Well…it looks like I should have some time for this challenge. 
Looks to be some stiff competition shaping up already…this should be a lot of fun!
I had some time to work on this today…haven’t actually gotten to the avalanche itself yet, just blocked out the camera motions to get a feel of what the scene is going to look like:
I had to scrap the original mesh that I was using for the mountains…I was using a DEM file that I downloaded off the net, but was getting some super-funky rendering errors that I didn’t want to waste any more time figuring out. So I chucked it and just made my own. Re-did the camera move, which I think is good enough for now to be able to start blocking out the meat of the shot. :bounce:
http://www.greggdomain.com/temp/FXwars/avalanche_camera_v04.mov
Did some work on the particle motion today…this is the result:
http://www.greggdomain.com/temp/FXwars/avalanche_particle_test02.mov
Still a lot of work left to be done (ground flow, chunks of snow, debris, etc.), but I think this looks promising for a test of the puffy, billowy cloud that gets kicked up.
Did some work tonight, drawing inspiration from CoryC’s tests…admittedly this doesn’t have the same wow factor, but I think this should get me going, anyway. Once the particles start kicking in, I think it should give me the desired effect (or close enough to it, anyway…) :wip:
www.greggdomain.com/temp/FXwars/avalanche_cracking_test01.mov (Quicktime Sorenson 3, 555k)
Nicely done so far G…you got any freetime to keep going? I hope so…you’re a contender man!!!
Thanks man…I’ve been super-busy at work the past week or so and haven’t had much time to sleep, let alone work on this. I was hoping to be able to start rendering last weekend, but that didn’t happen. Hopefully if I get it started by this weekend, one week will be enough time for everything to finish up so I can get it comped and submitted by the deadline. :argh:
Ok, here’s my final entry:
www.greggdomain.com/temp/FXwars/TripleG_FXWars_Avalanche_still01.jpg
www.greggdomain.com/temp/FXwars/TripleG_FXWars_Avalanche_still02.jpg
www.greggdomain.com/temp/FXwars/TripleG_FXWars_Avalanche_still03.jpg
www.greggdomain.com/temp/FXwars/TripleG_FXWars_Avalanche_still04.jpg
Animation is >>here<<. (640x480, Quicktime Sorenson 3, 7.2MB)
Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to put any trees or exploding buildings or anything, so it’s just the mountain and the snow. It’s still got some issues, but this is as finished as it’s going to get by the deadline. I may keep working on this once the challenge is over…depends on how ambitious I feel. 
Details about the scene:
I did this in Lightwave 7.5, (so no hardbody dynamics), so I had to kinda fudge the chunks of the mountain breaking away by using C4 (an explosion plugin, for those who don’t know). I rendered out a bunch of layers which gave me some more flexibility within After Effects to try to hide as many rendering errors as possible… :wip: Total time was about 4 weeks, whenever I had time on nights and weekends (which wasn’t that often!). Not sure what other info to include…if anyone wants to ask questions, feel free.
btw…I’m not sure why those images are showing up as links and not within the thread itself. Oh well…whatever. :shrug:
Ok, after the one week extension, here’s my final final entry:
www.greggdomain.com/temp/FXwars/TripleG_FXWars_Avalanche_v2(640x480).mov (640x480, QT Sorenson 3, 8.67 MB)
I think I tried to change too much in too short a period of time. I wish I had time to re-render my particle shader…something I did has introduced some rather annoying popping. There’s lots of other stuff I’d like to fix if I had the time, but oh well… :shrug:
Hi Gregg,
Nice work man, it does look almost like some sort of cell shader on that particle cloud.
-mG
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