CgTalk:FXWars! FXWars! Roller Coaster Challenge VOTE!:3

#1

Dont forget to suggest topic for our next challenge:
CgTalk:FXWars!Topics
The next challenge will be a comp challenge.

Ok I added the votes:
Here are the winners!

Best Simulation:
FXWars! Roller Coaster!: Frank Firsching

Best Animation:
FFXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt

Best Thrill Ride:
FFXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt

Best Design:
FFXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt

AND THE winner!

Best Overall ENTRY!:
FFXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt

Congrats to the winners!

-R

Ok here are the Rules for the current challenge:

CgTalk:FXWars! Roller Coaster Challenge:3

Ok here we go time to vote, please pick what you believe
is the best entry for each category:
[ul]
[li]Best Simulation [/li][li]Best Animation [/li][li]Best Trill Ride (NEW!) [/li][li]Best Design (NEW!) [/li][li]Best Overall Entry[/li][/ul]Ill post the results next Monday.

MConte05__________________________________________________ _
Thread: FXWars! Roller Coaster!: MConte05
Preview:

http://www.cgtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=61237

Comments:

After pretty much giving up on this project, I had a realization last night on how to get it work, got everything assembeled, and sent it around the track, and to my suprise it actually worked. Then realizing I only had a couple hours left to get this contest entry done, I have been rendering in low detail with horrible lighting, but it does the job of showing the track. Its a little rough because there is some space between the object and the rails, which causes shuffling. I didn’t have the time to remake the object, re-sim it, then render…

Also, in the video it seems that the rails intersect the train. I only simulated the train and the rails, and when I went to un-hide the spine and supports I found that I had deleted those. So I ended up just taking my model and trying to line it up as best as I could. Keep in mind I was pushed for time, so its sorta sloppy :blush:

Anyways, here is my entry…

POV: http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05_FXWARS(320X240).mov
Exterior Shots: http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05…320X240)EXT.mov
WireFrame: http://tyrant.interfix.net/MCONTE05…20X240)WIRE.mov

[font=Verdana]Sir_Vulcan [/font]__________________________________________________ _

Thread: FXWars! RollerCoaster!: Sir_Vulcan

Preview:

http://www.cgtalk.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=62117

Comments:

Ok, here is one of the Final Movies. This one is On board the train with the enviroment. Ill post the wireframe one soon(just the coater and the track)

It took me many hours to make and many more waiting for things to calculate. I started it a few days after the competition started and worked on it a few hours a day until yesterday.

This one took 23 hours to render on my poor computer and the compression pretty much wasted the texturing. But it’s still cool to watch.

Its 640x480 and filesize is 14.8 Mb FIXED!
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/vulcan/SirVuclan-FXW-RollerCoaster-Mov01.mov

If you like seeing the wireframe part of an animation, then this one is for you. It only show the peices I used in reactor for the simulation and theres no mesh smoothing or anything like that. Its exactly what was used for calculations.
Heres the link:
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/v…oaster-Wire.mov

For those that are interested, I’ll post the number of polys for each piece
Each train car - - 2280 faces
Each Wheel - - 2090 faces
Total for the Track - 167264 faces

[font=Arial Black]COLT[/font]__________________________________________________ _

Thread: FFXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt
Preview:

Comment:

Coaster Hellride. (very strongly inspired by Indy :slight_smile: )

Edited and rendered with all the bells and whistles: (Quicktime, 19 Mbyte)

Coaster Final

A plain shaded animation: (Quicktime, 11 Mbyte)

Coaster plain

I used Maya for all the stuff. It took me quite some time to come up with the simulations and for the final every cave took about 2 days from scratch to finish (plus a lot of rendering time).

The only keyframes are on the lift in the beginning and of course the cameras.
The whole simulation is divided into 8 parts, sometimes the break is clearly visible since I didn’t match the speeds correctly, shame on me. (you’ll see all the the cuts in the plain animation)
I used two different approaches to simulate the train. Here is a picture of the actual simulated geometry:

http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/challenge/CoasterSims.jpg

The upper sim is entirely gravity based, the “wagons” are sliding over the tracks and connected to each other. They are not connected to the track, therefore I use this sim for the jumps and gaps in the tracks. I would have used it for the whole animation, but Maya has got some serious problems with collisions, which make this sim really buggy and unusable for long and complicated tracks. See my wip for some details.
So I came up with the second one, which is a little bit more complicated. Here I use a custom expression for the movement of the locators along the track-spline. The expression calculates speed and position based on the incline/decline. The 8 boxes are connected to these locators and the “cars” sit losely through collsion on them, allowing some freedom for the cars - you will see them nearly fall over or jump of the tracks in hard curves or bends with close to 0g.
The wheels rotate using an expression calculating the covered distance in world space, that’s why they also rotate while the lift is going up.

All this freedom took a lot of trial and error for the track design, you don’t want to know how often it flew off my track. :argh: And it creates the strong shaking you see at high speeds in the curves. Part of the problem is, that the track is still made of polygons with their limited tesselation.

As always there is sooooo much still to fix (especially the edit, which ruins some things), but I hope you like it. I had a lot of fun creating it.

Nico

YAN__________________________________________________ _
Thread: FXWars! Roller Coaster!: Yan
Preview:

Comments:

so, i cant finish this, as i dont have time since few weeks to work on it…
so will post the last preview as my “not finish, not rendered so not really” final entry for this rollercoaster contest :smiley:
sorry for the bad preview…

so heres it it, http://perso.wanadoo.fr/yann.goumen…LLERCOASTER.mov (12 Mo)

so as explain before, full dynamic simulation for the first wagon, full gravity based, simulation run from the beginning to the end without cut.
and a follower for the other wagon and voila :slight_smile:

FrankFirsching__________________________________________________ _
Thread: FXWars! Roller Coaster!: Frank Firsching
Preview:

Well, here is my final animaton. Since I don’t have access to the Sorenson pro codec, I had to compress my movies with the standard edition (which has no way to control the encoding). Therefore I provide some alternative AVI-files using xvid/divx codecs. The quicktimes are 320x240 and the AVIs are 640x480 (bigger image size and smaller file size :argh: ).

Edit: CoryC has recompressed my DivX videos using the Sorenson Pro Codec.Thank you very much! The links now point to the new versions.

Complete ride of the rollercoaster with an on-wagon cam:
Quicktime (8.8 MB)
avi (19.6 MB)

A short piece of the track from a 3rd person view
Quicktime (2.1 MB)
avi (6.8 MB)

A wireframe view (simplified geometry as seen in the viewport of Houdini)
Quicktime (4.4 MB)
avi (2.9 MB)

And the last video shows the procedural pillar generation. The distance between the pillars is decreased over time. The track crosses itself and the pylon, that would cross the lower piece of the track will be removed, if it would intersect it. In the background you see some other pillars removed, too. This is due to the fact, that two pillars would stand too close together in the hard turn of the track. Then one of them will be removed.

Quicktime (0.5 MB)
avi (0.5 MB)

Summary:
Completly procedural roller coaster system (animation and build up).
Interactive simulation (including scrubbing of the timeline and adjusting simulation parameters like gravity in realtime). This is a great advantage: You can view the end of the animation and tune the drag coefficient, so that the coaster is just about the reach the end of the track and not stick somewhere in a minimum.
Not a single keyframe set (except in the 3rd person movie for the camera)
Animation length 1685 frames.
Animation length 1min 7 sec.

Here are the four steps how to build a coaster (shown using the short piece of track of my first test animation):

1st step: Draw a NURBS curve:

http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build1.jpg

2nd step:
Apply an operator, that starts the orientation editing. Here the coaster is always oriented upwards (even in the top of the looping).

http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build2.jpg

3rd step:
Orient the small u-shaped objects to resemble the orientation of the coaster you want (create loopings, twists, …)

http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build3.jpg

4th step:
Apply again an operator, that recreates the curve you have drawn. This time the curve has a point attribute coaster_orientation. This tells the build system how to orient the tracks.

http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/final/FrankFirsching_FXWars_Build4.jpg

The rest is all procedural. The coaster is made of some basic building blocks:

http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Persons/Firsching/stuff/FXWars/pillarParts.jpg

which will be place at the appropriate positions and orientations.

#2

Roberto, I guess you forgot MConte, who himself forgot to post in the main thread.
Here is his final entry : http://www.cgtalk.com/showpost.php?p=1791445&postcount=17

And somehow you double-pasted yans text in the beginning of your post. Right after your bold text.

Now maybe we can get some people down here to actually vote. :argh:

#3

Thanks Colt for your help.
I can now say that the probelms have been fixed.
To get more people to vote, Ill plug the thread later today.

Until Later,
-R

#4

After a second look, I found some more errors, sorry.
It’s the links to the threads …

Mconte is linked to Yan
Sir Vuclan to Colt
and Frank Firsching to Yan

#5

I have to fire that proof reader!
FIXED!

-R

#6

psst spelled my name wrong :smiley:

#7

Arrrgg!!

-r

#8

ahahahaha poor Roberto.

Im downloading all them .

Will we vote like in the sketch of the week?

#9

Yes Bartok.

Just select the best for each cathegory.
Sir Vulcan you need to post a mirror quickly to your final animation .

-R

#10

What…aaaaa…

Oh you just don’t have the right link

Use this one
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/vulcan/SirVuclan-FXW-RollerCoaster-Mov01.mov

and fix it up above, if you could

#11

[ul]
[li]Best Simulation - MConte05 [/li][li]Best Animation - Colt [/li][li]Best Trill Ride - Colt[/li]
[li]Best Design - MConte05[/li]
[li]Best Overall Entry - Colt [/li][/ul] if you want reasons, just PM me…

#12

[ul]
[li]Best Simulation colt[/li][li]Best Animation colt[/li][li]Best Trill Ride colt[/li][li]Best Design colt[/li][li]Best Overall Entry colt[/li][/ul]

You were all amazing! True talent. I can’t wait to see what you guys do next. Just because I didn’t vote for you does not mean you do not have my attention . Keep up the terrific work!

#13

Best Simulation - Frank Firsching
Best Animation - Colt
Best Trill Ride (NEW!) - Colt
Best Design (NEW!) - Colt
Best Overall Entry - Colt

#14

at first every competitor gets points in each cat, 1 is lowest, 5 highest
then i sum them up to determine the places :slight_smile:
the one with the highest points in the cat wins this cat.
hope you understand me :slight_smile:

MConte05

* Best Simulation 3
* Best Animation 3
* Best Trill Ride (NEW!) 3
* Best Design (NEW!) 3
* Best Overall Entry 3

15pts

Sir_Vulcan

* Best Simulation 3
* Best Animation 3
* Best Trill Ride (NEW!) 2
* Best Design (NEW!) 2
* Best Overall Entry 2

->12pts

Colt

* Best Simulation 4
* Best Animation 4
* Best Trill Ride (NEW!) 2 (the many cuts don't let me experience the thrill of riding one o these, the on-board cams make it more real, perhaps a bonus-on-board-cam would win it all for you ;) )
* Best Design (NEW!) 5
* Best Overall Entry 5

->20pts

Yan
* Best Simulation 1
* Best Animation 1
* Best Trill Ride (NEW!) 1
* Best Design (NEW!) 1
* Best Overall Entry 1
-> 5pts

FrankFirsching
* Best Simulation 3
* Best Animation 3
* Best Trill Ride (NEW!) 3
* Best Design (NEW!) 4
* Best Overall Entry 3
-> 16 pts

overall:
* Best Simulation - Colt
* Best Animation - Colt
* Best Trill Ride (NEW!) - MConte05 + FrankFirsching
* Best Design (NEW!) - Colt
* Best Overall Entry - Colt

1st: Colt
2nd: FrankFirsching
3rd: MConte05
4th: Sir_Vulcan
5: Yan

i hope i didnt mis-understand you there and best trill ride means something like best thrill-ride?? like in best simulation of a ride?
whatever :slight_smile:
great work, really good that you all participated, a pitty Yan couldnt finish it.
I am excited as well: what comes up next? :slight_smile:
-tuzz

#15

[ul]
[li]Best Simulation: colt [/li][li]Best Animation: [color=yellow]colt [/color][/li][li]Best Trill Ride (NEW): colt [/li][li]Best Design (NEW): colt [/li][li]Best Overall Entry: colt[/li][/ul]

#16

[li]Best Simulation colt
[/li][li]Best Animation colt
[/li][li]Best Trill Ride colt
[/li][li]Best Design colt
[/li][li]Best Overall Entry colt
[/li][/list]

ditto, that’s just an amazing peiece of work. Loved all of them. Mconte’s work stood out also.

#17

Best Simulation: Frank Firsching
Best Animation: Colt
Best Thrill Ride: Colt
Best Design: Frank Firsching
Best Overall: Colt

#18

[font=Franklin Gothic Medium][color=white]My view of the winners:Best Simulation: FrankFirsching
Best Animation: colt
Best Trill Ride (NEW): colt
Best Design (NEW): colt
Best Overall Entry: colt

[color=white]MConte05- Hey, you did a real good job on the Roller Coaster; I like the over all feel of the coaster (going fast/slow at the right part… And no long straight-aways! YAY!) When I first watched the video, the first thing that I noticed was that there were no places for the people to sit! Where are the seats? Also, ounce the ride started, I noticed that the bars do intersect into the car; like you said… But, as you said, if you had some more time…[/color]

[color=white][/color]
[color=white][/color]
[color=white]Sir Vulcan- I really liked you Roller Coaster, you used the environment, better than Colt did (IMO) and I love how you had all the drops and turns, looking as though you were going to hit the side of the hill at any moment. The cart that the people would ride was decent… But the main thing that killed you in the race for first place was the fact that the textures on the ground and sky were not as good as they should of been (but I do commemorate you for actually doing textures, it helped with the over all feel) The main thing that bugged me was the sky texture, and how you had this nice cloud texture, but than the water texture was right there (up in the sky?) with it… The water texture was good, but some more animation would have been better. The ground texture was your best, but it would have helped if you added some more objects into the scene, such as a broken down wagon, or other old western objects. But then again, you seemed to run into the same problem as the other people… The Lack of Time![/color]

[color=white][/color]
[color=white]Colt- Best out of the whole competition… Not much to complain about, the one thing that I did not like was the cart, which the people would have been ridding in, though it had a good texture, (very shiny) it did not seem like something that would be on that type of ride. But than again you clearly weren’t going for the reality of the simulation from all of the JoF’s (jumps-of-faith). Although there was that one part that bugged me there was lots that really impressed me… I really liked all the extras such as the signs at the beginning, and the details such as the rocks, and the environment… I liked all of the excitement such as gaps in the track, but it sometimes it was followed by a sew seconds of climbing up a hill, which lessened the excitement. Very good job and I hope to see more of your work in the future![/color]

[color=white][/color]
[color=white]Yan- Nice job, It still has the unfinished look, like most of the Roller Coaster’s in this competition. The one thing that I was a little disappointed in was that there were no support beams! But your rides car was very nice, and it is good to see someone doing the stand-up coaster theme, I could see it being so much better if you, like more people, had more time.[/color]

[color=white][/color]
[color=white]FrankFirsching- I really like your Roller Coaster over all but if you had some more time, Yours would of gave colt’s a run for his money… The Coaster ran very well on the tracks and (IMO) had the best seats/riding cart out of the whole competition. It is too bad that you did not have time to finish, and put in some textures… Over all I liked it but, it could have been so much more…[/color][/color][/font]

#19

Best Simulation: MConte05
Best Animation: Colt
Best Thrill Ride: Colt
Best Design: MConte05
Best Overall: Colt

#20

DevilHacker: Thanks for your comments, as far as the seating goes, like I had stated in my topic, I had finally figured out how to get it to work mere hours before it was supposed to be turned in. My plan for the final animation was to take the cars that I had been modeling and link them to the ones in the simulation. The cars shown in my simulation were pretty much meant to be “dummys” for the real cars to follow.