Thanks Matthew! The track supports I’ve added probably make it look even more “starwars-y”, but I guess at least I’m drawing on a good source 
Here’s a track fly-through I render last night, I’m adding some details today to make it seem more alive, hoping to finish off the racers as well, so I can block out shots tomorrow.
FXWARS! THE RACE: Richard Nichols
tibes
#22
tibes
#23
Worked a lot on the refining the city, and relighting it and adding bits and pieces to make it more interesting and “alive”. I’m trying to make the city as “finished” as possible so I can just use it in every shot without too much tweaking. The foreground animation will be enough effort without having to worry about the city backdrop, so hopefully the extra effort now with be worthwhile.
The city is around 500000 polys at this stage, and I’ve got around 25-30 lights. Render times at lo-res with no AA is around 5 seconds in LW9, so still manageable. Hope it remains that way
Edit: Did this little test too, not sure whether I’ll use something like in the final anim, but just playing with some ideas. QT7 Support Smash
Escopos
#24
Your stuff is looking realy nice man. I’m enjoying watching your progress … way ahead of me by the way! hehe:thumbsup:
mustan9
#26
Oh my god! Tell me about it. We’re not even one week into this things and he’s already rendering 40 seconds of track flybys.
Very nice work tibes! I like everything.
The light needs work, because it looks like a video game but if that’s your worst problems your way ahead of me. 
tibes
#27
Thanks everyone for the kind words!
I agree about the videogame look, I realised this after seeing the animation output yesterday morning. The animation initially was front-lit with the lighting rig parented to the camera. I thought this might be an easy solution for the lighting (which it was) but it looked very much like a videogame. I spent the rest of last night re-lighting the whole city with 30-40 point lights with fall-off and an overall moon-light. After looking at last night's render I'm much more pleased with the result. It's not the most realistic city in the world, but I'm pretty happy with the mood so far. Part of the problem with having a lot of dark reflective structures is that there isn't much scope for shadows to show up, but that's a trade off to avoid having to add a lot of detailed modelling and textures I guess. :D
Next, I'll finish off the vehicles, and if I have time, add some smaller props to the city before starting the sequence.
Here’s last night’s animation. And for fun, another still shot… I’m placing a few nice looking cameras around the city so I can choose from some “pre-selected” angles when composing the shots.
[img]http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/city4a.jpg[/img]
[](http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/ft3.mov)
destruct007
#31
DUDE! SWEET! Wow you are going all out, man I kind of want to help you do yours but instead I’ll offer you this sugestion add fluid clouds, take a generic cluod from the visor and take the rez and scale in Y and increasie it to fill the top of your city scape and below the road, or all inbetween if you raise the transparency! It will add details in the fog, and hide the distance that you can’t get to textureing to the N th degree.
Keep it up this is looking sweeeet!!!
tibes
#32
What race would be complete without… Pit Babes!!
[img]http://www.munkipants.com/fxwars/pitbabe2.jpg[/img]
(I realise I'm probably getting a little carried away at this point... but what the hell... pit babes! :bounce: )
mustan9
#35
Your characters look great.
The skin needs a little work, but skin always looks a little off in cg. It’s very hard.
The shoulder joint on the girl looks a little high. You may want to lower it closer to the arm bit for better deformation when she raises and lowers her arm, but it may not matter because if the camera doesn’t get very close.
I’m glad to see someone else doing characters for their entry.
I think your doing just the right amount of work in the right areas.
tibes
#36
Cheers! Yeah the shoulder deformation is more of a problem with the model and the base pose. I’ve adjusted the model to be more neutral in the base pose and this has fixed most of the shoulder problems. I might do some corrective morphs for the shoulder and elbow if they look bad in the animation, but for now I won’t bother.
I’ve added some thigh-high boots though…
tibes
#38
Finally back on the horse to get this sucka finished! Will be a struggle, and I may only get the first part of the sequence finished but will try and pull out all the stops.
Here’s the boards I’ve been working on so far. They may not make sense to anyone other than me
Many of these shots I should be able to complete very quickly, since the set is built and lit, and it’s a just a matter of placing the assets with very limited animation. Or that’s the plan anyhow.
tibes
#41
As one may suspect, I won’t get my entry done before the deadline. Very disappointing, but some technical issues with my PC and Lightwave in the past couple of weeks, and a crazy couple of weeks at work and with family, I just haven’t been able to pull it off.
I’m going to finish the sequence though, given the time I’ve spent so far, so I’ll take a thread over to the WIP animation section after the FXWars is over. Thanks to everyone that submitted their comments, and good luck to everyone that finishes, there’s some great stuff being created for this challenge! 