FXWARS! THE RACE: David Schoneveld

#1

Ok, I’d love more time to work on this before submitting it, here it is, my final entry. I’m planning on continuing to working on this, to make it even better! Hope you guys dig it.

8 megs, sorenson3, quicktime.
http://agentfx.com/fxWars/davidSchoneveld_fxWars640480.mov

I really enjoyed this challenge, I know I got a lot out of it! You guys were great in supporting me and giving a lot of great feedback, thanks to all of you, esp, Mathew and Jason, for all your thoughtful input. I can’t wait to take this scene to the next level. And on to the next challenge!!! Good Luck to all!

#2

Not bad for a first pass.
Btw, great job on the Maya Fluid Effects DVDs.

#3

Nice 1st pass.
destruct007, what are the locators on top of your cars for?
How did you get the 2nd car’s body to wobble after the impact? Is it keyed or dynamix?

It looks promising man, the car hitting the tree…leave falling from the tree, the cars exploding and the trees catching fire…hehe

Cheers!

Xavier.

#4

thanks! I guess my fluids better look spot on :wink: And thanks for the reply CobraX, you really haven’t seen anything yet :smiley:

I story boarded out my seq, to about 30 seconds, made it kind of like a commercial for FXWars, I’ll post them tonight. I highly recommend story boarding out your sequence. I did mine at about a 1 inch high by 1.5 inches wide, rough but that’s fine to get the idea, and it really simplifies the animation. I think I can make my small area of track look like a lot more .
I also scetched out the fx and how I’m going to do some of them, I can pos that too but it may not make a lot of sence to people.

#5

So I story boarded these like I said, just rough sketches of what I want to do, you can see how I’m planning on focusing on the fx not the animation, like CU on the fx where the animation can be almost a straight line.


then I sketched out the idea of how I’m going to go about these fx make sure I’m not forgetting and I know whats comming up. These probably won’ty make a lot of sence but I wanted to post them to show some of you guys my process.


#6

nice…

How long is it going be?

#7

Looking good, Dave. Good planning – lots of pretty solid effects opportunities in here, from snow, to the wheel popping off, to the explosion. I look forward to seeing your snow plumes coming off the tires and swirling in the car’s wake (if I interpreted your drawings correctly), as I’ve always loved that sort of effect. Also eager to see your fluid work.

Thanks for posting up your boards!

#8

right now I’m estimating it to be 612 frames @ 24fps so about 26 seconds.

Jason, yeah, you interpreted correctly, I’m pretty excited to do these fx too. I was watching cars in the rain this weekend, as I was driving, thinking how fun that would be to make snow blast out of the wheel wells like that. I’m going to see if I can get away with just particles for that effect, and then use the computer heave calc time for the fluids for the smoke plumage… if it doesn’t look good enough with just particles I’m going to add fluids to that, I just know that that will take a long time b/c it would need to be a large container for the cars to travel through…

Oh tip for high rez 3d fluids (high for me starts around 60x60x60 and greater): When I need high rez fluids in a 3d container I lower the solver quality to like 5 and it counter acts the slowing a little and still maintinas good quality sims. Hope that doesn’t confuse anyone, don’t just make high rez fluid containers but when you HAVE to that really helps.

#9

I did a rig similar to that snow plumes effect for a movie awhile back, and what I ended up doing was attaching a volume axis right behind the vehicle, an attenuated radial around its wheelwell, and a drag field a bit behind it… basically, would suck the smoke towards the car, swirl it about a bit, then it would slowly drift off and settle in mid-air and die. Given that your shots won’t be focusing on it that long, that may be overkill. Looked fairly nice, but took awhile to set up right, and I was using a lot of point particles, to get the swirliness detail.

Thanks for the fluids tip. I will probably end up using that today at work…

#10

cool, I’ll try that, one question, why a drag feild over a an air field? Did you find it just worked better? and did you use turbulence?

I’m planning on breaking into 2 fx, One the the heavy clumpy snow (high moBlur instance geo) and the cloud like you were talking about. I was going to try the cloud particle for that, so might not be the same thing, might then change pTypes and use points come to think of it, more the better.

#11

The drag was just so that I could have it slow and sort of float there after being caught in all this turbulent motion. I kept running up against the problem of particles falling out of the vortex spin if I set the conserve very low, but if it was too high, they’d continue to go at very high speeds in weird directions after they exited the car’s wake. So, the drag was just to slow them down. It didn’t overlap with the radial, and only a bit with the volume axis. It was kind of a balancing act to put together, so there may be a better way, which I’d love to hear, if you come up with one. I just know that it is possible to do with just particles.

#12

ok so here’s my animatic, the animation in here is for blocking purposes. those are actually dups of the car frames, I’m going to animte each one independent of the blocking… meaning the real animation won’t be as crappy.

http://agentfx.com/fxWars/crashScene_anim_A04.avi

I’d love to hear comments on camera moves, shots, shot leangths, and action. I feel like it needs a little more something. (other than better animation, ha!) this weekend I have deadlined for myself to finalise the animation.
As I see it, this weekend
WEEKEND 5 (as in 5 weeks to go) should be the last bit of animation of the cars,
WEEKEND 4 any bent metel added, and crash fx roughed in
WEEKEND 3 some passes of fx complete
WEEKEND 2 set rendered slap comps
WEEKEND 1 final renders final comp
***I may be off by one weekend, so that maybe minus one… also I work a bit on the week days, I know I’ll have to, I’ll be gone one of those weekends, argh! I guess I’ll convert one of those weeknights into a longer work session. anyway.

My point is times a wastein’ better get that animation done, because the point of this is, of course, fx.

#13

Its looking good!, just a suggestion, on the camera maybe add some movement so it looks like its held by a human. I think it wud add to it quite a bit.

:smiley:

#14

Looking good! Camera comments:

  1. First shot, I’d raise it up in Y, and tilt it down, so it’s more looking down on the cars.
  2. Maybe have a more extreme camera move on the jumping-over-the-hill shot.
  3. Move the camera closer to the tree on the crash-into-the-tree shot.
  4. I don’t think the second-car-skidding-out-of-control shot doesn’t tie in super well. Maybe either move the camera closer to the car, or start on the first car, and moves over to see the second car skidding around.

It’s all looking super good! My comments are mostly nitpicks.

#15

That’s very cool.

You could give more of an opening shot. Maybe something like a view of the race track with the sound of cars coming in the distance, or you could open up with a close up of the front wheels and pull back. Anything you want but just something to setup your video better.

You just jump into the action, but not in a way that provides an introduction.

#16

yeah thanks for the comment, that’s a good point. I was thinking about it and the first shot is sort of duplicated in a later shot so, your right, there should be a better intro to the race/setup. I can’t pull out too far b/c there isn’t much geometry out side of what you see, but maybe somethng like that, maybe follow a snow flake down and it gets blown away by the cars flying past. maybe. I’ll give it some thought, thanks.

#17

feel free to nitpick away I think all comments are helpful! I really do, I’d never take it personally I take what I can work with and fix in a reasonable amount of time and the rest are wishful thinking. :smiley:

oh and Benman I was thinking of writing an expression to do that wabble/subtle camera shake, good thought!

#18

Very nice. The editing looks really good. I think it has good pace and a nice storyline.

My only crit would be the way the cars crash, in particular the celica (?) (the one thats not a mini!). From my experience of Rally, especially on what im assuming is a dirt road, when Rally drivers lose control they tend not to fishtail, as they are skilled in driving by getting the back of the car round. It tend more to be overshooting a corner, locking up, turning one way to try and avoid it, but sliding in at an angle, or rolling the car - much like the mini crash.

Just my thought. Looks great though, can;t wait to see it.

#19

maybe the crash will look better with this newer animation :shrug: :smiley:

So here’s my new animatic, more refined animation. I tried to incorporate some of the suggestions, and am open to more even the same ones if you think I didn’t quite get it. I added a 2d place holder explosion so you know why I’m planning on holding on that shot for as long as I am.

I liked the suggestion of the sound of approaching cars in the first shot then you see them. So that is how I sort of “fade in”

ok let me know what you guys think!

http://agentfx.com/fxWars/crashScene_anim_A06.avi

#20

Wow! Man I love the fire. What software did you use to do that?

The car animations look better in this one. Did you change the motion?

Great work so far.