BLUR FX Challenge

[grury]

Eh eh, nice initiative.
Looking forward to see the results.

[JonathanFreisler]

wow, what a great opportunity. I’ll get started asap lol. So were using these references to recreate the effects.

[depleteD]

Yea im looking forward to the results

[Nazgul]

Hmmm bandwidth exceeded. :(

[TAVO]

do you guys have a date to submit this ?? is by PM to you?? thanks

[depleteD]

whenever u like really, its about doing something properly and high quality....demonstrateing that you have an eye for detail and can make a sick ****ing image...thats what we want to see.

u can post here or pm or do both....whatever works....

sorry guys, man my site SUCKS! , im gonna mirror them off of blur asap....

[JohnnyRandom]

Does second place get a Blur T-shirt:D

[depleteD]

ha that would be sweet
great idea, im gonna talk to some guys and see if we can give away some t shirts for this :D

[VictorSantos]

Great initiative!

I'll start tonight :thumbsup:

[Glacierise]

Hey still no posts? And I gave you so much head start hehe. Ok, I started with the welder scene, relatively simplest. The animation is here:

http://cg.glacierise.com/animation/welder_comp_take1.mov


It was quite fun - the sparks are a TP setup, uses a noise controller in the born rate, modified by offset and multiplier of course. I'd make a TD tool if that gives a bonus too :D Particles are boxes, aligned and stretched along speed, bounced off geometry and killed by a speed threshold. The welding light's multiplier is driven by an expression controller refering the controller generating the particles, and so is the fume source. Rendering wise - passes for geometry, particles, particle illumination, a ball with a material that shows the noise in self-illumination, and FumeFX smoke and a little flame. In comp, I mixed all that, used the awesome probe function of Fusion to get the luma of the self illum ball and drive flare and vignette intensities in cordination with the sparks/light. Added the hotspot on the tip of the welder, and 2 glow layers - tight and bright, and loose and subtle, to the sparks, and some film grain. I can make a breakdown or provide the files if needed. I should say that the way that's organized, with the instance and expression controllers and TP goodness, it's highly directable/adjustable to suit frivolous directors :D

I'll do the chimney demolition next!

[VictorSantos]

My first little test:

LINK (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ2tf0CKY_4)

>> Please watch in high quality

I still have to do another explosion, the rocks blowing out and the final shot with the backgound.

[Glacierise]

It goes up too fast dude, you need some of it to remain closer to the ground. Good start though ;)

[JohnnyRandom]

Hey still no posts? And I gave you so much head start hehe. Ok, I started with the welder scene, relatively simplest.

We were all just waiting for you! :D

[amckay]

cool idea depleteD!
it'll be interesting to see what people come up with
there's a lot of talented people on these forums!

[ahmedsheeraz]

wow....gr8 opportunity. @DepleteD: is it valid for artists from other countries too?

[depleteD]

Glacierise - good start, sparks are bit to fat, maybe thin them out, do u have 3d motion blur? I would adjust the glows so it has a small hot core and then a wider glow that melts them together. They are a bit too hot, pull them back to more of a pale yellow for the brightest and more along a staurated orange. I like the lens flare, but I think its a bit to big and overpowering. I think this is a really good start. I would still play with this. I like your attention to details, reflections, put a dude in there, went some extra lengths to make it look cool...

VictorSantos - Yea bit to fast, and it needs some lighting, its a bit hard to see your dark smoke on that dark backround. And it needs to have additional elements, like shockwaves, debris, sparks, streamers stuff like that to make it more rich....

amckay- thanks man,sweet ass projects are coming in... :D so hopefully people come out swinging....

ahmedsheeraz - you could be from mars and we would still hire you if your fx are dope....

keep it up dudes

[amckay]

depleteD yeah you guys are doign a cinematic for us I believe - prototype ;)

[depleteD]

ah yea man, where are you at is it relic? I think prototype is gonna be pretty sick, lots of violence :D The game looks really cool too sand box superhero type deal or something....

[Glacierise]

Hey thanks Andrew, that's all I need - a good direction. New take will be up tomorrow.

P.S.: Yeah I have some 3D mblur I did with mr - it's so great with the ton of options it gives you since the prod shaders. I just put it on top, since I can't render FFX with mr like you guys, but I can put some RSMB, i'll try how it looks. C ya :)

[VictorSantos]

I'm still working on it, I have the second test:

LINK (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ng0Xrl4idE)

Please watch in high quality :argh:!!

[Glacierise]

Much better! Now you just need to fix the initial explosion - it's too homogenous and spherical. Try mapping the fuel with a more pronounced noise, or use more sources, scale them differently, use the directional speed parameter, such stuff.

[igorfx]

How to see reference image...

[VictorSantos]

Third test! still have to do 1 more explosion and rocks :D

hope you like it

LINK HERE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcpfpF8FcaU)

[TwiiK]

Your flames look really good, but if I were to nitpick I would say that looks more like a gasoline fire starting than an explosion.

Also, I see this with a lot of fumefx effects, people tend to make hollywood style explosion because fumefx makes it so easy, but you should remember that hollywood make their explosions with low velocity explosives and gasoline to protect actors and crew. In the real world almost anything is high velocity explosives, and you don't have to protect any actors. :p

And in my opinion, high velocity explosion just looks way cooler. :)

[renaissance01]

http://rapidshare.com/files/155023129/Alex_Halstead_Blur_FX_Challenge.mov.html
3mb

Here's my first go at the sparks one. Sparks done with 3ds Max, Particle Flow. Smoke done with Fume. Composited in Combustion. It could still do with a little polish but i hope you like :)

-Alex

[EricTT]

nice work ,very realistic:bounce:

[theotheo]

I'll chuck this one in here as I worked on it a few weeks back, its max (fume+tp) and a shitload of fusion particles as well as some custom scripts ive written. (fumefx data loader/exporter for fusion as particles)

Click image to download (and view in something other then QT as it messes up the gamma)
http://www.euqahuba.com/temp/forums/explosioncomp_small.jpg (http://www.euqahuba.com/temp/forums/theo_explosion_v003.mov)

Here's a fullscreen of the comp if anyone cares... (http://www.euqahuba.com/temp/forums/explosioncomp.jpg )



-theo

[PsychoSilence]

thats a crazy comp :) but i really like the result!

pretty much the setup eyeon exposed at their website and on recent conferences.

[JohnnyRandom]

renaissance01 nice one, not sure you would get that much shadow on the welder dude/dudette from those sparks but sh!t nicely done:)

Anse I think that was another one Theo did, the hole in building and debris in the street shot...maybe...

The Fusion Maestro ATTACKS! Respects, some fine work, seeing your flows just boggles my mind!

Hey Theo, if you turn off hardware acceleration in QT prefs and use safe mode GDI only and you should get correct gamma.;)

[JonathanFreisler]

i should have something to show in about a week or two, I thought i had some free time, but when ever you THINK you have free time, work gets hectic.

Good work by all

[renaissance01]

EricTT: Thankyou :)

JohnnyRandom: Cheers dude :). Yeah I agree the lighting is a bit off at some points.

I had a bit of freetime over the weekend so I decided to try replicate one of the explosions as well. There is a little flickering, and I'm not so keen on the shadow but here is what I came up with.

Done with 3ds Max, FumeFX and Composited in Combustion. Ideally, I would of liked to have modelled the environment but for now it's just an image.

Please follow the link :)


http://rapidshare.com/files/155475899/Alex_Halstead_Blur_FX_Challenge_2.mov.html
3mb

Cheers.

-Alex

[eractou]

Hey Alex that was cool explosion and composition is great too.My two critique.

-The shockwave (maybe it isn't a shockwave :)) is very weak.

-Camera shake is not matches with explosion.

Excellent work though and sorry my english.

[depleteD]

Hey guys, Ive been seeing some awesome stuff here. I'm on holidays atm, I took alook at all the recent videos and I'm thrilled that I'm seeing top notch shit.

Monday I'm back and I will post full critiques asap.

And props to you guys for offering feedback to eachother, i really like that shit, shows that you guys want to be in an environment that nutures growth.


Cheers guys,

-Andrew

[renaissance01]

Pyrokinetic: Thankyou! :) I agree, the shockwave does seem a little weak. I did want it to be subtle as the reference footage has a very subtle shockwave. I'll have a play around with it and see what i come up with. As for the shockwave, i delayed the camera shake to also replicate the reference footage. Thanks for the critiques!

[Glacierise]

Hey theotheo, that's just rockin' dude! And the most brutal fusion flow ever :D I don't even wanna imagine how long a frame renders. What did you do with all those passes? I loved the reflections in the windows, the interaction with the cars and the breaking asphalt.

I liked renaissance01's blast too, and I aggree with the comments. One more thing should be added though - the mound of earth bubbled up in the base of the explosion ;) I'll tackle that after the chimney, I'm doing that next.

Now, a second take on the welder - I didn't aim for too much realism, I wanted to make a fancy effect that's very cool to look at:

http://cg.glacierise.com/animation/welder_comp_take2.mov

[TwiiK]

I was going to point out how pyrokinetic's crits were wrong, but you did so yourself. :)

The shockwave is weak because it's a small explosion. I think your subtle shockwave fits the explosion rather well.

As you can see from both renaissance01's animation and the reference footage the camera is quite far away and it would not shake until the shockwave hit it.

I have a few crits of my own though:

- Your dust is not the same color as the ground floor which makes it look out of place. I would sample a few colors from the image you're using as a backdrop and use them as the dust colors.

- I think your dust is rising too quickly after the inital blast. There's not much heat after the initial blast in an explosion like that and instead of rising upwards because of the temperature the dust would be carried with the wind. In your animation it looks like there's a lot of temperature and bouyancy in the simulation which in term drives the plume too far upwards.

It looks very promising.

[JonathanFreisler]

yeah i agree with twiik in regards to renaissance01's.

explosions loose there energy and heat production after the intial explosion. They dont keep producing heat like the inital blast, looking good though.

keep it up everyone!

[depleteD]

Victor Santos - Hey dude, good stuff, this is really top notch billowing fire effect. Awesomeness. I'm really looking forward to your next post man.

renaissance01 - Cool sparks I like the look of these, this made me go into frame**** mode. I like it man. The spark "spikes" are a really cool touch. IMHO, a bit too hot, cool them down to a more saturated orangeyellow

The flash of lightrays are a bit to sharp and need their alpha gain pulled down. Maybe a .5 blur and a alpha gain at .5 should do

theotheo (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=42917) - very ****ing cool. This is what I'm talking about. It has all that richness, particles everywhere, nice complex fume sim, the earth is cracking, integrated very well. I think thats pretty badass that you have a exporter to get fume data into Fusion. I havn't used fusion particles that much. I might give them a try sometime. Anything that you really like about Fusion Particles over 3d packages? The only thing Id have to say, with a flow that complex and big, if you got sick, and someone had to pick it up for changes and revisions or something like that, there could be trouble

Glacerise - This take is looking better, i would have to say for your larger spikes....play with the glows, and try makeing them a bout 33% thinner at the most, also i think the first glow is killing your motion blur and they are looking a bit to crisp.

renaissance01 - Awesome explosion, I would say add a fill light to push some detail into the shadow part,just a lil tho. and particles would be nice...but overall killer shit.

Keep it up guys... awesome work so far.

-Andrew

[theotheo]

Some nice stuff going on here guys, wicked!

Thanks for the comments guys, lmuch appreciated. If there's anything I'd comment on its some of the big chunks don't have enough weight IMHO, but now im critiquing my own shot :)

DepleteD, thanks man. The reason for the flowing being that big is a lot of the stuff going on is fusion. The background is a still image projected onto simple fusion geometry and hand animated camera and all the small stuff is fu-particles. Only the hero elements like fumefx and big chunky particles are MAX/TP, since fusion can't do fluids and RBD's yet... :)
I'm a big fan of the Fu particles because its a lot faster to setup and get interactive feedback from the rendernode (Ogl/software rendereing) Its just a helluva lot faster then pflow/tp when it comes to simple things. But as said , when it comes to heavier stuff it falls short. But you still have the majority of operators you'd find in pflow/tp. Forces,spawns,sets/groups/customization etc.

Looking forward to see more of the stuff in this thread! (got to run back to work :) )

-theo

[MasterZap]

Not an actual "entry" but throwing this in for fun, since it has "welding" at the start and "big explosion" at the end... you just have to sit through a bunch of crap in the middle.

Quite old stuff too, I should add, predating my "mental images" days.

http://www.z4p.com/video/zap-rev-demoreel.mov

/Z

[ahmedsheeraz]

some amazing stuff going on here....n i am still in rnd phase of my entry :) . Here are the two utube links (One is arrows in war thing and the other is throwing big stones):

arrows in war: http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=y9LHDanPGiM (very much inspired from Brandon Riza's work - hats off for him)



throwing big stones: http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=CzsOahnc8oQ


Need critic and suggestion on which effect should i proceed further and finalizing my entry.

[Glacierise]

Hey, MasterZ! You've been missing lately, glad to see you here - so you still have heart for FX, and even some cool stuff on that old feature length reel :D

[BrandonD]

MAX FX guys are impossible to find in Los Angeles right now - they're all on 2012.

[depleteD]

Aye its some bullshit. We need like 4.

[BrandonD]

Houdini :)

[depleteD]

Dude, I really want to get Houdini in here, really bad, but its hard for the powers that be to justify, because it will cost so much for the programming to integrate into our pipeline...

If you have any suggestions for max > houdini and back workflow Id love to hear them.

Word

[amckay]

were you there when Craig Brown was working at blur? He was big on trying to push houdini into the pipe, but dont think he had much luck :\

its not hard to get point data back and forth from max and houdini a bit of googling will get you all the info you need

brandon - yeah evvverryone is on 2012, I think Frantic has purposely not taken on any 2012 work so they can have the pick of the litter for max jobs hah

[SoLiTuDe]

were you there when Craig Brown was working at blur? He was big on trying to push houdini into the pipe, but dont think he had much luck :\

its not hard to get point data back and forth from max and houdini a bit of googling will get you all the info you need

brandon - yeah evvverryone is on 2012, I think Frantic has purposely not taken on any 2012 work so they can have the pick of the litter for max jobs hah


Haha Craig was definetly not successful. :)

How hard is it to get geometry back and forth though? From what I understand points aren't so bad, but getting a pointcached character in might be a bit more difficult.

[depleteD]

Yea Craig was really trying to get it in, and he did some ****ing awesome stuff in it, shit that would take hours to do he would do in under half an hour in houdini.

He was pushing obj sequences through. I tried fbx but that failed. Im gonna take a run through google and see if I can scrape some stuff up.

Max does everything that I need, but more solutions and opening up an employee base are always good.

[noouch]

I've had the unfortunate task of pushing .obj sequences back and forth, so I know how bad it is :D
But rumor has it Houdini does FBX pretty well in more recent releases, so there's hope yet...

[amckay]

if I was still in Aus I'd have all the info we had on the show, but basically we were transfering obj models out, and houdini point cache info out, which there was a free utility on the web which would convert the info into a .pc2. So I wrote a simple pipe to read all the objects in, camera data etc. and convert load up all the pc2 data.
The way we had our pipe set up was I'd write all the scripts for the max side, Rangi Sutton would do all his stuff on the houdini side, and we built a few custom file formats for sharing other data such as camera info etc.
This worked really well and we didnt have any hiccups throughout the whole process.

oh OBJ sequences are slow but they do work, I wrote a tool to do that as well, making obj snapshops, but it gets really slow really quick. I hired Alex Mcleod to write a more efficient file format which he did in like half a day. It was much quicker but not lightning fast. I did that because we were doing lots of metaparticle stuff on various shows and it was quicker to handle data that way so it didnt need to calculate every frame, but unlike point cache obviously the topology changes each frame.

XSI has crosswalk which at lest Soft tells me is really great.. but I havent got any personal experience with it. But its command line based so you could make it part of your pipe to automate file exchanges back and forth. However I wouldnt recommend that as a practical method.

Honestly if you did want to do work in both apps, then what I mentioned above is probablyh the best way, track down that util on the houdini forums and start compiling point cache data between the two apps. Or else write your own point cache file format is another option

[byvfx]

haha yeah craig didnt really have very good people skills when it came to try selling Houdini to Blur.

yeah at frantic we got lots to do..

[depleteD]

Meh, I would work with craig all the time, the dude was great, he made excellent cases for why we should use Houdini. But at the time it didn't fit in our pipeline and the resources to devote to getting it.

[byvfx]

oh craig was awesome to work with i wasn't saying he wasn't .. i didnt say he didnt make good cases for using houdini.. like you said the pipe line wasnt built for Houdini.. and probably never will be there. i was just saying im sure he could have sold it better. but i guess that whole situtation was kinda setup for failure to begin with. anyways back to your little challenge u got going here.

[igorfx]

Max to Houdini and back..
i use it like this, in version 9.0 and 9.1 Houdini, a break model in Max, the export like obj.
make some RBD simulation, and the export obj seq. Then with Pyhton script obj2ptc convert
obj seq and import that in Max.
For Houdini particles it cna be done to export like RF bin files and then import with RF importer or Krakatoe render.

In Houdini 9.5 with FBX suport, you can export everything, RBD, FLUIDsim, particle with metablass....

Hera in this move is Fracture House, RBD make in Houdini - Render in Max with Vray
http://tccin3d.com/videos/igor_zanic_fxtests.mov

This is some of my test to make custom debirs wrokflow
http://www.crater.rs/igor/dust_test.mov

And test some particle cont 1 - 10mil

First - 1mil particle - deepshadow 1024*1024 - 720*576
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/9963/1millo4.jpg

Second - 5mil particle - deepshadow 1024*1024 - 720*576
http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/4065/5milqk6.jpg

Final - 10mil particle - deepshadow 4096*4096 - Full 2K
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/151/highparticle122xd9.jpg

[depleteD]

Dude that is so awesome. Great work man, I loved that mov of your fx tests. Im ognna test out the fbx stuff asap. I had some problems with it a while ago, but i will give it another shot...

-Andrew

[amckay]

Brandon/DepleteD - The way you guys are set up over there Max is the best tool for what you're doing. The fact you're using XSI + Max is a whole new headache (Personally I think Biped is a piece of crap, but you can pull some great rigs out of max, there's no reason to go to xsi for that) but houdini + xsi + max.. ouch! heheh

Blizzard Cinematics is doing similar now, all render + lighting is maya (renderman) fx for the most part are still all max, same wtih modeling etc.


Houdini is great I love it, max still stands up as a great tool to knock stuff out quick and dirty, unfortunately quick and dirty is my middle name half the time : )

Igor - those are great tests mate! Excellent work!

Brandon - yeah man Craig's a great guy, I only went out drinking with him once, and he got a little weird (I've never been to a strip club with someone and heard the words "oh man I wish my wife was here" come out of their mouths hahaha) but he's a great guy! and freaking talented!
Are you over at FF these days? How's it going?

*Edit. oh yeah sorry we're going way off topic here arent we.. woops hehe*

[igorfx]

Thanks... everybody

[superhypersam]

brandon - yeah evvverryone is on 2012, I think Frantic has purposely not taken on any 2012 work so they can have the pick of the litter for max jobs hah


actualy even Frentic are doing a few shots for us!

Though mostly simple stuff.

cheers

sam

[Glacierise]

I am doing the chimney scene now, and I decided to put the creeping cracks effect in it, I've wanted to do that for some time now. Check it out - rayfire and Thinking particles:

http://cg.glacierise.com/animation/creeping_cracks.mov

[noouch]

Been working on this on and off in my spare time for the past week or so. Just Max/PFlow so far (except for the explosion at the beginning), and RayFire demo for the fragmentation of the ground geometry.

http://noouch.de/video/jdamboom_rendertest_005_h264.mov

Lots to be done still obviously, but I'm pretty happy with the general direction it's moving in so far :)

[Glacierise]

Great to have you in, dude! Keep developing that.

[TwiiK]

Needs motion blur badly, but seeing as that was just a test you're forgiven. :)

The start is looking very good, almost spot on. The falling debris on the other hand is not so good.

The fragments from the falling debris need to burst out more and some of the pieces are too big. Also there's a weird spinning sphere right in the beginning.

The way the debris falls down is also a bit odd. It looks like a wave moving towards the camera.

And the particle should not dissapear. :)

[depleteD]

nooch - thats a cool block, you definitely have the general idea. just gotta remove those pops and the particle deaths on frame. And mo blur!!! always add the moblur.

glacerise - good shit, thats gonna look really cool on the collapsing column. :D

Glad to see this is still going guys, great work.

-Andrew

[JonathanFreisler]

HAH - Just when you thought this thread was dead...

My friggen entry HERE (http://www.jonathanfreisler.com/includes/blur_challenge_desert_explosionsHD_web.mov) (save target as). This thing almost killed me lol. I burnt the candle at both enders for well over a month when work was slow had had heaps of cool time up my sleeves. Even when work picked up I still work on this most days. I started the second Andrew posted the challenge, and just "finished" last night.

The major problem that took so long was the fact i cant preview fume at home (something to do with vistas admin right and crashing max when ever I try to make a fume preview - not good - as we all know fume is about motion, shape form ect, which you cant see unless you have a real time preview).

Fume, pflow, a bit of TP (more to see if I could do it - I'm still learning )

Comments and crist most welcome, odds are i wont be changing it ><. Not because i think its perfect (its probably still not even 90% there) but in my head I'm over the job, and don't want to open the files anymore lol. That and this was meant to be a test, I believe I've gone way over the general expectations set by this challenge :)

50 + layers in a comp, 2 x comps + a small breakdown. Multiple fume sims per explosion (up to 5). 60 gigs of fume sims all up, GI, heaps of pflow systems, tp systems, ALOT of renders and rendering time!

Enjoy!

[grury]

Nice one Jonathan.
I like the first blast best, the smoke on the second blast feels a bit too smooth. I think both could do with a bit more motion blur on the flying debris, specially the second one, they stand out a bit too much.

Good luck mate.

[Glacierise]

Dude I can't dl it. Can you host it somewhere else? I am also cooking a cool entry btw :)

[JonathanFreisler]

hhhm, it downloads fine for me.

heres (http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=RUlhX9G2tNY&fmt=6) a youtube. Um, its on rapid share somewhere >< but i cant find the link.

About the rocks, they do have MB, i did post rpf in combustion. The camera move totally made the MB go crazy so i had to turn it down a bit, but wont be hard to fix >< except I cant do it now as I'm going on holidays 2mora and wont have time until a weeks time. But thats an easy fix dude thanks. At least your not telling me to re sim or something :P. Next time you watch it just IMAGINE the rocks and debris are more motion blurred;). But yes i will fix that.

Yeah the second one does feel a bit smooth, i started to loose interest whilst doing that one, and my aim was more to get it finished than not do it at all if you get what i mean.

See you all in a week!

AAHHH i just realized my name doesn't fade in, i gotta stop watching it! lol

[Glacierise]

Saw the youtube version :) I love the diversity and complexity. The one thing I don't like is the noise - it's the damn thing feeling small and wavey. Nevertheless, awesome :) Definitely find that rapidshare link so I can enjoy it in even higher res!

[JonathanFreisler]

yeah i'm not sure how to find a rapid share links, Theres no way to like search through files and stuff. Might be slow off my server if heaps of people are dling it :S Yeah i guess noise is one of those things which is clouded by personal preference, as i said i probably wont be re siming any time soon :S Ill see when i get back, i think i have a bit of displacement in post to break the plume up a bit, might take that off.

Oh yeah, wanted to thank Allan for his crits during this. If your reading this and your nets not slow have fun in NYC dude.

[eractou]

Awesome work Jonathan. :buttrock:

[entrancea]

Hey guys....
am bacl after a long time......Unfortunately andrew's site says bandwidth exceeded....I am really looking for ward to participate but cant seem to download the stock footage now...Is there any other llink from where I can download it?

Regrads,
Entrancea

[LD50]

Wow Jonathan thats really nice work! And thanks for the detailed Breakdown, shows nice how many steps are needed to get something nice looking.

[JohnnyRandom]

Nice one! Time well spent :D

I was surprised you actually got pretty decent quality out of youtube.

[JonathanFreisler]

Thanks for the kind words and support guys! Means alot coming from some gurus out there.

thanks to my itouch and wireless hotspots I can check my email. I'm at suffers paradise in Queensland australia. Yeah youtube went all fancy and upgraded to 16:9 and if you upload a large enough file you can watch it in HD. Which I dirctly linked u guys too by adding &fmt=6 at the end of the normal links. I'm going to enjoy my holiday now!

[renaissance01]

Nice work Jon!

My only additional crits would be that the dust dissipates and gets turbulent a little too quickly. But other than that, kick ass work man :)

You're in Surfers? Stones throw away from where I live. You'll know how f***in hot it is then haha. Enjoy your holiday...

[jigu]

Great works with fume, jono... not only fume explosion but also liked the compositing and camera moves... :beer:

[JonathanFreisler]

hah, alex your at pandemic. I went to uni last year with kim Hudson who works there now. I was meant to catch up with her while I'm up here. Thanks guys. Most of your crits seem to be related to too much turbulence in them, I'll see what I can do when I get back (not making any promises, you guys know what its like when you have been on a job every day for about 2 months) but thanks!

[depleteD]

Johnathan, this is freaking awesome work. I really like the fact that you get the idea of layered complexity to make a beautiful image. Nice attention to details and a good way to present a complete piece with the background camera mapped. My favorite part was that you moved the heavy stones a little bit that were sitting away from the explosion. That was cool.

My only comments would be a bit stronger motion blur on the particles more fine debris like dust and have more smoke injection for a thicker more fuller feel and animate the turbulence down.

But overall, beautiful work, this was a cool thing to come back to from my holiday. :)

[VVaari]

Damn you guys do awesome stuff :drool:

Hey depleteD, would it be possible to get that stock footage back online again? If I find some time, I'll TRY to crash airplane with rayfire demo and fume :rolleyes:

[depleteD]

Dude soon as I get some time im gonna fix my website, im trying to switch web hosts and its proving to be difficult, i tried to ask for webspace here at work but got a little of a run around.....

[JonathanFreisler]

hey thanks dude, means alot. When I get home I will fix up the turbulence and the debris mo blur is easy because I did that in post. Cheers

[noouch]

Alright so I'm putting this on ice for the time being because the turnaround time has grown from frustrating to ridiculous on my current hardware with the introduction of AfterBurn into the scene (an hour or more per frame). While this doesn't mean I've given up or anything like that, I definitely won't continue this without a small render farm or at least a faster machine.

The latest progress:
http://noouch.de/video/jdamboom_precomp001.mov

If anyone is willing to donate render power for the sake of big explosions, don't hesitate to offer!

[JonathanFreisler]

very cool dude, the motion blur at the start looks really weird, looks like its echoing. But i like everything else exept the fact massive chunks that fall down and explode into tiny debris, put some varation on that so all of them dont break, have some still intact.

Can you render it all out in passes to cut down the render time?

[noouch]

Unfortunately, I think passes would only increase the render time. In tests the afterburn pass with matte object geometry renders just as long, and the geometry itself renders in about 1/5 the time.
It gives me the advantage of being able to tweak the dust in the comp seperate from the geometry though, which would probably be faster in the end.

[TwiiK]

That looks exceptional noouch. The first few seconds look like they're taken straight from the source video.

One small crit would be that it looks like you're only using 1 light for the scene. I usually use at least 1 brighter yellowish light for the sun and 1 less bright bluish light for the sky. Most of the time I also use some lights to simulate light bouncing from the ground. The lights are rotated to illuminate different parts of the afterburn effect.

That way you don't get a solid color in the shadow side of the effect.

That rendertime seems extremely high to me no matter what you have under your hood. Is it 1 hour per frame at the resolution of that video?

Are you using object motion blur or image motion blur on the debris? And do you have the tools to apply it in post instead?

How long does it take to render without the afterburn in the scene? Or with just the Afterburn without the rest?

When I've been doing effects like that I found the biggest killer to be object motion blur and I think image motion blur looks nearly just as good for debris like that.

Edit: Ahh, I spent so long writing this you replied above me. :) Are you using motion blur on the afterburn effect itself? If so, how long does it take to render without that?

[noouch]

That rendertime seems extremely high to me no matter what you have under your hood. Is it 1 hour per frame at the resolution of that video?
The rendering machine is a P4 3.2GHz with HT, using only one thread (scanline renderer), so 1.6GHz. And yes, that hour is for the resolution of the movie posted.

Are you using object motion blur or image motion blur on the debris? And do you have the tools to apply it in post instead?

It's optical flow based motion blur. I plan to use Fusion's vector motion blur for the final.

How long does it take to render without the afterburn in the scene? Or with just the Afterburn without the rest?

AfterBurn only doesn't make much of a difference in render time. Particles only render between 10 seconds and 5 minutes, depending on how many there are visible (about 250,000 at peak).
Ahh, I spent so long writing this you replied above me. :) Are you using motion blur on the afterburn effect itself? If so, how long does it take to render without that?
The time consumed by image motion blur applied to AfterBurn is negligible (a couple seconds)

Sadly the machines at work don't have AfterBurn installed, otherwise I'd fire off this job as low-priority and let it simmer. Still accepting offers for render power here ;)

[TwiiK]

I actually have render power to offer, but my internet bandwidth is lacking so I'm unable to send raw image sequence output back to you for compositioning unless it's a one time thing for your final animation - then maybe I can spare some bandwitdh . :)

I can however render out as many tests as you'd like and then just send a video back to you.

My farm has 3ds max 2009 and Afterburn 4.0.

Just send me a PM or an e-mail if you're interested. I'm also on msn nearly all the time if you prefer that.

[JonathanFreisler]

yeah i have to admit that an hour per frame sounds way too excessive, do you have shadow settings unnecessarily high or something?

[Glacierise]

New entry:

http://cg.glacierise.com/animation/bar-be-gone.mov

The title speaks of itself :) Btw, don't open it in a browser, it ****s up the gamma. Better to download and play it with an offline player.

[TwiiK]

That looks brilliant, Glac. The lighting in the beginning and the scene itself look especially nice.

As for the gamme it's opposite for me. If I play a quicktime file locally with quicktime it messes up the gamma, if I play it in the browser the gamme is as it should be, but if I actually decide to play it offline I don't use quicktime so the problem is non existant for me. :)

[Glacierise]

Hey thanks man. Is that better, like making complete shots instead of testy-looking FX-only stuff? I spend time on that, but I'm now (kinda) good at shading/lighting, and mr is kind enough to enable me to dish these out quickly. Still, it's time that could be spent on FX...

[depleteD]

Nooch - That Jdambomb is looking alot better, Im seeing the large pieces of debris falling down pop off into little debris when they hit, u definatley need to cover that up. When your qcing your stuff make sure u have no pops. The afteburn you have looks good but it needs more detail, maybe another light. But great timing and motion man. That is really well done.

If your doing alot of aburn work u can render 2 passes, 1 with lighting and no density fade and one with the density fadeing away and then channel boolean the fadeing alpha to the lighting pass.



Glacerise - Ha! dude that is awesome. I would add more floaty particles. everywhere. Take a look at war of the worlds when the aliens are blasting the houses away. I love how the debris have flames on them

[Glacierise]

Woohoo! Thanks! Actually I did try with much more sparky floaties, but I didn't look too good to me. They look very cool with firey things, but with the smokey ones less are maybe better. Off to the next one ;)

[Glacierise]

That's for here, too, enjoy!

http://cg.glacierise.com/animation/reel_opener_war_shot02.mov

Shot 02 of my new reel opener :)

Youtube preview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgFJkP2fMuQ

Note - the download version is slightly better ;)

[JohnnyRandom]

Note - the download version is slightly better ;)

LOL, you were kidding right? I could actually see the word demo in the rebar on the download version. Someday youtube...

Nice work, great texturing too :) Maybe some different camera move to highlight the "demo" you almost miss it.

[JonathanFreisler]

nice Glacierise, im not the biggest fan of fx shots for reel openers (i guess i see it as if you want to impress it should be in your work), but it does the job! Yeh its hard to see the word demo.

Gj man

[jigu]

wow that looks great, glacierise! what about smoke transforms into demoreel word at the end?

[Glacierise]

Heh thanks guys.

@jigu - maybe next time :D

On the words - there will be one more shot of this, stay tuned hehe.

[irwit]

Hi all, looks like im a little late to the party. Just thought I would say well done to everyone, work in here is looking great! I really like the desert scene by Jonathan Freisler.

Im currently in bed for a few days off work so I have been pretty much none stop catching up in the PF forums. Think Ive got to about page 220 of the main PF thread. I think its great how depleteD first post in there is asking about PFlow and scripting and now he's the one hiring at Blur.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing some more entrys, GL everyone!

[JonathanFreisler]

Hey thanks irwit, I worked hard on that, and i'm pretty happy with it. If i watch it now there are a few things i would fix up, but thats not going to happen lol. Ive always been meaning to read entire threads, theres so much knowledge in them from great people - but i haven't got quite the time. Ive got a few projects/FX shots i'm working on, so perhaps when i finish them and get a show reel up and change jobs. Well see.

I hope your finding the threads useful!

[Glacierise]

Here's the whole thing now:

http://cg.glacierise.com/animation/reel_opener_war_final_medium.mov

Here's the youtube preview, remember to watch it in HD:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYk_v17rIBQ

Enjoy ;)

[Hordak]

Uhm can someone post the footage again? The links are dead

[Hordak]

Double post. sry

[noouch]

http://yourmomisfat.info/blurfx/258MilesburgPollack.asf
http://yourmomisfat.info/blurfx/welder_826-42_l.mov
http://yourmomisfat.info/blurfx/dshort.mpeg
http://yourmomisfat.info/blurfx/jdamboom.mpg

Permanent hosting not guaranteed, get them while they're hot.

[UbiGuy]

Hi!

I still working on it to add high altitude wind but it's already good enough to be post...


http://img254.imagevenue.com/loc341/th_31040_JDAM_Impact_v002_Sorenson_122_341lo.jpg (http://img254.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc341&image=31040_JDAM_Impact_v002_Sorenson_122_341lo.jpg)
http://rapidshare.com/files/1974256...02_Sorenson.mov (http://rapidshare.com/files/197425601/JDAM_Impact_v002_Sorenson.mov)

[Glacierise]

Looks very cool dude, congrats! I don't like the way the bottom grid turbs in the last part, but otherwise - superb! And, rapidshare blows :)

[JonathanFreisler]

yeh dude as i said before. Very freaking cool.

Ive been meaning to do a few explosions more like that but haven't had the time.

good job man.

[irwit]

any chance of a youtube ? rapidshare says I need to pay now :hmm:

[UbiGuy]

Thank You all!

I will look tonight for how work Youtube... I never post on Youtube before.

[UbiGuy]

Glacierise

I agree with you, I have low down a bit my turbulence for the bottom part. You will see it at the next version...

[UbiGuy]

irwit.. The Youtube version...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXJg8cnsP1k

a better quality here...

http://www.vimeo.com/3291606

[Glacierise]

It rocks now, great work dude!

[thomaskc]

Ubiguy, thats awesome.

How many fumefx systems are there? My guess would be 3, correct?

1. dust blast
2. center volume dust
3. the upwards cloud.

[irwit]

irwit.. The Youtube version...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXJg8cnsP1k

Cheers man, looks excellent! I really like the ground dust, makes the piece feel intense.

If I was nit picking I would say the blast ( the cloud of dust coming up from the explosion ) is maybe a little soft. A bit more smoke like that explosion like.

Still really great shot and if it was part of an animation would sit in really well

Good job :thumbsup:

[PsychoSilence]

irwit.. The Youtube version...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXJg8cnsP1k

thats pretty b*tchin awesome! congrats on that result :)

[depleteD]

duuuuuuude that is freaking great

[EricTT]

very realistic,good job,you may show some tips?:beer:

[amckay]

i love it good work!

[Bandu]

Hey UbiGuy, great work, looks very promising!

Do you have any better quality mov linke 720p?
I'm still looking at your previews version "JDAM_Impact_v002_Sorenson.mov" frame by frame :-)
Are there significant changes in your new version except the wind?
Don't know if you did anything on the first 3 frames of the impact.

keep posting
cheers,
Bandu

[UbiGuy]

Thank You all!!!

Thomaskc... I have use 6 differente systems... Personnally I prefere to cut in small pieces my explosion to avoid resimulate large... Mushroom, Dust Cloud, Trails, NearGround Effect, Large groundEffect, Thin dust, etc...

What's up Allan? Did you plan to come back to Montreal soon? I pay the next beer..

[UbiGuy]

There no signifant change Bandu... Maybe I have change the DustCloud... Now I working on a different explosion... I prefere to come back later on it with fresh idea and new experience...

And no, I don't have render bigger than that...

[amckay]

I have too much fun when I'm in Montreal ;)
yeah maybe I will towards the end of the year, be good to get all the ubi guys out for some drinks, there's a few ex frantic guys who've moved over there too so plenty of drinkers!
it must be pretty damn cold there right now yeah?

[UbiGuy]

It's cold... Oh yeah!!!

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