ingenuities?

Mistara

think there be a way to cover a sphere with ocean privimitive?

and plop a continent on it?

splish splash

Dartanbeck

I think so... kind of. 

I haven't tried it, this lappy is too crappy and I've got my new machine apart fro some overhaul, but here's a possible workflow:

Try the Spherize modifier. I'm not certain how good the results will be, but it immediately came to mind.

For the continents, make a terrain and be sure to add (I think) a zero edge filter to get the edges uniform. Now add spherize to it via the modifiers tab. A smaller sphere might help in areas you don't like, but I'm hoping that the spherized terrain would be good for the planet.

Next spherize an Ocean large enough to cover your new world. The waves should still work.

Dartanbeck

You could also use a water shader on a sphere (for the ocean) and animate the Shape value of all of the fractal noises in the water shader.

Mistara

thanks

as complicated as all that saounds  the camera work is challenging to put it mildly

the best planetfall cgi i remember is in the firefly episodes

Diomede

It may be possible to use a regular replicator (not surface) and choose one of the presets (ball? arch?).  I tried a couple of tests but didn't get good results.  Would have to play with the X, Y, and Z grids, adjust hot points etc.  

Another thought is to use a spherical vertex mesh, apply the ocean shader, and then deform the sphere with a cloudy displacement?

Mistara

are the wave amplitudes actually deformers at work?

Dartanbeck

The ocean shader isn't the magic behind the Ocean primitive. In fact, I prefer the other water shaders most of the time - but I'm not doing oceans.

The second post I made above does work, to a degree. Open one of the Water shaders and you'll see fractal noise in several channels - and they're all the same - they match.

So I click on the Noise and I think it's called Shape - it's a number field box on the right side of the dialog, set to 2.5 by default. Cahnge that to 1.0, then go to the 6 or 10 second mark in time, depending on how fast you want the water to move, ant change the value to it's max of 5.0

Now Ctrl Drag that fractal noise everywhere the shader uses a fractal noise - and you have moving water... to a degree.

I did this before and then further enhanced it with DCG's Intersect shader from Terrain Tools. Worked reall well. I did the same thing with the different fractal noise that I used for Intersect, so that the two noises were different.

Mistara

its 2020!  i was supposed to be ready to make 'the movie'
jan 20 was supposed to be the full production date

i think ... they used lightwave for firefly cgi

Dartanbeck

Hard to say. I know they used it on Battlestar Galactica (SyFy version), and that there's a Firefly clas ship in the first part of the pilot! LOL

It's funny you bring that up just as I was posting this in my other thread. I decided to try this after watching one of the Battlestar Galactica CG artists working with their ships in LW back then. They used very muuch this same kind of philosophy for their engine fire - smooth, not all firey

Dartanbeck

That's a kitbash I did to somewhat resemble a Firefly without actually going there. I'm not really interested in Intelectual Property useage disputes! LOL

Nightshift3D's Gryphon meets Cybertenko's Hunter Killer (can't link - other store)

Hunter Killer

Dartanbeck

OMG!!! In finding that image (Google search) for the Hunter killer, I found my own render (above), and when I clicked on it, it took me to a thread I made - and this post was made on 01/02/2017, did the kitbash on New Years Day!!!

It was all about making this

Mistara

before the production starts, there is prolly a pre- production steps

Pre Production
like what are the director decisions?

Production

Post Production

Mistara

Dartanbeck said:

OMG!!! In finding that image (Google search) for the Hunter killer, I found my own render (above), and when I clicked on it, it took me to a thread I made - and this post was made on 01/02/2017, did the kitbash on New Years Day!!!

It was all about making this

 

lol  and now is jan 2 2020.  seems a good date for starting a new movie production?

Mistara

found this  http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/how-tos/filmmaking-tips/4-step-guide-to-digital-movie-making-for-beginners.html

 

scream

You should have an idea of what shots you want to get, what the blocking of the actors will be, and where the camera will be placed. When these important decisions are thought of ahead of time,

i'm already behind schedule  woes

 

blocking triangles 

Dartanbeck

Cool! Thanks!

Yeah... I've been behind schedule for what... ten years?!!! LOL

Preproduction is me. Concept art and trying things/learning things... getting thoughts together. I never seem to leave this phase.

Production - contrary to my previous statement, that's where I am now - filming. Well... I think I might have broke my new motherboard, so I'm installing a new one tonight after UPS rings it to me. Thanks Newegg!

But then it'll be back to rendering pretty much nonstop. The times when I come in here is when I'm waiting for a render and I'm not working (or watching my awesome grandkids!).

Post production is what I'm waiting for!!! So excited! I rendered out sevral elements designed to work together to create a full frame of a movie sequence - just so that I could get into Fusion and play with it with my new 1408 Cuda core graphics card (I know it's not high-end, but it's HUGE to me!) and it was so fun and amazing to put all of this studying to experience for a change! Wow I had fun, and it inspired me to really crack down.

It also helped (big time!) with helping me to 'see' my blocking better. So it's becoming easier for me to set my cameras the way I need them - and to mind how I move them - and to store those movements if I do.

Going kind of opposite from that, I've used some of my new VFX skills to put fire elements into my scenes as I render, rather than in post. I made flame animations and applied them to a card with some animated lights, so when I drag it around in the scene, it all acts pretty natural.

Mistara

camera  currently using point at, but i want the camera to follow the ship but not rotate with it. 
toying with parenting it but putting limits on the rotates, sounds good in theory.

 

made an eggshell of a terrain with the morpher spherics, it doesn't go negative, it rolls in ward, can't get it to bulge outward.  lost the riverlets 

i want to leave my work pc rendering over night, gives me 3 hours left to set up the scene

Mistara

there must be an easier way to set tweeners or graph out an elliptical orbit

can't use the glow channel, moons won't cast shadows on the planets

 

prolly should use motion paths

planets don't just spin, they wobble spin

Mistara

i'm freaking out  doh

i don'y have a light set up for solar system deep space.
going thru all my hdri and tp dome sets

Mistara

i should've started with starry skies

Dartanbeck

For a quasi-eliptical orbit, let's say you begin with the sun:

With the sun in the center of the scene, insert a target helper

• Drag Mercury out to where you want it to orbit and parent it to the target helper
• with Mercury parented, move the target helper slightly away from center
• Add a new target helper and parent Mercury's target helper to that
• Repeat these step for each planet you want to add, giving each planet's main (center) target helper a bit of rotation to spread them out in orbit
• Begin having them orbit the sun by selecting all of the central target helpers and rotating them together at the last keyframe
• Deselect the furthest planet's target and rotate a little more and repeat for each planet's target, so that Mercury (or the closest planet to the Sun) orbits a little faster than the next, but quite a bit faster than the last.

While not true-to-science, it still should look pretty cool, and have a slight off-center to each orbit. Using the target helpers, you can exaggerate the wobble if you wish

Use these same steps to set up any moons you want orbiting their planets

TIP: Never use glow channel for the actual surface of a planet. It's just wrong. The sun... definitely. Then set the sun to not recieve or cast shadows and place a bulb light in the center - make it really bright for a vast distance. Maybe start with 330 brightness and adjust from there.

This will give a fair representation of how it actually works, but sometimes we don't truly want how things really are, which is when we start enhancing things. But try setting the Sun's bulb light to do everything on its own and see what happens. Depending on the scale of things, I'd also give the bulb some soft shadow and find a place to render where a moon is casting a shadow onto its planet to adjust the radius of the soft shadow. The soft shadows should be set small enough to still allow a moon to cast a shadow on its planet, but large enough so it's not casting onto any other planets.

Good luck with your experiment! 

Mistara

Thanks.  will give that a try

i rendered out the solar system preset. and modifiers on ocean.  aiming for an ocean like the vikings intro, 

an establishing shot from space to kerplunk in the planet's ocean

i know is silly, but i want it to look pretty. 

 

not quite what i wanted lol

Mistara

day 2 of production.

i can cry right?

Establishing shot.  establish dragons can cross space.  solar traffic is prolific.
wanna vry cuz orbitals looking death starry. is not pretty.  is too hostile looking.
butterflies a lot less hostile looking.  butterfly ship design could work 

Mistara

and how to show time dilation in faster than light speeds.  motion blur prolly the easiest, but not the most spectacular

Diomede

Congratulations on starting production!  That is always the biggest hurdle in any endeavor.  

Will be cheering you on.  Cry all you want, but persevere.

Stay motivated.  Stay awesome.

Mistara

Thanks.  my day job computer security won't allow the plug in mcx files to run.  gahhh.

i made all kinds of camera rigs in anticipation, was last year's work, now it doesn't feel good enough.
did that fly thru of the mmoir set, it came out looking in slow motion, 

gonna have to take a starbucks break, need a latte to wake up my director's hat.  lol

and i never finished the bebula cloud puffs.   12:00 already.  have 4 hours to set up for a 48 hours of frames render.  concentrating on background, ocean and foliage.  i don't want to use fake gi.  the lighting on the sets needs light bulbs and hdri  need a hdri for deep space.  i had an hdri of the milky way, might be faster to re download it.
is this what production assistants are for?  lol

deep focus.

why do they number slates?

Mistara

  don't remember this one, think is new

Dartanbeck

Mystarra said:

Thanks.  my day job computer security won't allow the plug in mcx files to run.  gahhh.

i made all kinds of camera rigs in anticipation, was last year's work, now it doesn't feel good enough.
did that fly thru of the mmoir set, it came out looking in slow motion, 

gonna have to take a starbucks break, need a latte to wake up my director's hat.  lol

and i never finished the bebula cloud puffs.   12:00 already.  have 4 hours to set up for a 48 hours of frames render.  concentrating on background, ocean and foliage.  i don't want to use fake gi.  the lighting on the sets needs light bulbs and hdri  need a hdri for deep space.  i had an hdri of the milky way, might be faster to re download it.
is this what production assistants are for?  lol

deep focus.

why do they number slates?

The click is a great tool for syncing audio - both through sound and sight. Numbers reflect where they are in the shoot. When film was the mainstay, I understand that it was much faster for the editor to find specific parts of a shoot simply by scrolling quickly through the reel of tape (looking at the frames as they pass).

It was such a common thing for them that Blackmagic Design has incorporated a high-end know on their new convertor that spins just like the knob on the film version of the machine, with all of the same functions available that can be applied to the new workflow. Quite amazing stuff. 

 

Mistara

scifi shows seem rarely to show the whole earth, they show a quarter slice

Dartanbeck

It's a photography/cinematography thing. In many/most cases, showing just a small part can add a lot more interest than just an overall capture of everything.

WendyLuvsCatz

I thought it was to appease the Flat Earthers  who are found all over the globe 

Dartanbeck

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I thought it was to appease the Flat Earthers  who are found all over the globe 

Oh, I stand (get it?) corrected!!!