Vehicle/Environment: fighter flyby

[stephen2002]

the ship is very simple

The reflections seem wrong.

It looks like it would hold up in a "whoosh" scene, but I wouldn't do much more with it unless you are planning on adding a little something more.

[sergio2]

i have been told that the ship is very simple: this is for a reason. these fighter ships will appear in large, complex group formations, and i want to impress the audience with the complexity of the arrays, rather than the individual ships. also, the larger cruise ships and mother ships are far more complicated in design, and i don't want the fighter ships to compete with them for the audience's attention.

as for the weird reflections: i think this is because the reflections don't have motion blur. if you have ever used bryce, you will know that it would have taken AGES to get enough frames to make a realistic effect. instead, i faked it in photoshop. unfortunately, i can't blur the reflections without blurring the ship, so i decided to just blur the background.

when i have finished learning maya, i will be able to make these effects look a little more professional. INCA|design is also working on a brand new 3d app designed specifically to make 3d photoreal scenery MUCH more efficiently and realistically than other approaches. basically, our plan includes our implementation of every important feature of other 3D programs, to offer full control using the hands-on direct 3d approach. but the true innovation will be in the non 'hands-on' approach. basically, you don't have to create every piece of geometry or texturing yourself, unless you want to. trust me, it will be great. our goal is to make it cheaper to make a 3d set (photoreal) than it is to go on location.

[uday]

Originally posted by sergio2
.basically, our plan includes our implementation of every important feature of other 3D programs, to offer full control using the hands-on direct 3d approach. but the true innovation will be in the non 'hands-on' approach. basically, you don't have to create every piece of geometry or texturing yourself, unless you want to. trust me, it will be great. our goal is to make it cheaper to make a 3d set (photoreal) than it is to go on location.


cool!:rolleyes:

[Daniel]

The scene looks very simply! And U said U've used Bryce...so I even can't U give points for the terrain!

The Ship...hey, how can ppl enter/exit that ship? How can the ship flay? It just fly...or what? That's all much to simple!!!

The second thing, that with Inca's 3D app. Do U don't thing it sounds alitle bit like a nice story, nothing more? WHO would buy the program...? However. surprise Us!
May u can kick out Maya, Lightwave, max and Co. :P

Cya.

[leigh]

The fact that the entire background has so much motion blur on it, while the ship remains crisp, doesn't look right :curious:

[sergio2]

maybe i should explain about the motion blur... this image is a single frame from an animation, where both the ship and camera are moving at the same speed and direction. motion blur only occurs when something moves RELATIVE TO THE CAMERA. in this case, the ship and the camera stay almost still with relation to each other. notice that if you are on a highway travelling at the same speed as someone else, if you look at the car then the car is 'sharp' while the background has motion blur.

As for the INCA graphics program... basically, it will enable you to create any of the natural settings in, say, lord of the rings, within a few minutes. REALLY. imagine the cost savings. need to build a virtual Gondor? no problem. just model the city as you normally would. this program also has a huge preset library of practically everything... but unlike bryce's, they will almost all be realistic. the program was inspired partly from Bryce's shortcomings, but then we realized how great it would be if we then simply added our wishlist from other programs into one single program. this will enable us to make our feature movie at a much lower cost, shorter timeframe and have higher realism. the program has 5 tabs along the sides, which relate to different toolsets. there's one for terrains, plants (and eventually animals/humans in V 2.0), atmosphere effects and particle effects. each tab would have access to specific tools (and there are some GREAT ones in the works, believe me). but every tab also has access to (pretty much) the best of the features of Maya, softimage etc. this makes all effects, even atmospherics and plants, to be fully editable with the large array of standard/high end 3d tools. there is also a 'normal 3d' tab purely for modelling etc using the types of tools of those programs. basically, every useful 3d modelling tool etc is included for hands on modelling/texturing/rendering.

each tab contains the view of your scene, but allows you to edit the different elements separately. you will love our method for creating forests (and almost all effects).

[leigh]

Originally posted by sergio2
basically, it will enable you to create any of the natural settings in, say, lord of the rings, within a few minutes. REALLY. imagine the cost savings. need to build a virtual Gondor? no problem. just model the city as you normally would.

But then how, exactly, does this differ from any program already available on the market??? Is there a "Make Gondor" preset?

I'm not really sure exactly what makes your program so unique, it just sounds like another 3D app, like any other.
Many apps are already used to create realistic stuff... Your words seem to suggest that the industry needs such an app, but we already have many at our disposal.

I think that perhaps if you are using Bryce as a benchmark, then obviously ANYTHING would be an improvement. However, since we have many excellent programs available these days, we can create realistic stuff easily - all it requires are talented artists.

I suspect from your description that this INCA program has a drag-and-drop style toolset, like Bryce does?
While programs like this are certainly useful for people who don't want to bother learning real 3D apps (and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense), there is something about these types of programs that will ALWAYS prevent perfect realism, and that is their lack of control to make things unique. While it's great for people to be able to click a button and have an instant character, the fact that you cannot then go and make that character very unique makes the overall piece boring and unoriginal.

Just look at Poser - while the program certainly has its merits in certain circles, anyone can spot a Poser model a mile away, because they have nothing distinctive about them. This is unavoidable. It's not necessarily a bad thing, unless you are wanting to make something truly photorealistic. In my opinion, it is IMPOSSIBLE to make anything truly realistic with applications like this, because of the programs inability to enable the artist to create the tiny imperfections and idiosyncrasies of realistic characters and environments.

[KingMob]

heh...this app made by the magical fairies who live in the forests?

ALSO I need a good natalie portman button...that would be keen.

Sorry to bust your chops, but this app is a BIG boast, I'll have to see it to beleive it. Sorry if that sounds harash..but thats a pretty
epic goal.
:surprised

As for the ship, it reminds me of that movie, flight of the navigator or soemthign? remmeber that? really shiny simple ship.

interesting stuff so far...the background looks really brycerific...hows the propultions system look?

[sergio2]

when i said 'create gondor', you would have to do that using traditional 3d methods. however, the environments and lighting will be MUCH easier to set up. imagine that your atmospheric presets affect the way the terrain is wheathered, affect the plant distribution and affect water courses. this in turn affects the weather. this type of interaction means that you can create a very rough and approximate environment using the special tools in the tabs, then click a button called 'integrate'. the computer processes for a few minutes and comes up with PERFECT shorelines for the rivers and beaches, clouds in the right places and plant distributions as they should be (the plant library will be HUGE, and you will be able to make your own). normally, you would have to play around with the materials to create the right shoreline effect, put fog in one place but not another, add debris and fallen leaves to a river etc, but the program does all of this for you (depending on the camera distance from a certain object). yet after you click the 'integrate' button, you will still be able to edit the specularity of selected polygons on the river bank etc. in other words, fully editable.

sure, you can create your digital gondor in many apps in the same way you would using INCA, but what sells a scene most is the lighting, materials, environment and rendering effects. this is where INCA software will suceed. why make Gondor in Maya if you have to (practically) create every single environment and material effect manually, almost polygon by polygon? Please don't say 'paint effects'. every time i have seen paint effects plants, while they are an excellent idea with very nice quality and speed, they have their obvious limits (many look CG).

to make Gondor with INCA, you make a model of the city, as with maya. then, you go to the VERY generous supply of preset materials and apply them. these materials include sliders for all sorts of properties, like how easily dirt will cling to them, how easily they are eroded etc. then, i go to a sky preset with a certain cloud style, and i paint in the general areas i want with clouds. the program adjusts my brush strokes so the clouds are the preset style. i also create a basic terrain with some brush strokes, and it adjusts them in the same way. apart from the construction of the city, the scene only takes a few minutes to create.

then, i hit the 'integrate' button. the mountains retain their general form, while eroding accurately with respect to the city, rivers, environment and vegetation. the city gets dirty in just the correct cracks and crevices (more when near dirt etc), and water streaks appear where necessary, as well as some crumbling of the city where it would occur. the 'integrate' button has a 'timeline' setting that controls how long nature effects the scene each time you hit the integrate button (ie how much erosion etc depends on this setting - each tab such as terrain or atmosphere can have its own 'timeline' setting).

we will (in V2) have a 'human' editor, which will contain several thousand preset humans that can be blended and customised to a professional level.

we recognise that not all people know the correct proportions of a human body, or how a plant moves, where to place skin pores etc, so we show you how using a window at the bottom of the screen that gives you information in a documentary style, as you use the program. once you have seen the information, it does not repeat unless you tell it to (this window can be turned off).

there's too much to discuss here, but we also have some modelling features that will revolutionise the way people model, more useful than polygons (or related technology like hypernurbs or nurbs). but im not going to talk about that one:)

[sergio2]

the propulsion system is not always visible... it involves distortion 'fields' more than big engines, although there are some distortion effects involved. i'll model the effect in cinema 4D and render it in bryce a bit later. (why bryce? beause i have NO idea how to do good skies in Cinema 4D. i hate bryce's renderer, but i have no choice :()

[Eklund]

Reminds me of the ship from the 80's 'Flight of the navigator' movie! :)

http://www.pcs.ne.jp/~yu/sf/navi.jpg

[sergio2]

Reminds me of the ship from the 80's 'Flight of the navigator' movie!

OMG, i just clicked your link... i think you're right. dammit. the shape, the material... even the landscape shots look similar:scream:

well, at least when the weapons system is visible, there will be less resemblance between the 2 ships. with the weapons system visible, my ship looks almost exactly like those ancient egyptian scarab beetle paintings (the ones with their wings outstretched, pushing the sun). this was the original inspiration of the ship, and it ties in with the storyline.

see, there is a part in the prologue of the second movie (its a trilogy) where a pharaoh deceives her people by showing them that there is only one god, not many. this conflicts with the people's beliefs (at the time) that there were many gods. in the movie, the truth is that there are no gods, but the queen uses symbolism to hint that she is in fact the one god.

this is not just some ripoff idea, though. We based this on actual facts. do some research on queen Nefertiti and her husband, the Pharaoh Aksenaton, and how they built a city called Armana. this city was designed so that as the sun rose between 2 cliffs, its first rays shone through a temple window onto the people. the pharaohs stood in that windo and gave gifts to the people, surrounded by a halo of light. this (somehow) convinced the people that the pharaohs represented this one god.

in the movie, the symbolism is more direct as a scarab-like spaceship rises underneath he sun, and the people all worship Nefertiti (we've twisted it around so that Nefertiti is controlling the situation: this is crucial to establishing her character for later in the movie).

the whole scene is only a few seconds long. before you point out the 'lame-ness' of having a character named Nefertiti throughout the whole movie (which takes place in present day), note that her name is not really Nefertiti. she is simply a person who has appeared from time to time in history, under different names. i think that many people will like the movie: it has the same appeal as Star wars had, with the sense of history of lord of the rings, but the characters will be MUCH deeper and more interesting.

Some names we want to cast:
Stephen Dorff (blade)
Jessica Alba (dark angel TV series)
Kyle Howard (Grosse Pointe TV series)
Ian MkGellen (LOTR)

[onelung]

if anything ya need to add a motion blur for the back part of the ship, i'm not sure if your new application can do this, but in max its very simple, but that would help it out a lot,plus i think the background is just to saturated... hopefully that helps

[sergio2]

if anything ya need to add a motion blur for the back part of the ship, i'm not sure if your new application can do this, but in max its very simple, but that would help it out a lot,plus i think the background is just to saturated... hopefully that helps

thanks for your advice... i think you're right. i initially went for the 'tourism ad' look, but it is a little too over exposed. i'll tone down my photoshop adjustments. as for the motion blur... i used plain old Bryce (which doesn't support motion blur) to render this, and the reflections and ship DO look wrong... so, im going to do a 16 frame animation and blend the frames to create motion blur in photoshop (this is basically how Cinema 4D does it, anyway). but first i'm going to add the weapons system and give the landscapes more detail.

since the movie is still at the concept art stage (ie we have done the story and i have all of the designs in my head, we are still at the sketching stage), we don't really need to perfect this scene yet. im just perfecting THIS image because i feel like it could lead to something.

[Bulldog]

Originally posted by sergio2
im just perfecting THIS image because i feel like it could lead to something.


I can tell you where its leading , Its leading straigt to the renderosity bryce gallery where you can find 3 trillion similar rendered images. Please dont try to impress us by using fancy words like "cost reduction for on location shoots , photorealism and such" been there done that bud , thats bryce , and the best usage of bryce in a "movie" to date is that star wars Duality video.

I think you should sit down and model a decent ship , thats a tapered circle , no matter what complex formation you do , thats still a tapered circle , and let me make my morgan freeman impression here:

"the idea of someone using tapered circles to wow the audience turns my stomach!"

cheers :)

[KingMob]

about your cast list.

Once they see the story, and the imagery I couldnt imagine them not wanting in on it.

I bet after they see inca in action they'll donate their skills!

[uday]

Hey serg...may be you could post some more images ...or a small avi.....
So all this criticsm hopefully would just go away..
looking forward to it.

[lil' rothko]

I was also gonna say it's very similar to 'flight of the navigator' but i see you've been down that road. I hate to say it, but i think if you retain the same design, that'll be the first thing that people will think.:p

[Goon]

So you dont know Maya yet, but you know Bryce. You have an idea, a dream that includes some rather famous stars. A program that doesnt exist yet, and for which you have provided no link, but is supposed the be a god send of photorealistic props.....
Prove it and i will love you. Otherwise your talking out of your ass.

[leigh]

I must admit, I also find this whole thing slightly odd :curious:

[KingMob]

"slightly"??!!

:surprised

[Matt]

navigator rip.

[warspot]

be sure to put the help button very visible in the interface, and also a link to google

[warspot]

oh, i didn't read this part:

Some names we want to cast:
Stephen Dorff (blade)
Jessica Alba (dark angel TV series)
Kyle Howard (Grosse Pointe TV series)
Ian MkGellen (LOTR)

:applause: been a while since i had this laugh.

(not to mention the spec of the almighty app)

[sergio2]

I can tell you where its leading , Its leading straigt to the renderosity bryce gallery where you can find 3 trillion similar rendered images.

sorry, i didn't know that bryce users weren't welcome here. but i do understand what you mean: you want a little more complexity.

as i said earlier, this is my first COMPLETED design. i'm going to submit a more complex, incomplete design in a new thread called Claw, in the 'work in progress' section. i look forward to your comments there.

that aside: this isn't just some one man project: many people have seen the detailed storyline of the movie and have been convined that they want to be a part of it, so it is not just some amateurish vision. as for the program, to make it more realizable we are considering integrating many technologies from different apps into ours. ideally, the developers of these competing apps would work together on our app: of every copy that we sell, a portion of the profits go to those companies. they have more to gain than to lose.

[More]

the developers of these competing apps would work together on our app: of every copy that we sell, a portion of the profits go to those companies. they have more to gain than to lose.
Ummmm, i dont think so. They are rivals for a reason, not to share profits. :shame:
When you talk about 'members we want to cast' are you just a cocept artist but is leaking information?

Its a nice dream, i was waiting to see this 'app' untill i read how silly your last post was.
I also think a funding issue will be a problem, companies dont let you just 'use' their technology and merge it with others, you may have to buy the technology which is quite alot of money.
Not to mention the cost for those high class actors, Ian would be a hell of alot to hire.

[sergio2]

i am not just the concept artist. i wrote the story and i am getting the preparations done. see, i have many (non film) ideas for this INCA company, which should make considerable ammounts of money beforehand. when all is ready (money mainly) i will actually begin making the parts of the movie that cost a lot of money. every idea starts somewhere.

if all else fails, then i'll just licence the idea to a film studio. everyone who knows the story of the movie agrees that it is sellable.

Its a nice dream, i was waiting to see this 'app' untill i read how silly your last post was.
I also think a funding issue will be a problem, companies dont let you just 'use' their technology and merge it with others, you may have to buy the technology which is quite alot of money.

this idea was only if i have limited financial resources. but you're right about competing companies. however, most of the features that are industry standard (eg many polygon tools etc) will be incorporated into our program anyway, but i was referring to program specific features such as Maya Paint effects. if we could work with Aliaswavefront on this program, we could also integrate the workflow between the 2 programs, say, by offering our 'tab' features as plugins to different 3d software. if Aliaswavefront says no, then we'll just have to find another way fill that gap. but remember, this program isn't for you, it's for INCA to be able to make this movie in the first place. just like ILM does in house software. when we're done, we'll offer the program to the public.

why be so dismissive? i mean, how else can you make a 3D movie when no software is available? Pixar did this with renderman etc. like i said, every idea starts somewhere.

[More]

Interesting point, but you must understand that Pixar didnt really come along to these forums and ask 'im making a film, do you think my woody is good?' So people may feel a bit dismissive of your ideas.

[leigh]

Originally posted by sergio2
i mean, how else can you make a 3D movie when no software is available?

With Pixar, back in the days, that was indeed a problem.

However, you surely can't be using this reasoning now? There are plenty of excellent apps available, why are you ignoring them? All the other big companies out there are satisfied with the likes of Maya, XSI/Soft, LW, Houdini and Max etc...

This is why I still don't understand your reasoning behind making this "amazing" new program. Talented artists can already use all the above mentioned programs, and more, to create what they need already.

ideally, the developers of these competing apps would work together on our app

That's not very likely to happen.

if all else fails, then i'll just licence the idea to a film studio. everyone who knows the story of the movie agrees that it is sellable.

A story about an elephant that becomes a ninja is "sellable" too - it certainly has the potential to appeal to certain people, but it doesn't mean that someone will actually buy it.

I don't mean to sound to abrasive here, but you really sound very naive. I hope you don't end up sorely disappointed.

You are only 17 years old - which means that you probably haven't really even worked much in the industry. Trust me, there is a lot more to it than you evidently think.

[mister conehead]

Why is the name Inca? Inca's were Indians. Maya's were indians to. So, why choose a name like already is in use by Alias|Wavefront?

[aenema]

go leigh go! :bounce: im satisfied with Maya. Maybe can your company port Brazil over to Maya, id be your first customer ;)

[KingMob]

Look, I'm not trying to be a jerk,a nd Im sure neither is anyone else...but look at what you have presented us.

A bryce rendered image,t hat is at best a tapered sphere (sorry but It's true), a blurry bg, a list of top dollar actors and a software program that can generate everything on the fly, to be coded by the VEST in the business...that and you are very young.

THis is a pro forum...Lots of people here, myself included(tho limited) have worked in the field, have seen projects from concept to completion and have pitched ads, videos or movies...it's not easy.

Then you have the software side, in which you plan on getting these amazing programers to make it... like it is so easy to do. AW, Softimage, Discreet Newtek spend millions of dollars and many years just in R&D and specific code... you are making it sound like you will just slap code from this and that and make the ultra app...if it was that easy don't you think one of these companies would have done that?

Then you say how all these people are interested in buying the idea etc... I have to ask, what people? Friends and family do not count sadly, or else damn would I be rich. Right now you are basically crying wolf...and the townspeople aren't having it...

THo this HAS been the most amusing thread of the year imo.

GOod luck on your project, and if you are truthfull, I will be first in line for the film and the software...but right now it all sounds a bit fanatical.

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