Roller Coaster Simulator (or maybe not).

This is an interesting project that I am doing for a client based in Arizona, which he has allowed me to post here with his kind permission.
It is quite an unusual project, so here is the original brief.

The patent that I need artwork for the most is a new type of roller coaster vehicle. The vehicle travels on a roller coaster track but the vehicle itself is visually enclosed. Riders inside the vehicle can then experience a simulated ride theme to compliment the aggressive motions of the roller coaster. I need artwork that can show the potential of these simulated environments.
You’ll see two ride compartments that are actually in the same vehicle. This shows that riders on the same roller coaster ride can experience two different ride themes. In Figure 15 the first rider is experiencing a snow mobile ride theme. In Figure 16 the second rider is experiencing a space adventure ride theme. I also need a piece of artwork showing the outside of the roller coaster vehicle moving over the tracks during the ride operation (and showing no windows to further emphasize the novelty of this ride).”

The examples referred to showed generic sci-fi and snow scenes, so I won’t show them, but you get the general idea.

At this point I have designed the vehicle, and over the next few days or weeks will be doing the snow scene and space scene, I intend to use blender for the most part, though I may do some post processing in photoshop, with which I am pretty well acquainted.

This is what I have so far…



Front


Rear


Interior looking backwards.

What a cool and interesting project to be involved in… I’ll look forward to watching your progress.

This project is very much live again, since I did these, it has changed from a concept design to a promotional video for the idea, and with a deadline in November in 2014 I am hard at work putting together the different parts of this project.
Firstly as a proof of concept, I produced this short video. I originally put this in finished artworks, but as the project has been much expanded, I shall post it here, as it will help to explain where this project is going subsequently.

On a side note, some of you will have come across other projects of mine, but for those of you who have not, I also do all my own sound effects and music.

After I did the short video I had a discussion with my client, (This is a rather clinical term as he has become my friend during the course of this project), and we came up with a road map to define the direction that this should take subsequently.
Here is what we came up with.

  1. I produce an animation showing the the view from a camera stuck on the nose of the front car, as it travels the entire length of the track.this is the 'real life" version on which the subsequent versions will be based. As they use the same curve as a basis for all the twists and turns, it is necessary to do this one first.

  2. I do some ground shots from inside the theme park showing the cars go past.

  3. I do 2 or three other videos using the same curve, each on a different theme, (you mentioned space and some kind of snow world,) these are eminently doable, and if there is time I could do one or two more.

  4. I do some shots of the vehicle interior, possibly with real people in the seats (using greenscreen). This might be technically the most difficult, but I hope to be up to the challenge. showing one of the previous videos on the screen inside will not be hard.

  5. I edit the whole lot into a coherent video and do the soundtrack.

Subsequent to this I did some research on you tube, which included watching a lot of rollercoaster rides, I found a couple that were particularily usefull, the first was a cgi presentation for an as then unfinished ride at Alton Towers called “The Smiler”, the reason this was useful was because the architectural plans for the ride were also posted, in order to gain planning permission, which gave me a feel for the construction of one of these edifices. I hasten to add that my ride is not a copy of this, (As you will see). But I did find that it gave me a handle on where I was going. The relevant part of this video is at 2.51 seconds after the start.

The second and very good video was this Blender tutorial on how to build a rollercoaster track.

More coming soon.

I like what your doing…I have looked into this heavily…The track is boring. I know because Ive done this. You should look into doing this 3-D or anaglyphic. Red and cyan blue lenses. Blender does this in nodes. It gives you a really good perspective on the track and coaster. I also wanted to do this with greenscreen and put tourist in the coaster itself. In order to do this if you take it off the web,you have to reverse any video, and then place anyone on greenscreen in the video. My problem was getting rid of the boaring track and making or putting out the effort to make it a wood track, or at least putting up a lot of lights and poles in the track. Anyway wow a lot of work…its not bielievable yet…but I think with work, you could do it. XXooXX Matt

Subsequent to building the rollercoaster, which thanks to the tutorial was much easier than I expected, I embarked on building the theme park, which took two weeks. I am not aiming for photorealism, but I did want a particular feel, a kind of heightened “superreality” The kind of thing that you remember from your younger days, a glorious evening, the sun going down in a cloudless sky, when you are with friends, on a new adventure.

I shamelessly pillaged my back catalogue, the 17th century warship and the rock festival stage got borrowed from the “Sailing The Rings Of Saturn” video.

The cornish cottages come from a CD cover project, and the Swiss paddlesteamer battlecruiser comes from an ongoing work in progress. but the helter skelter, the ferris wheel, and the unamed torture device that I copied from you tube, where built for this theme park.
There are no third party models in this project.
My uploads are being a bit contrary right now, so I will put some screenshots up in a new post.

Thanks for the reply, I ought to make clear that the cgi for the Smiler track is not mine , and I am pretty sure it was not done in blender. I only posted it because I wanted to show the references I had been using to put this project together. Also, If you look at my previous post, you will see that I am not aiming for photorealism. This is because I know that it is because I cannot hit that mark, and as such it is a distraction. Also 3d is not in my clients brief. He is looking at producing a presentation that he can show on his laptop, to prospective clients. Though I may be doing this for fun, he is in deadly earnest (And it is his idea), so at the end of the day I have to produce something that he can use.
I would love to try some 3d at some point but currently it would add an extra layer of complication, so for now I am working within my means.

With reference to my last post , Here are some screenshots of the theme park as a work in progress. (the new video will follow soon after).






So last post for this evening. This is the video as described here.

  1. I produce an animation showing the the view from a camera stuck on the nose of the front car, as it travels the entire length of the track.this is the 'real life" version on which the subsequent versions will be based. As they use the same curve as a basis for all the twists and turns, it is necessary to do this one first.

This was produced over two weeks, and then rendered using Blender Internal. using a core i5 2500 rendering time about 70 hours.
I am watching developments on Cycles with some excitement, but currently for animation BI remains much faster, and is still more flexible.
The music on this video is entitled “Run like Hell till Dawn” and was originally composed for a music mod for the Oblivion computer game in
2006.

Well it looks good…But the track is boooaaaring… I know you think what the heck…who cares…but this is a blender track…get rid of it…I know its hard critic…otherwise I think your brillant…sept the sound track…you can do better…hate me now…yea the sound track is to crisp…not enough character…you sound like a lawyer…anyway I really do like it. When you climb the track…its waisted footage. Looks like I did it…

Wow… excellent job on this. Not sure what sound effects your using for the coaster, but in someways I feel they would add additional excitement being louder than they are now.

But this alone was a great feat, I have no doubt you’ll find a way to meet your objectives that were mentioned in post 4. Other things that could add to the ride, are well placed structures that are designed to make the rider feel like they are going to crash into as their plunging around this curve or that hill.

Hey great to hear from you!
I probably won’t answer after this as it is 3 o clock in the morning here. The sound effects may change, I’m not sure about them myself, also Daniel (My patron) likes the music. to tell you the truth that side of it is not too important yet as all of it will change in the editing, and there is a lot more to come yet. also, on the bits of the ride where there is not a lot happening, there will be shots from the other videos to fill those, in a funny way I can’t be too forward with this video, (which is supposed to be “real life”) as it cannot be allowed to overshadow what is on the videoscreen inside the car. This is such an interesting project in so many ways.

Sweet work!

The long climb…it’s ok but then it’s odd after you reach the top. I wanted to plunge off the waterfall but it didn’t. :slight_smile:

Then it has some strange slow downs…not sure why at 0:56. Also not very interesting til you get to 1:06.

Then it rocked.

I think you are spot on with your assessment. I was struggling with making it work at the beginning, but got the hang of it halfway through and as it worked from that point was loth to change the earlier parts, as it would affect everything from that point on. ( I animated it via the evaluation time on the bezier curve, which is different from the tutorial I followed because I don’t think it was an option on that version of Blender). Anyway, I would say that if the video was an end in itself, I would probably do it again, but as it is part of a larger project, (and took a week to render), I will use the best bits, and edit in something else where it is not working. It is interesting that you mention the long climb, as that is one of the points where I specifically have a different video in mind, but had to do this one first, as the curve had to match. I’m afraid I do a lot of storyboarding in my head, which can be frustrating to other people.
Suffice to say the bits that you pointed out will not appear in the final video in this form.
To finish off here are a couple of views of the interior of the car (these were done some time ago) showing what might be happening inside as the car is running, the main render was Blender, but they have been extensively photoshopped. These will be the subject of future videos, along with other stuff.




Here are a couple more screenshots of the themepark, there is a short piece of animation that I might put up tomorrow.






Here is the latest bit of video, I,ll do a couple more from different angles before I go on to the next part.

For those who have been following my intermittent progress on the roller coaster thread on the Blender forums, this is my latest installment. This is the space battle which is the ride that will be seen in the first car. This will be the backbone of the short movie, along with the roller coaster ride itself. The rest, which I shall now be working on will center on a description of the cars themselves, and clips of what will be on show in the other cars. This video had to run end to end as a single scene, that matched the twists and turns of the roller coaster ride exactly. This was demanding and by the end my computer had slowed to an absolute crawl. This made judging the pacing quite tricky, and some of the criticisms of the roller coaster ride video, will also apply here. The only thing I will say is that dodgier bits will be replaced with different content as the movie progresses, so this is still a work in progress. The music remains the same at my clients request, and the other thing is that he wanted something reminiscent of star wars. So I attempted to oblige. People who have seen some of my previous work will recognise some of the models, as I have reused them in order to save time (I have a deadline for this). The render took about a week on Blender internal, and I sincerely hope that I don’t have to do it again.

Incredible job on this, and good to see you back in the mix at BA. I have to believe your client will be happy with the results.

I must admit I.m terrible at this networking malarkey, I get too interested in what I’m working on and forget to post!
BTW Carl, I just watched your movie, amazing stuff, some brilliant modelling. But remind me not to stay at your hotel!

When time allows click on the relapse link in my signature… starting work on the sequel.

I really love this project, as much as I love rollercoaters :slight_smile:

I must say upfront that in actual fact I am somewhat further along t5he road on this video than the last post might suggest. I tend not to post when I am banging my head on a brick wall of not understanding how something works. so I am posting stuff up in the relevant order to show how it has worked out in the end. If it seems that I am advancing supernaturally quickly, that is because I am condensing several months into a few days. But I think people may find the process interesting.
That said I decided thinking that I needed to put a human element in. In my last movie I used greenscreen, but for various reasons I couldn’t do that this time.
Instead I looked into using animated figures. This is a whole new area for me, and I am starting as a total novice. IK animation is something that I initially looked into and discarded, (i DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TIME ON THIS PROJECT). However I found this video on you tube and was hugely encouraged.

This gentleman obviously had a good sense of what he wanted to achieve, but the crucial part is that he was using a free resource in the form of the Carnegie Mellon University motion capture library.
http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/
This has not turned out to be the easiest resource to use, but I think will be worth the effort.
My first attempt at figure animation looks like this.(I put the spacecraft in because it put me back in my comfort zone).