The poor man's VFX sequence

[BBB3]

Hi guys,
Something I've been doing for fun on-and-off over the past couple of weeks.
The idea was to get better acquainted with some basic Max animation features and particle flow. I could have worked a lot more on this and added, for instance... a pilot. But, oh well...

PS: This was rendered on a single 8-core machine so I had to cut corners a lot in order to bring the rendering time down to manageable levels. There's no GI there, and I had the calculate all the tiny lights in a separate pass as they were quadrupling my render time. In the end, it was down to about 5-8min per frame, which I guess is ok.

As always, very eager to hear the experts' advice on how to improve it.

Here's the short sequence:

http://vimeo.com/7785620

And two stills from the original HD clip:

[jacksc02]

nice one Bertrand.
Nice textures on the craft.
Was the haze effect from the engines done in post?

[squeakybadger]

really nice stuff, very impressed!

whens the full length movie out then?

[instinct]

Very nice job...even tho i miss the pilot :P

Regards,
Thorsten

[BBB3]

Thanks a lot guys.

jacksc02: The haze had its own particle system, which was just white and calculated in a separate pass using a pitch-black override material on all other elements of the scene. I then used this pass to mask between a distorted and a non-distorted version of the beauty pass so that the haze only appears where it's supposed to. Not sure if that's how most people do it but I took this trick over from my old Blender days.

squeakybadger: Well, considering the time it's taken me to produce 10 seconds, I guess the full-length feature should be out in about 20 years

[peterguthrie]

very impressive! Your talents are wasted on arch viz!

[BBB3]

Thanks Peter. You're a lot more charitable than my wife, who calls me a diletante - as in someone who tries a lot of different things to make sure he never becomes really good at any of them

And thanks for the wink on Vimeo!

[egz]

Nice work!
What technique did you use for the thrusters and the heat distortion?

[jacksc02]

jacksc02: The haze had its own particle system, which was just white and calculated in a separate pass using a pitch-black override material on all other elements of the scene. I then used this pass to mask between a distorted and a non-distorted version of the beauty pass so that the haze only appears where it's supposed to. Not sure if that's how most people do it but I took this trick over from my old Blender days.

Already answered

[egz]

Already answered

Hehe, I should probably read past the first post before posting a reply. Still curious about the thrusters (flames etc.) though.

[BBB3]

Sure. Sorry. The engines mix three different particle events: 1) Standard particles rendered as geometry for the sparks with VrayLight material, 2) Afterburn particles with a per-age colour and density ramp lit by standard omni lights for the flames (lights also provide illumination for the scene), 3) Afterburn octane shader used to create the mask for the haze effect, excluded from all lights.

[percydaman]

nicely done! The cockpit glass seems really missing though.

[BBB3]

I think you're right. It seems very flimsy and bubble-like. Not sure how I would go about fixing this...

[percydaman]

Id probably put a falloff in the refract slot (probably would need adjustment) and then stick a color of sorts in the diffuse. Im kinda thinking like a gold/bronze like you see in an astronauts helmet. just an idea.

[BBB3]

There's already a falloff - probably poorly set up - But the gold/bronze idea is a good one. I might give it a try. Thanks.