we have groundwiz here as well. Those that use it, swear by it. I haven’t had the honor though.
world machine is a great tool too, it’s even free, combined with dreamscape terrain object and terrain shader the job can be done pretty good. dreamscape has many good features but i’ve never gotten used to the workflow percy pretty much sums up why. DS always seems like a good idea at first but for some reason every time i incproprate DS in a project the budget is always blown out of proportion…
The most intelligent way to do this, is with a combination of Forest Pro, OnyxTree (if you need 3D Trees) and FumeFX or Afterburn (For the exhausts, not for the clouds). For a general sky just take a good hemispherical sky images. I would set up the flythrough clouds manually (opacity mapped planes), because you’re suggesting high speed air battles and this can give more trouble with volumetrics then you would like. The same goes for distant trees: with proxies you’ll need high render settings just to prevent flickering with high camera speeds so you’re better of with opacity mapped tree-planes. Forest Pro is ideal for this. You can also use GroundWiz (I really like it a lot) but I wonder if it really is that neccessary in your case: it is ideal for generating complex terrain maps with good capabilities in placing lots of trees, stones, roads ,etc and it supports VRay proxies !
Generally you can get very far by just trying everything that is in Max already. You’ll also have to wonder if you really need VRay for this job if the final result will be a fast-paced action flick: you can also bake lighting on objects and make your shots so you don’t need slow GI lighting !! Furthermore, things happening in water or air generally don’t need GI that bad !!
@Trick
thanks for the great tips. I’m hoping to know within the next 2 or 3 months if I’ll be doing these animations. I really like the part where you mention I should be able to do most of this with stuff that comes with max. Its a pain for a small studio like myself to buy a plugin for every little thing.
A bit off topic but how would you suggest I go about animating a vehicle driving through long grass. I mean how to animate grass in the wild that is between 500mm and 1m tall, then the vehicle flatens it as it drives over, and slowly the grass goes up about a qaurter to half of the way (I’m not sure how to explain it but I think you know what I mean) Flat grass eventually goes back up, unless you keep on driving over it, eventually with time creating a dirt road.
There are many ways to do this, but you’ll need to do some diving yourself. Max has the native Hair and Fur WSM which can be restricted in its dynamics tab and think can be scripted too !! VRay has its Fur solution which can be restricted with animated image sequences. Again it’s all about camera speed and expected detail and of course budget and time. You’ll have to be very skilled/experienced to do these kind of setups if you have to meet a certain deadline: it’s always about looking how you show a believeable presentation to the viewer and not to yourself. Even bending planes with opacity mapped grass can create the right illusion if you put your camera’s and lighting right: it’s not about showing the crashed grass, so I can not imagine it is that important !!
another vote for Groundwiz - for animation you have to be careful to anti alias a lot esp on long shots as otherwise you can get pixel shimmer on the really fine detail
combine with terrain generator to produce a greyscale depth map.. and you can then apply that to a plane using Max displacement for hills/mountains
If you’re feeling really experimental you can do the opacity mapped planes thing for grass + cloth dynamics. Make only the grass needed to be flattened cloth objects (in one of the many ways that can be done) and you won’t have to calculate dynamics for all the grass in the scene. (unless you want everything to wave in the wind)