This could turn out to be a very good idea. Although I was thinking, will this be a challenge with different teams participating and competing with each other or will it consist of a single group of people that will work on a single animated short film?
Thanks,
3DEffects
I been thinking that I could try something we have never done before…
We could Try to establish a STYLE for all entries.
And the FX shots could be based on a UNIFIED storyline
We could create desings for all CORE vehicles base on a unified storyline:
The shots we could request are:
[ul]
[li]CAPITAL SHIP COMBAT[/li][li]LANDING ON AN ALIEN CITY[/li][li]CROWD SHOT OF ALIEN TROOPS[/li][li]SHIP COING TO WARP[/li][li]THE FALL OF A COLONY…[/li][/ul]People would have flexibility on what to do on the shots, as long as they use the CORE desings.
Storyline: We could do a first contact situation in ONE solar system that goes SOUTH in a bad way. The Humans cannot go back, so they have to fight.
The CORE Desings that would be provided for ALL entrie would be:
HUMAN:
CAPITAL SHIP, LANDER SHIP, SPACE FIGHTER, CARGO SHIP
Human Colony
Human City
Humans: Soldiers, Officers,Troopers, Colonists
ALIEN
HIVE CAPITAL SHIP, HIVE ATTACK SHIP
Alien Hive
Alien Nest
Aliens: Soldiers, Officers,Troopers, Colonists
SOLAR SYSTEM:
PLANETS, Asteroid Fields etc…
Interesting, very interesting. I like the structure of the storyline. Well done Roberto!
Will this FXWar start soon or it may take some time until all is prepared and made ready?
Thanks,
3DEffects
This ideas need to mature first.
And that only happens when you guys take it apart.
So keep the comments coming.
-R
Ah I see. Thought it would be abit early to develop such a vast story. Anyway, If I think of any ideas, comments or suggestions, I will definately post them!
Thanks,
3DEffects
Ok I am liking this idea, Robert - I love that you aren’t afraid to try something this big! They do stuff like this on Deviant Art all the time, I don’t see why it can’t be done here.
So, I’m thinking…
Break it all down. Get a rough storyline going, it doesn’t have to be detailed at all - almost what you wrote already is enough.
Break down the scenes for smaller scenes within for each participant and get everyone to sign up… then delegate the ‘scenes’ to the artists who joined up.
Did you want it to be solely 2D? 3D? a mixture of the two or a free-for-all where anyone can put their skills to the test?
An example of what I am saying is say that I sign up – and down the line, I get ‘assigned’ the ‘Fall of a Colony: Ground Troops’ category. Then, I get to do what I want with that… get me?
Keep the story united, but our creative imaginations at our own will – do not delegate one style of ‘space man’ or ‘spaceship’ but let our juices flow once we get our assigned category.
Make sense?
I think lots of us would badly love to see something like this happen…atleast I know I would . There’s enough skill around these forums to pull it off, the issue is finding people willing to give the time and focussed determination to pull it off.
Maybe stage the minichallenges to produce the needed people and assets? You’ve done this with the FXwars and sketch sections I think?
I’d also suggest doing very, very short bits that can be extended over time as people are able to work on it and work actually gets turned in. Maybe something like a short cutscene idea that only needs a few seconds per scene?
Just spitballing some of the things I’ve been contemplating regarding this sort of thing… :shrug:
And that is the KEY of my plan… (Maniacal Laugh)
Lots and lots mini challeges to create assets.
The cool thing is that as long as the 3d assets are:
[ul]
[li]Polygon Based[/li][li]Uv mapped[/li]
[/ul]We might be ok.
-R
Sounds like a great idea. I have a suggestion about the style of the project: for once, I’d like to see aliens and situations more believable and imaginative then the anthropomorphisms that Hollywood and the game industry are always putting out-- more like what you see in modern hard sf- Bova, Greg Egan, and so on,- and less like Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas (and, please God, not giant insects! :p).
Really, far-future hard sci-fi has almost no representation in animation or film-- it would be pretty cool to see something like that tried out in a visual medium.
hehe, cool!.. great minds and all…huh…did I say that. 
Going for a 2001 look is a cool idea and probably will also help simplify the texture work alot.
Definitely Poly cages and UV will be required…formats aside, the greatest challenge is getting people sticking to it and finishing. :hmm:
Well the idea I had in mind is to use a pipeline similar to the one of a TV show.
In other words, most of the work would have to be done Upfront.
That means that before the challenge is presented in this forum
( and I post the crazy dateline) the CORE digital assets would be done,
and made available for the participants.
Of course I cannot promise a fully rigged alien character, BUT, a painted model of the creature
could be provided, along with concept art. These assets would be the product of a MODELING challenge (hard core modeling challenge) & a sketching challenge (Daily Sketch forum).
-R
Having the assets built up first like that is a crucial step. It’s worked for the indie collbs on CGS…with the push of the larger number of people on official challenges it should have a good chance to work!
It’s always bugged me a bit to see unimaginable manhours and talent that the main challenges get put into them, but it never gets used for anything bigger down the line…seems a terrible waste to me. :shrug:
Seeing the efforts of the challenges be used for more than a personal display/portfolio would be a great bonus to your planned pipe. 
More spitballing here-
Wasn’t gonna suggest this, but what the heck. Might it be worth contacting some of the people that have already created the amazing work on the challenges past and see if they would donate their work/talent for this endeavour? That would accomplish 2 things> ramp up the speed of aquisition, and also there would be a good idea of the quality of existing assets. :shrug:
BTW: I’ve had success recruiting work and talent for the shirowproject collab with this method .
it’s a different genre but for the short cutscenes ide I mentioned above, this is the sort of thing I meant > http://www.worldinconflict.com/us/trailer.html
It could be built in 5-10 sec parts, section by section.
I have been wanting to work on a procedural space battle for a while in PFlow with max. Hero ships would be hand animated but the background fighting, laser blasts and explosions would all be PFlow.
Sounds like I should get cracking on some research
ETA: As above; What about a call for old Space Opera entrants to provide models with credit given? I am sure a lot of people wouldn’t be for it, but some people might be willing to offer some of the models for free/credit? Just a thought.
The thing about creatures is that there aren’t a lot of low-budget methods for doing crowd simulation. Most particle-based methods have a bunch of poses for each character baked out into static geometry, and switch between them on a frame-by-frame basis by a particle runtime expression. Then you have a couple expressions to keep the particles from hitting each other, and you’re done. You hand animate every guy who gets close to camera.
Massive and Behavior are significantly more complex than that.
I mean, with some really long particle coding, you could probably get something more complex than that, but I don’t think a whooole lot more complex. The method I’ve described wouldn’t have deformational motion blur (i.e. of arms and legs).
Sorry if I’m coming off as the naysayer here. I just like to play devil’s advocate, and I’ve had to do this stuff before, and know how hard it is.
I agree totally. There isn’t some over the night trick to pull of crowd sims.
The only easy crowd system I’ve seen that works easily and quickly is birds. They can be done with particle systems, have simple animations, and it looks better when more birds are used.
Good points…
The funny thing is that I was planning a crowd sim fxwars.
Any ideas how people could pull that off?
-R
Not easily. It’d mostly take a lot of particle tweaking, and there’s definite ceiling to getting it looking good. To get believable crowdsim, you really do need something like Massive.
There’s a couple AI-driven particle systems out there, like BrainBugz, which allow for simplistic crowd behavior (flocking, pathfinding, etc.), but the problem, as far as I’m concerned, is always going to be getting actual deforming objects instanced, as opposed to swapping out static geometry at every frame. With PRman or MR standalone, you could write a shader or DSO which could do it (which Massive did), but it’s a little beyond the capabilities of standard Maya/XSI/Max. Though I dunno, is XSI’s Behavior cheap now? I don’t know much about that one.
How many people have a $30,000 copy of Massive?
I’ve got a copy of Massive … in my dreams though!
hehehe;)
Thought it was $18,000 though.