29 replies to this topic

[Sphoenix]

Hello everyone!

This is our idea for the final year film, I won't go through too much detail since the storyboard says it all. But the main sequence involves a grenade being thrown into an old/destroyed room. In mid-air, a tulip will slowly develop around the grenade's shell and consume it as the environment takes on a stunning transition.

Our blog: http://sansarafilm.blogspot.com/

Attached Files

•  Sansara_story.jpg   360.73K   4 downloads

Edited by Sphoenix, 31 October 2011 - 09:01 PM.

[spider black]

love the idea. is the backplate going to be live action location or is this fully CG.

[Aldarion]

Best of luck guys, make sure it's amazing eye candy

[Sphoenix]

Going down the CG route. Since a few of the main shots will be in slow motion, we'll have more control over the camera in mid-air. Some of the backgrounds will include high-res photos for matte paintings so it won't be completely CG.

[Aldarion]

Look at this (I'm sure you already have, but if not...) , could have some nice inspiration for you :



and also at the work of Polynoid : http://www.polynoid.tv/

Edit : Might also be a good idea to look into Apophysis (www.apophysis.org) to generate some abstract magic whatever that you could put on animated cards in nuke.
it can make some pretty pretty stuff. http://www.google.co.uk/search?gcx=c&q...OPIKW8gOi9b2GBQ

Edited by Aldarion, 03 November 2011 - 02:48 PM.

[Aldarion]

Any R&D we could see ? First pass geo, textures, comps, tests ?

[Sphoenix]

So the previs goes something like this:



Our aim is to stick with a few shots each that we could work really hard on for showreel pieces, therefore leaving any storyline editing for a later stage. Some issues in this previs are camera movement, rendering and objects sinking into other objects. A lot of this was unintentional and occured right before hand-in, but for updated versions we will correct these problems.

Some of the feedback we got was that we should include a human perspective to this film. Someone has to be the focal point rather than something. We came up with this idea of a young girl in the room, playing innocently, not getting too much into the story. But danger could be introduced when a soldier walks by the corridor, hears a noise and assumes a threat, therefore initiating the grenade sequence. Through that we could use various editing/composition skills to make the scene dramatic. This could add a feel for the film, but right now we are leaning more towards the 'amazing vfx' side of it and just stick to very strong shots that we can work hard on.

A story is not ideal but any ideas/input you have is welcome!

Below is some of the vines/ivy R&D done recently, which uses paint effects to generate a curve of plants. I've tweaked almost all the attributes from then, so I will probably render a more realistic version in the next few weeks.

[Moid]

The ivy stems need to appear to be looking about as they grow, flickering from left to right, as if searching for light (which is what real plants do if you see time lapse footage of them, they grow to follow the light) and this would add some character to them.

[Liam]

i love the growing vines/foliage. gives me an idea for my 3rd year film lol . keep going its shaping up well

[Sphoenix]

Well I've made a number of edits to the previous version, 31 changes to be precise. Some of these are not animated but they all affected the ivy growth and how much of the leaves/stem are seen.



Ignore the minor issues like draft renders and framerate, the renders were quite rushed.

I tried what you said Martin, the plants growing towards the light. It worked to an extent, there is an option where you can even have the leaves tilt towards the nearest light (which I will test tomorrow). However, to get this movement I think I need to key many of the attributes within the time frame and play with the animation quite a bit. That light option might do it all for me, and I could just key that. But I'll get some results from that and post it up here very soon.

[Moid]

Well that looks pretty good, well done! Is this something that is built into Maya, or did you have to script it?

Edited by Moid, 20 December 2011 - 09:00 AM.

[Sphoenix]

Oh no it's built into the software, lovely tool called Paint effects. Nothing works out of the box though, so I had to tweak pretty much every attribute to get the result we need. You think it'll do? I actually thought it had a sudden scaling effect as the plants formed, instead of gradually increasing size.

[RandomViper41]

looking nice, but depending on how close the camera is to the plant I would make your own leaves/textures as the paint effects ones are good but only from a distance

[Sphoenix]

looking nice, but depending on how close the camera is to the plant I would make your own leaves/textures as the paint effects ones are good but only from a distance

Yeah I will definitely look at making my own textures. I've included a concept of an angle I may try out as a main shot in the video below, since the previs is not finished yet. One idea we had was to get quite intimate with the transition of the environment, showing ivy growing through bullet holes and along the cracked walls. I may not get too close on the leaves but it will be close enough to see texture work.

[UpGrAdE]

Nice work. I like the camera angles you are using. Are you going for realism?