FXWARS! THE RACE: Richard Nichols

[mdillender]

looking nice..will be interesting to see how you integrate driver. Where you looking to comp yourself in as the driver or go with a model?


Martin

[tibes]

Hey Martin!

Will be going 100% CG for this. The riders will be wearing motorcycle helmets so their faces will be covered up (mainly just to save time in modelling and rigging).

Here's sorta how the riders will look:

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/model2.jpg

The seat won't go through the rider's backside like in the pic. This is just a pose test from Lightwave. I'm going back to Silo with the posed rider to adjust the cockpit around him. The design of the racer has changed quite a bit also. Will post updates soon :wip:

[mdillender]

very nice tibes..

Keep it up..you're already doing great. Not sure if I like the newer racer or the first. The first one was pretty wicked looking, but not quite as aerodynamic as the new. The newer does look faster as a design.

Take care.

Martin

[Cyph3rs]

very nice tibes..

Keep it up..you're already doing great. Not sure if I like the newer racer or the first. The first one was pretty wicked looking, but not quite as aerodynamic as the new. The newer does look faster as a design.

Take care.

Martin

If your talking about the design in the first post then the one in tibe's second post they look exactly the same to me.
Anyway good work tibes, keep it up!

[tibes]

Hehe, yeah they are pretty much the same (what I originally meant was, the updated version I have in Silo is quite different, but I haven't got around to posting it yet :p)

[Cyph3rs]

heh, I knew what you meant but i dont think mdillender did. Anyway post up that updated version! Keep at it and dont give up :D

[mdillender]

It looks to me that the front end has become more aerodynamic in the second. Maybe it's just the way it looks textured.

I knew they were the same if not very similar. DUH!

Always great to get a chuckle.

Luck to all.

[Escopos]

pretty good progress there ... sleek machine ... I would think of this as a "Future Heavy Metal" game (mostly because of the clown guy I suppose). What kind of crash are you thinking? Pieces flying in the air or just denting kind of stuff? I'm no huge expert on dynamics but I'm wondering if its better to have more seperate pieces or just a whole body like the one you created?
Good luck! May the best explode first! hehe

[tibes]

What kind of crash are you thinking? Pieces flying in the air or just denting kind of stuff?

yeah, still considering this part. In The updated version, the rear wings are separate pieces that move in a kind of socket, and there will be separate pieces for the cockpit controls and engine appendages. I'm thinking about the crash breaking apart a building along side the track and using rag-doll dynamics on the riders.

As soon as I finish the modelling, I'm going to block out the shots and figure out what the damage is (pun very much intended :)).

[tibes]

Modelling update.. just got to do a bit of detailling and texturing. Onto the rider next...

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/model3.jpg

[tibes]

Just a little animation test, with the racer, and some particle effects...

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/test.mov (QT7)

[Cyph3rs]

looks great! keep up the good work

[mustan9]

Tighten up some of your edges. Especially around the cockpit and wing tips. Looks to much like a balloon. Just add some edges around the profiles to tighten it up.

I like the design :)

[CobraX]

Cool man, but i guess at whatever speed that vehicle will fly you won't really notice that the edge is too sharp...

Just to repeat what i have been told, this is not a modeling challenge...

Can't wait to see these vehicles fly!

Cheers!

Xavier.

[destruct007]

I agree with mustan9, I was thinking the same thing... maybe you were too :D It looks like you could add in a neet detail where the front of the wings connect to the body, it's wide there and it could have lights or something. Great work, I'm really likeing the design.

[tibes]

Thanks for the comments and ideas guys! I'm hoping to get some solid time over easter to keep working on this :)

[Lman]

the design is nice are you goung to add a shaper looking evil craft aswell that be cool.
nice work bro. :)

[tibes]

Spent a bit of time tonight and last night trying to figure out how to do the environment. I've attempted city-scapes before and given up with all the effort that's required, but I really visualise this race happening around the roof-tops of the city, inter-twining the sky-scapers. I'm trying to reduce the amount of detail required, by keeping the buildings in fog and silhouette as much as possible. Using a few custom-made hero buildings and eki's citygen script I think I'm getting closer.

I'll try building the road and placing the buildings around and see whether it comes together.

The first one is a more "normal" render, with some photoshop filtering:

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/city1a.jpg

The second is more of an experiment, using layer blending to "fade away" the buildings that are close leaving only black. I think this might look interesting in an animation, so I might give it a test run once I have the track together to see how it looks (ignore the speeder in the frame, I would composite these separately):

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/city1b.jpg

The plan is to have four bikes (essentially all the same, of differing colours) in the race. The crash will involve one bike having mechanical problems which results in an epic pile up!

[tibes]

Track WIP - bedtime :D

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/city2.jpg

[mustan9]

That looks really cool. Again it reminds of starwars. Don't know why? :)

[tibes]

Thanks Matthew! The track supports I've added probably make it look even more "starwars-y", but I guess at least I'm drawing on a good source :D Here's a track fly-through I render last night, I'm adding some details today to make it seem more alive, hoping to finish off the racers as well, so I can block out shots tomorrow.

15MB QT7
http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/trackthumb.jpg (http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/track1.mov)

[tibes]

Worked a lot on the refining the city, and relighting it and adding bits and pieces to make it more interesting and "alive". I'm trying to make the city as "finished" as possible so I can just use it in every shot without too much tweaking. The foreground animation will be enough effort without having to worry about the city backdrop, so hopefully the extra effort now with be worthwhile.

The city is around 500000 polys at this stage, and I've got around 25-30 lights. Render times at lo-res with no AA is around 5 seconds in LW9, so still manageable. Hope it remains that way :D

Edit: Did this little test too, not sure whether I'll use something like in the final anim, but just playing with some ideas. QT7 Support Smash (http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/break1.mov)

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/city3a.jpg
http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/city3b.jpg

[Escopos]

Your stuff is looking realy nice man. I'm enjoying watching your progress ... way ahead of me by the way! hehe:thumbsup:

[Lman]

thats looking very cool.
I likw the sence of hight. and the fog has nice effect.

[mustan9]

Your stuff is looking realy nice man. I'm enjoying watching your progress ... way ahead of me by the way! hehe:thumbsup:

Oh my god! Tell me about it. We're not even one week into this things and he's already rendering 40 seconds of track flybys.

Very nice work tibes! I like everything.

The light needs work, because it looks like a video game but if that's your worst problems your way ahead of me. :)

[tibes]

Thanks everyone for the kind words! :)

I agree about the videogame look, I realised this after seeing the animation output yesterday morning. The animation initially was front-lit with the lighting rig parented to the camera. I thought this might be an easy solution for the lighting (which it was) but it looked very much like a videogame. I spent the rest of last night re-lighting the whole city with 30-40 point lights with fall-off and an overall moon-light. After looking at last night's render I'm much more pleased with the result. It's not the most realistic city in the world, but I'm pretty happy with the mood so far. Part of the problem with having a lot of dark reflective structures is that there isn't much scope for shadows to show up, but that's a trade off to avoid having to add a lot of detailed modelling and textures I guess. :D

Next, I'll finish off the vehicles, and if I have time, add some smaller props to the city before starting the sequence.

Here's last night's animation (http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/ft3.mov). And for fun, another still shot... I'm placing a few nice looking cameras around the city so I can choose from some "pre-selected" angles when composing the shots.

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/city4a.jpg

(http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/ft3.mov)

[Bonedaddy]

Dude! Looking nice! I look forward to more!

[mustan9]

I think yours is going to be hard to beat!

"Eat Cheese" :) Funny.

[tibes]

Cheers guys :beer:

(Eat cheese... hehehe glad someone noticed :D )

[destruct007]

DUDE! SWEET! Wow you are going all out, man I kind of want to help you do yours :D but instead I'll offer you this sugestion add fluid clouds, take a generic cluod from the visor and take the rez and scale in Y and increasie it to fill the top of your city scape and below the road, or all inbetween if you raise the transparency! It will add details in the fog, and hide the distance that you can't get to textureing to the N th degree.
Keep it up this is looking sweeeet!!!

[tibes]

What race would be complete without... Pit Babes!!

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/pitbabe2.jpg

(I realise I'm probably getting a little carried away at this point... but what the hell... pit babes! :bounce: )

[tibes]

DUDE! SWEET! Wow you are going all out, man I kind of want to help you do yours :D but instead I'll offer you this sugestion add fluid clouds, take a generic cluod from the visor and take the rez and scale in Y and increasie it to fill the top of your city scape and below the road, or all inbetween if you raise the transparency! It will add details in the fog, and hide the distance that you can't get to textureing to the N th degree.
Keep it up this is looking sweeeet!!!

Cheers, I'll give that a go!

[tibes]

Just about done with the riders...

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/manhg.jpg

[mustan9]

Your characters look great.

The skin needs a little work, but skin always looks a little off in cg. It's very hard.

The shoulder joint on the girl looks a little high. You may want to lower it closer to the arm bit for better deformation when she raises and lowers her arm, but it may not matter because if the camera doesn't get very close.

I'm glad to see someone else doing characters for their entry.

I think your doing just the right amount of work in the right areas.

[tibes]

Cheers! Yeah the shoulder deformation is more of a problem with the model and the base pose. I've adjusted the model to be more neutral in the base pose and this has fixed most of the shoulder problems. I might do some corrective morphs for the shoulder and elbow if they look bad in the animation, but for now I won't bother.

I've added some thigh-high boots though... :D

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/pitbabe3.jpg

[RobertoOrtiz]

Just a reminder:


One Month To Go (MAY 22th): FXWARS THE RACE! (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=349057)

-R

[tibes]

Finally back on the horse to get this sucka finished! Will be a struggle, and I may only get the first part of the sequence finished but will try and pull out all the stops.

Here's the boards I've been working on so far. They may not make sense to anyone other than me :D

Many of these shots I should be able to complete very quickly, since the set is built and lit, and it's a just a matter of placing the assets with very limited animation. Or that's the plan anyhow.

http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/1.jpg
http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/2.jpg
http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/3a.jpg

[RobertoOrtiz]

FYI:

TWO WEEKS To Go (MAY 22th): FXWARS THE RACE! (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=355539)

-R

[tibes]

Aye carumba! Will have to pull my finger out.

[tibes]

As one may suspect, I won't get my entry done before the deadline. Very disappointing, but some technical issues with my PC and Lightwave in the past couple of weeks, and a crazy couple of weeks at work and with family, I just haven't been able to pull it off.

I'm going to finish the sequence though, given the time I've spent so far, so I'll take a thread over to the WIP animation section after the FXWars is over. Thanks to everyone that submitted their comments, and good luck to everyone that finishes, there's some great stuff being created for this challenge! :thumbsup:

[mustan9]

That's too bad! Your wip animations where very well done.

[RobertoOrtiz]

FXWARS: OK people talk to me, One more week? (showthread.php?t=360839)

-R

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.