Man, I’m kind of bummed, My wife reminded me that we’re going to NYC this weekend from friday morning to monday evening! ARGH! I’m so annoyed about that. I definitely have to loose the motion blur, which was so key to the look. And even with that gone I’m not sure I can finish. I have all the elements almost complete, I basically have to finish by thursday, maybe can tweak the comp monday night.
I’m debating, finish it the way I want, and take another week, or finish it with compromises to the quality and turn it in on time. I guess it comes down to what I’m in this for. The glory 
or to learn more. Hmmm. Does anyone know the smallest renderable size one can turn in? I was doing 640x400 but now I think maybe I can get a higher quality if I cut the rez down to like 400x220 or something like that with black bars on top and bottom. I wish I could keep motion blur it so important for the sprites, snow and debris. Even if I cut down the rez I have 3 nights and 3 days to get the rendering finished. Being gone for 2 of the 6 weekends has taken it’s toll on my entry. I’m sure I, like everyone here is expecting to do a lot the last weekend. Imagine that gone. Yes it’s possible but shoot.
Well I think I’m going to cut down the render size even more, still cut out the motion blur and try to finish by Thursday.
FXWARS! THE RACE: David Schoneveld
What do you have to render?
How many frames and how long per frame?
What version of Maya are you running?
hehe, we can see we re not alone( i assume many people are in the same way…)
for me i take 2 week in the middle(hic!), and now have sooo many problems to try to finish before the 22…
The glory
or to learn more. Hmmm
that is the question!
with motion blur the car render is 40 minutes per frame for 200 frames, the background which is almost finished is 20 minutes per frame, but this is all w/o even doing an ambient occlusion, reflection, and shadow pass! Argh, there’s no way, Maya 7 PC. well I do have a single core 2.6 with only a gig of ram… the gig of ram is what’s killing me. I was going to get a new machine but some money I was waiting on is delayed.
My plan is to do one for the competition and another as the better version, the following week or two. I don’t mind, not having the coolest possible entry. It will be looking cool with a little more time. I don’t think the rendering is the only issue, if I had a render farm, then no problem, because I can work and render. whatever, maybe this competition will be extended (hint, hint, robert) by a week or two, just to bring an even higher level to it all. Kidding, ah sort of, anyway I’ll post a good play blast with debris and the crash online tonight.
…now it’s tonight, check it out one particle pass, the red channel would be turned white in comp the green white, more fade and blured. The other is the crash debris anim test.
http://agentfx.com/fxWars/crashScene_gndSnow_B12.avi
http://agentfx.com/fxWars/crashScene_anim_B11.avi
I’m feeling like I’ll be able to finish this by thursday, at 640x400 no motion blur. So not a huge compromise but I’m sure everyone is going to make a compromise before the end. I think I’ll still work on this after the challenge, might give it a rest for a bit first.
woaahh, looks awesome. the crash debris really adds to the already cool animation. Good luck on finishing in time.
nice work there dave! just found this thread. I’ll have to keep checking back, it is looking really cool
Really really cool David!
That looks so promising, nice work for the animation, congrats to your partner and to you! The camera movement is really sweet.
You did a good compromise i think, that does a good impression already, as you’ll just need to add motion blur later…
Cheers!
Xavier.
That does look very cool. I would love to see a sample rendering with motion blur. 
Just so we know what we’re missing.
thanks guys, here’s a slap comp w/o the explosion… As you can see there are still some issues to work out. It looks ok, but MR in Maya does hide things that I key the visibility on, so you can see the front of the car still there after the crash. The snow is much to wispy, I imagined it to me more clumpy, also too much white, I’m going to get a sky back ground image. I was also going to add fog and falling snow to the scene, but with me going out of town… prolly not. So this is not far from the final product, I added a low res render frame of the explosion, we’ll see how that blends in tonight, with the rest of the scene.
(20m)
http://agentfx.com/fxWars/crashSceneComp_v02.mov
The motion of the cars, the flip and snow look very good. Wish I could animate like that.
I’m glad you got it finished!
Looks very cool, and the crash has a good hard impact. I like it.
Well, I’m not sure but I think there will only be a few entries finished for this thing.
Have a good weekend!
Inspirational fluid work! 
I love the explosive nature of it.
Would you mind posting some info about how you achieved it?
I look forward to see the polished version soon.
Tom.
Wow, i like it, i think you do a very good job in the short time of the project. there is some trouble in the shot (00:00:03.5) the camera go trough the floor, i know, by the quality of your render, that this can’t be fixed for the VFXWars, but maybe can for your polished version.
The Crash its Amazing, very Good Animation 
The Particles, in the Snow_Fx and some car parts(in the crash), are good to (maybe the snow must be a little diferent from the floor, because sometimes the Fx is missed.)
The Explotion… wow!, :eek:.
Congrats!!!
hehe yep, excellent one, and for now the only know “finished one”.
bad for this week end and the mb, but… its life!
congrat for this good piece of work.
Nice job on the tiny pieces flying out. Did you actualy model some car parts for the instancing or just made a whole bunch of “thingies” that resemble car parts? I liked it. Congrats! Hope to be able to get back to mine some day … :sad:
Looks awesome. The shot tells a story, and tells it well – very visceral. Love the crash details, with the hood flying off and the detritus going everywhere. Great stuff. The explosion, of course, is top notch. I’m curious how you shaded the snow particles? I am guessing just hardware rendering, but if you had some special trick, I’d be interested to hear.
funny enough I’m going to take out the explosion, I like it w/o. Since we have more time. I actually would have said no to extending the deadline, since I’m in trailer crunch now, however it DOES happen all the time in production so why not here
I found this engine and stuck it in the car
http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/289688
I then selected all the pieces, deselected any pice that looked too big or so, and the instanced them all. I have like 199 instances of which I gave rand rotation (no += yet since I wanted ti figure out how maya’s new collision attrs work) and more importantly I added rand scale. My mistake that I’m going to fix is that the particles should have more initial velocity, the first hit should have more particles flying away from the car. I think that will greatly add to the first impact.
I’m thinking I’ll take out the explosion to more show off the crash. the explosion is too big and kind of detracts from the whole crash, I felt before I added it, that it was a painful crash. then after the explosion you disassociate from it because it’s fake. Who knows maybe I’ll keep a changed version of that, if you can tell my antialiasing was too low on it and the hold out for the tree is all jacked.
powerdan, I did know that the camera did that, I even painted those frames so you don’t see underground. I will fix that now, good eye btw since that was only 4 frames, really only one, that you could see.
I’d like to turn the headlights on. give a little fog, and when the crash happens keep one or two lights still one, shooting off in odd directions. I want to add falling snow, a better background, some wind blown ground snow. I also need to better comp this. The white on white is too much it needs color. I may change the car to something more bright. Oh and the ground snow needs tracks and the snow from the tires os waaaay too wispy it needs to be clumpy, the tires are 1/4 of the way under snow and it looks like it’s driving on a road with some lightly fallen snow on it.
So the sprites on the snow, yes there is a trick to them I take the puff ball fluid example, soften it, take out the keys, add an expression to time, and you have fluid textured particles at 1000% time increase. You can’t add rotation so the lighting remains the same, but you can push that effect, more than I did in this even. I didn’t cycle through the images, b/c I knew there would be popping and I didn’t want to spend the time to make the texture loop-able. So it was that on top of regular multi points, both with motion blur. Oh and they change color, start out red, and as they age become green. Then in comp I blur the green channel so they dissipate.
I guy at work said he might make me a tree texture, so the trees don’t have to be white like that. So we’ll see.
More spit, more polish, more to come. Thanks for all your great feedback!