Question about an animation I have to do

[mikeh64]

there is a tutorial over at the cow that might help:

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/rippon_richard/cloud_flythru.php

[Billabong]

Perfect!, Thanks Mike

[Joseppi]

Billabong,

Once you zoom far enough in on a 3D earth, then it wouuld be good to switch over to After Effects where you could overlay satellite images of the continent, state, then state region. At some point you have to switch to higher rez photos of more localized areas as pushing in too far will start pixelating.

Zooming through "clouds" will provide you with a few opportunities to mask the switch to another photo to zoom into, but a tricky part is eventually how you transition from the last "city" view to the building itself, because if the angles are different, the viewer will see a weird angle change. This is supposed to be a fairly straight zoom path in, and if you are going down, then the last shot of the building is taken from across the street, the "path" the zoom camera took will suddenly go from the sky, to an abrupt change to skimming across the street.

So while you may be able to get satellite views of the region and city, that last stage could be tricky, if you want to crane down to the front doors of the building.

If that sort of seamless shot ends up being unworkable (for the time and budget), there is perhaps the alternative of a satellite shot, with a quick transition like the satellite zoomed in, along with a camera sound effect of a motor drive or something... like on some of those Tom Clancy spy movies... 4 shots that flash disolve to the next shot. It's more stylized, but also buys creative license to bridge missing images that would be needed for a seamless "powers of ten" push in...

Here are a couple other samples:

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten

Joe

[Billabong]

Joe,

Thanks for the tips. As far as the quick transition shots. I will mention it, but I'm pretty sure they will say no to that. I don't have all the info yet. I'm suppose to find out on Fri. If I do have enough time (and a lot of time I will need). Once I have thier address. I can maybe model that region in close up detail, but then that still leaves the problem of going from the clouds to country, then state, then city, then the region of the building.

[flesh wound]

If you do have access to after effects you can also try out this tutorial:

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=15

Andrew Kramer's website has a bunch of great tutorials for AE. I used this one to create a similar effect a while back.

-Kevin

[Billabong]

Thanks Kevin, I actually looked at his site this morning. I guess I scrolled right over it. I'll check this out right now. Thanks again

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