animation: ancient rome

[colt]

Really great rendering and texturing work. Your light setup is just fantastic. I'd really like to know how you placed your lights and what your fog settings where. :love:
A little crit would be that the leaves at the wall look great moving, but they just move too much. They should be more stiff imho.
The rest is great, you created a beautiful mood.
:applause:

[sbv20]

yeah, this is incredible. how long did it take with how many people? i'd imagine the render took forever, too. great work, keep it up.

[elhuppi]

Thanks for the compliment.
Hm, guess you´re right about the leaves.
About the lightsetup - used a lot of directional lights to imitate bouncelight from sky and bottom. I used spotlights (different layers - colosseum, houses etc.) with raytraced shadows for the Sunlight. Nothing special so far. The Haze was created using Maya FluidEffects. This already gave a nice touch of warm color to the image, but the final result was achieved through a composit effect. I duplicated the composition and layered it on top of the other. Then I colorized it and lowered the opacity till I was satisfied with the look. Btw. there were some more effects and adjustments I did in compositing, but mainly this gave the look to the image.

@sbv20: I did the shot on my own. First I tried to use FG to light the scene up, but that took me to long to render, so I changed to the default renderer and used normal lighting methods. Rendertime per frame around 3-4 min.

[Jo B.]

sieht super aus. :buttrock: :xtreme:

was mir ein wenig auffällt, ist dass die hauswände der häuser links ein wenig hell sind obwohl sie im schatten liegen. besonders bei dem vorderen haus.

aber super stuff!!! auch auf deiner website. respekt.

[elhuppi]

Thanks Jo B.! I saw the showreel of soulcagedepartement. Your stuff is very awesome. Two thumbs up man.
:thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Guess you guys will have no problems to get enough customers and jobs. Keep it up!

[aenema]

wow this is amazing. great work on everything :thumbsup:

[CGmonkey]

That's sick... You're sick! :buttrock:

Hehe awesome! ;)

[Psycholink]

Very cool!
can you post a wirefire?

[XerC]

Woooh! This looks awesome! :eek: Short anim but very cool indeed! I even think the leaves' animation is okay. I especially like the pigeons! Their movement is damn fine! :thumbsup: (Only the last one's way is a bit too linear IMO, the others look much better. More natural.)

Greetings,
XerC

[imashination]

Very nice indeed, the quality is quite outstanding. As already mentioned, the ivy leaves are able to sway a bit too much. Remember ivy is a climbing plant and will be almost welded to that wall. Depending how you animated it, try some much smaller movements as if the leaves are blowing, but hinged at their bases.

[unrealwarfare]

amazing work! i love everything about it! the texturing and the lighting. the tone of lights reminds me of hollywood's gladiator. Great work!

[WhiteRabbitObj]

Very very nice. I think you could have lessened the flattened feeling that the colosseum background has by adding more depth of field, but I suspect a grander view of things is what was needed for the shot. Superb work.

[dammit]

i agree that the shot is very nice.. my only critique would be to lessen the motion on the ivy, and increase the darker values overall. there is a real good sense of directing the eye in a seemingly simple pan.. (and now the obligitory smile):buttrock:

[Tellerve]

WOW, my gosh, I'm very impressed. *sigh* I have a long way to go.

Tellerve

[Hugh]

My only crit would be with the leaves, too...

I don't think they're moving too much - they are just all moving together (or they are moving in 'bunches' - they need more individual movement....

[Gatling]

I loved every second of it :thumbsup:

[singularity2006]

yah, that is like incredibly coooL!!!

but hmmm.... I'm not sure, but i think there is a slight problem of scaling ... the colloseum from what I remember is huge..... several stories higher than the surrounding city. I think to increase the scaling effect, u could move the top edge of the colloseum upward to get cut off by the screen giving the buildings a better sense of their size.... and the distance between the entrance of the colloseum and the forground buildings seems unusually shortened.

But then again, I could be wrong about that scaling thing.

Anyhow, holy shiznits that is awesome....... :buttrock:

[Chaos Maximus]

wow, im very impressed. especially love the birds and other movement.

keep it up

[chrisWhite]

Nice :thumbsup:

Great lighting and color, this whole thing feels very warm and inviting, it really draws you in. I like it alot!

[John_Shaft]

Excellent work, I think it would help out just a little to have the shudders kind of sway with the wind. Just a thought. Also the back does look flat.

[jelloshotsrule]

first, looks great. i'm trying to figure out how you used fluids for the haze... though i don't really understand fluids (yet) so maybe in a few weeks i'll figure it out

second, what are the birds? as in, did you model them? or are they other prefabs you found? just curious how much detail you used for them. i guess very little was needed...

great work!

[ceql]

hehe looks great! Very nice atmosphere in the video ;)

[Monkeyfarm]

This is not photoreal or production quality (perhaps game cinematic quality) but it's only 6 seconds. there's no animation beyond a few birds and cloth sim, and camera move. And it's only 6 seconds long.

Maybe a convincing crowd sim?

Photoreal lighting?

[Monkeyfarm]

I'm pretty sure that the romans used more of a flat-type roof shingle config than a spanish curved tile style.

[elvis75k]

Bravo! :surprised

[jtk77]

thats great man.
Proves good texturing is the key
the birds are masterful

though i agree with previous posts..the vines ..are odd.
I would rather see no movement than what is going on there.

[CEE-GEE]

Brilliant, great atmosphere!

I think the most noticeable thing, is the Colosseum scale.
It should be definitely larger compared to the houses in foreground.
Another minor crit should go to the fog/haze, which is maybe too much heavy and 'yellow'.

By the way, it works good, it's a beatiful shot.

Keep up the good work.

[jtk77]

I don;t know..that colloseum isn't really as big as you think it might be. But hey, i could be wrong.

[elhuppi]

First I wanna thank all you guys for such a flood of comments. wow, thanks for being on the frontpage. That´s more than I´ve ever expected from this thread.
I´ll try to answer some questions:

@Psycholink: Here is the wireframe you asked for.
http://www.huppi.de/colosseum_wire.jpg

@imashination: Good point. The ivy leaves are paintfx, and I created them from a tree-stroke, which I adjusted till it looked somewhat like ivy. So these are still brunches and not grown like ivy does - that´s the problem. But I do absolutely agree with you and the other guys, that the wind in the ivy is too strong.

@WhiteRabbit.obj: Hm - more dof would maybe optically scale down the scene.

@Hugh: You´re right with that. The ivy is grown in bunches, because I used a modified paintfx tree to create the ivy.

@singularity2006: I do agree with you on the colosseum being to small. A friend told me the same - next time I´m on a shot with a colosseum I try to remember that fact. :)

@John_Shaft: Good idea with the shutters - I´ll remember that too.

@jelloshotsrule: It´s a 3Dcontainer for particles, inwhich you can use a ramp or other textures to control the opacity, color and other attributes. But that´s only one way to use the MayaFluidDynamics. The clouds in the back, which are moving also slightly are controlled by a perlin noise kind of texture.
Yes, I modeled, rigged and animated the pigeons. The geometry isn´t very highpoly, as they are far away from the camera.
Here is a cycle of the pigeon:
http://www.huppi.de/pigeon.gif

@monkeyfarm: Sorry, I entitled the thread as animation because it wasn´t a still. I never wrote anywhere that I´ve done unbelievable character animation in there. About the crowd sim - Indeed I had the intention to film some people with togas, but unfortunately I had no further time for these details.
About the shingles: I did some research on old roman shingles and as far as I can tell these are the right ones. But I still could be wrong and my informations were bad. Thanks anyway for the tips.

[svenip]

mainly it looks nice. but i have some problems with the perspective. if i compare the front houses to the colloseum in conjunction with the floor goin from the collos to the houses, then i have the feeling the the houses are just a bit smaller then the great one.

the fog doesn't look good at all. it just looks like a strange blur to me, and this blur is destroying all your textures on the coloseum.

don't get me wrong , as i said it's nice work but it still needs some improvements to get it really good.

[Psycholink]

Nice wirefire =)

[jtk77]

ok the collesum is about 185 ft high and the adverage 3 stroy building..and that was scatered in rome, most were around two..
is what? 30 40 ft?
So yea, I guess..even at that perspective its kinda low.
heres a link to building heights of rome.

http://www.stayandvisit.com/RomeHomeItinerary.htm
http://www.stayandvisit.com/RomeHomeItinerary.htm

[AndersEgleus]

Ok, I agree with the most of the crits given so far, but I just can't shut up:

That is absolutely amazing work!

Only thing I'd like to point out is that it feels like the shadows on the colluseum are a bit too desaturated and bleached. Can't really say why, it's just a gut feeling.

I saw your dragon film too. Stunning animation.
Keep it up.

[LowEndFrequency]

Looks sweet, im jealous.

If it was me, I would tone down the dusty look, alot! and then maybe have a slight depth of field, and have the focus distance sweep from the close building on the left to the colleseum in the rear as the camera pans up

[Gatling]

I think it's the vines that best bring out the character in this piece.

I just can't get enough of this one :applause:

[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.