Big city with one bitmap (musicvideoproject)

[JamesMK]

Well, I'm definitely impressed! It looks really huge...

Exactly how did you go about applying the texture here? I'd be really interested to know what the model looks like without the texture and what method you used to map it.

[Pufferfish]

Hey JamesMK,

Thanks for your comments,

The city is mostly boxes with a different size, I made small groups of boxes and attached them together, then applied the map.. just box mapping :) Then copied them around with little tweaking...

I will send the pic of the city model without material.

[JamesMK]

OK, so it's a piece of cake, sort of. Just comes down to having good looking maps :D And I guess you've got a pretty extreme setting for the lens, right?

Well, it looks very good indeed. Untextured image coming - good!

The thing is I need to make a big, huge city-shot myself soon (but in daylight), so I'm really interested in your method here.

[Pufferfish]

Yep it is a total scam really... plain boxes made look ..er... better than just a box :)

The material thing may be a bit harder if you are doing daytime view ...night is always easier , you can hide things :)

..ah the lens.. yep that is the key thing :)

[rikimountain]

its ****ing awesome!!!
show us the map too, please!!!
how much time did you spend on it?
:buttrock: :buttrock: :buttrock:

[Pufferfish]

Thanks for your comments rikimountain,

Sure I will show the map too, it is the best part :)
The bitmap takes about 90mb so I have to pack/scale it a little :)

The material is made from satellite images of cities, very high from the ground, mostly night time images...I combined about hmm.,.. aprox 13 or more (huge) satellite images to get what I wanted. Then I made all of them look like one night time image...hmmm..yep that's about it :)

This is actually very quick thing to do, hmm.. the modelling took about 30mins and making that material hmm.. that took some more...hmm if I say 6 hours it aint very far from the truth..

..I will send the model and the map when I get back to my secret nerd chamber :) ...

[JamesMK]

Woa... that's a lot of texture data... Explains the stunning results, indeed.

[Pufferfish]

ok finally here..

so here are the pics I promised.

First one is just the plain city without material or anything.
As you can see...it is just some boxes :)


http://gamma.nic.fi/~shroveb/cityplain.jpg



Second one is a tiny part (scaled and packed jpg) of the full bitmap that I used as a material. Hope you can see something from it :)


http://gamma.nic.fi/~shroveb/tinypartofthemap.jpg

[JamesMK]

Whoa! OK, sure, it's "just boxes", but they are most certainly many and well formed! No wonder this stuff looks good...

I don't see why you should feel nervous :D It would take a seriously grumpy old VFX-expert to find something to complain about here. At least that's what I think...

[RobertoOrtiz]

Hey pa!
get the tar and feathers!



he he...


Seriously, there is no reason to be nervous, your work is very good.

-R

[RADiator]

This is exceptionally good work! The whole composition looks fabulous!

DAMN I WANT TO LIVE IN THIS CITY!!!!:D:D :D

[Pufferfish]

Great! Im more than happy to hear your comments, thanks guys!
This all is really encouraging :bounce:



I will put up something moving soon...

[Emersive]

could we get a render of this at 1024x768 it would be a really sweet desktop picture... awesome work..:drool:

[Blacklion]

Damn.... so simple yet ...so effective..Me likes.

Good work.

[Pufferfish]

Sure, I can render a bigger one. :)

[Pufferfish]

Here is a link where you can see the city animated. It should give you all a better feeling of the city itself.. or at least I.. well .. er.. hope it does :)

- click here to download - (http://gamma.nic.fi/~shroveb/)

(1.445kb and you need divx5)


This is one of the early tests, colors are more green and those flying vessels are not fully combined with the city itself. Camera speed is tested here also... slower first then it gets a little faster. So nothing is ready in this clip.. just an early test. Hope it gives you the scale though :)

[Pgraphics]

That worked great. Nicely done.

[rikimountain]

could you do the desktoprender in 1600x1200 too?! hahaha...
:buttrock: :buttrock:
i know its a quite stupid question... but how did you map that boxes???! looks like i was kinda newbie to 3d?! shit! :banghead:
would you maybe be interested in writing a little tutorial on this??!
i adore that shit man! keep it up

[Pufferfish]

Thanks Pgraphics for your comments.
Do you have any suggestions how to make it look better?


Anyone else?

I still can change things so all critics/comments are very important and very appreciated :)

thanks :)

[Pufferfish]

Originally posted by rikimountain
i know its a quite stupid question... but how did you map that boxes???! looks like i was kinda newbie to 3d?! shit! :banghead:
would you maybe be interested in writing a little tutorial on this??!
i adore that shit man! keep it up


Thanks Rikimountain,

one big desktop image coming up... :)

Yep, I can write a little tuto for this too.. when Im finished with this. Hopefully very soon. Im almost there :)

hmm.. if I say some things that I think are the key elements in this city thing are : HUGE very very detailed bitmap and boxmapping, several house groups mapped with this bitmap and copy option :)

[Pufferfish]

some update...

I made two version of the city... (still have to choose which type of city to do for the final project)


quite dead one

http://gamma.nic.fi/~shroveb/cityimage1.jpg


...and more lively


http://gamma.nic.fi/~shroveb/cityimage2.jpg




comments/critics more than welcome :)

..oh and please say which one you think is better.. I would like to hear yout opinion, 'cause I have to choose one of those "moods" for the final project.

[rikimountain]

the first one looks more like a dead/abandoned city to me... and just the moon ads some light...
i like the second one better cuz theres quite much going on...
city night life.. i would say...
but depends on the project which fits better... AND... thats just my personal opinion...
but... bot rock! :buttrock: :buttrock: :buttrock:

[jampoz]

Man, i'm impressed! :buttrock:

You found the easiest way to achieve the best thing, respect!
It really DOES work, you shouldn't be nervous at all but feel proud instead, believe me :beer:

[Pufferfish]

rikimountain: Yep the upper one is too dead.. I made the "nightlife" version for the final...it works better with this project.
I think I make one "giant robot/mecha fighting" scene with all the lasers and stuff like that from the upper one. Just for myself , I kinda like that dark and abandoned feeling.


jampoz: I always try to "cheat" by making all things easy...sometimes it even works ...well more often it doesn't :)

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your comments.

[Waters]

I like this a lot. I tried once myself to do a city, after watching an early teaser for star wars ; ) , and didnt get nearly as great results. Looks good, and I liked the motion test.. although, I think it would be cool if there was some reflection on the sides of some of the buildings ( so they look like they are made of glass ), or maybe there already is..?

[Pufferfish]

Hmm ...good point Waters. The most of the animations are ready and are being edited in, but I think I have to test it :)

Thank you!

[Aearon]

great looking city you have there. don't worry.. the modeling might be simple, but it's very effective i think.

i'd try a mix of both images. the first on is two dark on the 'outside', it doesn't look like there are any lights on, and the second one has too much brightness all over the images, which makes it too uniform.. hurting the composition. the eye doesn't really know where to look.

i'd take the first image as a starting point and make the city just a tad brighter outside the center

[Pufferfish]

Originally posted by fist
...i'd try a mix of both images. the first on is two dark on the 'outside', it doesn't look like there are any lights on, and the second one has too much brightness all over the images, which makes it too uniform.. hurting the composition. the eye doesn't really know where to look.

i'd take the first image as a starting point and make the city just a tad brighter outside the center


Thanks Fist, I think you are right. It is a bit "messy" to look at.
I will try what you suggested.

[Deam]

Another proof, that the computer is just a tool... to accomplish an idea... as long as you use your creativity.

:buttrock: Very cool!

[TheFirstAngel]

First gotta say one thing: WOW!
Your Project looks just great! I'm officially impressed 0;)

My thougt is very simple, i had the same problem with a "Nightcompositon" cuz the single allover glow I used was making my whole composition blurry and messy... I created a few different glow effects then, to have more control over the single "glowing elements", and could place the effect more "local".
Maybe its just enough to "dim" that glow/edit the map slightly, to reduce its size/intensity a just lil bit.

Hey, and haven't I said it already? U ROCK, MAN!!!!

[Pufferfish]

hey nice to hear comments on this.

the1st_angel, thanks!

The video is actually ready now, I will put it up soon.
Im not totally happy with it but had to can it. Otherwise it would have taken several months more, the fixing will never stop if you start doing it :)

[Sceme]

wow....is there any bigger render of this. really impressive work.
How big is your texture image? :P

[PsychoSilence]

heavy box modelling ! like the shape of the city ! so you just box mapped the images of cities in the models ? amazing resdault i´ll keep watching the process ;)

[Pufferfish]

Thanks guys,

sceme: I have several bigger renderings, will put them on my site soon. About the texture map, it was pretty huge, I made 2 different versions, the one I used is about 90megs and the other is a bit larger. Resolution of the map is 6000x5500.

PsychoSilence: yep, used box mapping.

[TheFirstAngel]

Can't wait to see, "Lord of boxes"... O;o)
yep I know that... there is always something... but u won't end up like my best friend Sisifus, do we?
Great job, Keep it up man, keep on rockin'!

[Keiyentai]

WHoa..... that is just plain cool. I wana see this music video...

[FrankyMo]

As your alienware challenge that's reallly amazing work you've done so far!!! :-)

[Lukes]

Like the others I too am deeply impressed with your city, I do have a noob question though, box mapping, is that the same as a cubic image mapping in lightwave? And did you use world space so that the image map is diferent in diferent areas?
Looking forward to seeing the finished piece.

_luke

[Pufferfish]

Thank you all, makes me happy to read your comments :)

Lukes: I dont know much about Light Wave so hard to say anything. world space? hmm... not sure what you mean by that, but the map is different in different areas but it tiles also :)

Cheers!

[saturen3]

realy amazing.i dont know what must i say.

[TheFirstAngel]

Hey Pufferfish, can we look at the final work somewhere?
except MTV? Would die to see it!!!

And another thing: anyone who has not looked at Pufferhish's Alienwaretread should do that immediately, it simply rocks bombastic!

Find it HERE:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=96136

[Pufferfish]

Hi there th1st_angel, sorry I did not answer earlier.. all kind of "alien" hurry was going on;)

The video will be online soon for all to see.

Hehe and thanks for the advert :)


Cheers!

-j

[saturen3]

Hey jari!

Realy amazing work!awesome.

A question :

Hadn`t you any problem with the map on the boxs?It`s realy amazing for me to know the process.

cheeeeers,

[keitai]

hey pufferfish,

very nice .avi. Wondering if you had the time to make a tutorial??

I am a newbie (working with blender) and i was also wondering if this is a so called use of camera mapping????


You can see what i mean here
link (http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/rendering/camera_mapping/camera_mapping.html)

and just watch the movie.

For learning purpose, could you post a part of your (uv?) map and bitmap image? I can't get it how you did your movie with just one bitmap ;)

thnks in advance

[weasel.acuh5o]

wow, very nice... you really managed to make it look big. though I think a _little_ more detail wouldn't hurt. you don't see it in the normal images, but in the video you notice some simple boxes. dunno if you do if you don't look for them, but... :)
perhaps just bevel some corners, nothing more. and even if you don't, very good work. I hope you post some more sequences!

[Duffer]

incredible work putter :)

that vid was sweet!

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