A plain shaded animation: (Quicktime, 11 Mbyte)
Coaster plain (http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/challenge/colt_FXWARS_rc_plain_640.mov)
I used Maya for all the stuff. It took me quite some time to come up with the simulations and for the final every cave took about 2 days from scratch to finish (plus a lot of rendering time).
The only keyframes are on the lift in the beginning and of course the cameras.
The whole simulation is divided into 8 parts, sometimes the break is clearly visible since I didn't match the speeds correctly, shame on me. (you'll see all the the cuts in the plain animation)
I used two different approaches to simulate the train. Here is a picture of the actual simulated geometry:
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/challenge/CoasterSims.jpg
The upper sim is entirely gravity based, the "wagons" are sliding over the tracks and connected to each other. They are not connected to the track, therefore I use this sim for the jumps and gaps in the tracks. I would have used it for the whole animation, but Maya has got some serious problems with collisions, which make this sim really buggy and unusable for long and complicated tracks. See my wip for some details.
So I came up with the second one, which is a little bit more complicated. Here I use a custom expression for the movement of the locators along the track-spline. The expression calculates speed and position based on the incline/decline. The 8 boxes are connected to these locators and the "cars" sit losely through collsion on them, allowing some freedom for the cars - you will see them nearly fall over or jump of the tracks in hard curves or bends with close to 0g.
The wheels rotate using an expression calculating the covered distance in world space, that's why they also rotate while the lift is going up.
All this freedom took a lot of trial and error for the track design, you don't want to know how often it flew off my track. :argh: And it creates the strong shaking you see at high speeds in the curves. Part of the problem is, that the track is still made of polygons with their limited tesselation.
As always there is sooooo much still to fix (especially the edit, which ruins some things), but I hope you like it. I had a lot of fun creating it.
Nico
YAN (http://www.cgtalk.com/member.php?u=56555)__________________________________________________ _
Thread: FXWars! Roller Coaster!: Yan (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=180676)
Preview:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/yann.goument/perso/rollercoaster/test_08.jpg
Comments:
so, i cant finish this, as i dont have time since few weeks to work on it...
so will post the last preview as my "not finish, not rendered so not really" final entry for this rollercoaster contest :D
sorry for the bad preview...
so heres it it, http://perso.wanadoo.fr/yann.goumen...LLERCOASTER.mov (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/yann.goument/perso/rollercoaster/YannGoument_FXWARS_ROLLERCOASTER.mov) (12 Mo)
so as explain before, full dynamic simulation for the first wagon, full gravity based, simulation run from the beginning to the end without cut.
and a follower for the other wagon and voila :)
FrankFirsching__________________________________________________ _
Thread: FXWars! Roller Coaster!: Frank Firsching (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=182992)
Preview:
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/coasterWagons.jpg
Well, here is my final animaton. Since I don't have access to the Sorenson pro codec, I had to compress my movies with the standard edition (which has no way to control the encoding). Therefore I provide some alternative AVI-files using xvid/divx codecs. The quicktimes are 320x240 and the AVIs are 640x480 (bigger image size and smaller file size :argh: ).
Edit: CoryC has recompressed my DivX videos using the Sorenson Pro Codec.Thank you very much! The links now point to the new versions.
Complete ride of the rollercoaster with an on-wagon cam:
Quicktime (8.8 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Full.mov)
avi (19.6 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Full.avi)
A short piece of the track from a 3rd person view
Quicktime (2.1 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_3rdPerson.mov)
avi (6.8 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_3rdPerson.avi)
A wireframe view (simplified geometry as seen in the viewport of Houdini)
Quicktime (4.4 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_WiresSmall.mov)
avi (2.9 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_WiresSmall.avi)
And the last video shows the procedural pillar generation. The distance between the pillars is decreased over time. The track crosses itself and the pylon, that would cross the lower piece of the track will be removed, if it would intersect it. In the background you see some other pillars removed, too. This is due to the fact, that two pillars would stand too close together in the hard turn of the track. Then one of them will be removed.
Quicktime (0.5 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Pillars.mov)
avi (0.5 MB) (http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Pillars.avi)
Summary:
Completly procedural roller coaster system (animation and build up).
Interactive simulation (including scrubbing of the timeline and adjusting simulation parameters like gravity in realtime). This is a great advantage: You can view the end of the animation and tune the drag coefficient, so that the coaster is just about the reach the end of the track and not stick somewhere in a minimum.
Not a single keyframe set (except in the 3rd person movie for the camera)
Animation length 1685 frames.
Animation length 1min 7 sec.
Here are the four steps how to build a coaster (shown using the short piece of track of my first test animation):
1st step: Draw a NURBS curve:
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build1.jpg
2nd step:
Apply an operator, that starts the orientation editing. Here the coaster is always oriented upwards (even in the top of the looping).
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build2.jpg
3rd step:
Orient the small u-shaped objects to resemble the orientation of the coaster you want (create loopings, twists, ...)
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build3.jpg
4th step:
Apply again an operator, that recreates the curve you have drawn. This time the curve has a point attribute coaster_orientation. This tells the build system how to orient the tracks.
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build4.jpg
The rest is all procedural. The coaster is made of some basic building blocks:
http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/pillarParts.jpg
which will be place at the appropriate positions and orientations.
