FXWars! TORNADO Jono, F3, FREEFORM

#1

Hi all,

I seem to have some time up my sleeves so I’m in on this one. I wanted to go against the grain as usual and try not to do what everyone else will be doing (hopefully), so I’ve decided to go with doing a waterspout.

I’ve planned probably two shots, a wide and close up, possibly one more not 100% sure. It wouldn’t be fun if the waterspout didn’t destroy anything, so will tear the side of an oil rig and cause a lotfair bit of mayhem.

I’ve started modeling the oilrig ill destroy, I’ll try post images, but I might skim over that process and only post stuff when I feel like its ready lol.

Good luck all!

#2

ok, so heres the start of my oilrig. I found a few good refrence photos with dimensions and stuff, its not going to be 100% accurate, it just needs to look good lol. Its also not going to be super detailed, so simple is better. Next time i post an update will probably be when i finish modeling it, ill make a few variouse buildings and oilrig type structures and just randomly scatter them over the ground.

i hope the photo worked lol ><

#3

WWWWWWOOOOOOOOO i have mastered the simple task of adding images…

#4

Congratulations!
Nice one nice one, can’t wait to see it going down :wink:

#5

heres a small update after a long week end and little sleep lol :S

As i said, its not meant to be accurate, but slowly getting there. I am going off proper dimensions and stuff, so it should be right, i think i may need to make my tornado smaller, the average radius of a tornado… would encompass the whole oilrig almost @_@. But waterspouts are smaller and weaker in comparison to your average tornado.

#6

Wow, looking really good! Cant wait to see this progress!

#7

thanks! ive started to work on the textures. Its great working with somehting so repetative, i can just clone stuff around to populate the rig.

Ive started a few test for the tornato, i made a basic spline rig for the funnel of it, and ill use pflow for the debris and trails and stuff. Hopefully ill post somehting cool soon ><

#8

Sorry about flooding the post, but has to be done.

Some nice renders of the oilrig.

#9

NICE renders and textures … What software are you rendering on ? How long per frame ?

#10

Thanks sand, took ages, and made all textures for the rig out of lovely free ones found on the net :).

Ok here are a few texture sheets, most surfaces have diffuse, bump and reflect. I’ve thrown 3 sheets together and I’ll try to explain them.

Ok so this first one is the oil rigs base structure texture (sorry if there wide ><). Ok so this one covers the most surface area I think, the PSD is around 300 MB and has way over 150 layers. No surface is achieve with just one texture map, multiple rust, rivet, metal maps, some baked in corner creases, an unexplainable amount of maps using various multiply, overlay modes (soft light = the bomb). One thing people do with converting a colour map to a bump map is to simply desaturate… desaturating a colour image brings over unwanted bump levels (rust is a surface decolouration, not an indent) so for all my bumps i convert to a greyscale, then ditch all the surface colouration layers, and end up painting a majority of the chunks in, with little detail (no one wants a flickering surface due to too much bump detail). It’s also the best way to get free geometry, notice the vertical beams painted up the top in my bump map, come through nicely in the latest renders… but aren’t geometry (the first and 3rd one).

Ok this one just shows a few random texture sheets, what I’m showing isn’t all my textures, i just picked a few good eons hat show off some nice texturing. Again almost all of the bump maps are generated by my painting them, especially on the buildings. I made several UWV maps for the buildings, and just randomly copied and pasted them around the buildings, so they all looked various.

Just another example of the roof texture and bump, on the right hand side is the illumination map for the building windows. I’m using Vray, so this will be used for the lights to emit light based on the texture, you can see it in one of the renders, the ground and other close buildings pick up some lit up windows. Also there’s the window reflect map.

Sorry with the large renders, and killing the post ><
Had to be done lol, enjoy

#11

Wow, very cool mate! I think i’ll try and avoid looking at other peoples work now! Depressing lol! :argh:

#12

Very Very impressive :slight_smile:

#13

yeh thanks, now i have to make a destroyed version with chunks of debris that ill add into a pflow system, ill end up hand animating most of the hero chunks, ripping and tearing and bending of metal. chunks, ripping and tearing and bending of metal.

BTW im using max, vray, fume and AB.

For the cables and wired does anyone have any suggestions? i tried using flex, (like the paul neal hanging light bulb method) but i think the cables are too long :S might just ahve to spline ik them up and animate them by hand, i also tried using cloth also. and ractor. Im sure flex is the way to go, ill just have to stick at it.

#14

Holly crap! How the hell do you people go so fast…

This is looking great so far, I cant wait to see where you take this.

Good luck!

#15

:bowdown:

The model is a prizewinner in itself already! Amazing work so far man, cant wait to see where you go with it!

Nick

#16

I’d personally go for reactor and his rope constrain. It can be really great (especially when in Constraint mode). Though reactor as a whole is not so realiable :wink:

You’ve mentioned animating by hand. Would you? I mean really :wink:

#17

Thanks for the comments

Well I’m certinly not pixar but most times when you can’t get the results you need via other methods you have to animate your way around it. usually it takes longer but gets the look you want because you have more control. Typing on itouches is very hard.

I’ll investigate more reactor,cloth and flex on the weekend.

#18

Pretty impressive beggining man :slight_smile:

Ca’t wait to see what animation you have in mind… as for the ropes - try using the integrated cloth over a simple plane with enough segments (this will greatly reduce simulation speed than if you use cloth directly over the cables) and skinwrap on the cables. Other suggestion I can think of is a spline, with splineIK and spring controllers… but eventually you end up with hand animation gain :slight_smile:

Flex and reactor… especially the second one are a big pain in the rear part… :slight_smile:

#19

yehm well paul neal has a very nice hanging lightbulb made with flex, i tried using the exact same method, kind of worked, but not how i want it too lol. Yeah, i just breifly tried cloth on the edit poly (a cylinder), ill try a plane and skinwrap it, that was my next option.

yeh its coming along, im rigging bits up now like the main spire, to bone up, put orientation constraints on, and ill hand rotate the controler, and then put some noise on it.

Got alot to do lol

#20

still alive!

sorry for the lack of posts, ill post a link for a quick preview i just uploaded (i hope it worked)

its not the correct camera, tornado movement/speed, debris speed or timing. Its mainly a test to see how the pipeline works and i can just update it on the fly. i have a plain to catch in about 2 hours (its 2 am).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktcP4u5GCS4

i can start hammering into it when i get back, i need to make a torn-apart-oilrig (the edges, bent metal ect).

the tornados looking good also, ill render some nice test out when i get back, AB for the funnel, fume AB and pflow for the touchdown. I have a list 2 pages long of thigns i need to do for this, i hope ill find some time next week. I did get a cahnce to brows through some other entrys, some are looking really nice!!!

gj guys have a nice weekend.

C&C’s most welcome