I work for a non-profit that is producing a Christian documentary that compares the days of Noah to the days we live in today. Part of this includes taking a look at the sanctuary and the articles of furniture that make it up. I have been able to accomplish most everything we need using Blender. The only part I am struggling with is the Shekinah Glory above the ark of the covenant. The director essentially wants a fireball with a rainbow haze emitting from it. We had a guy that had designed it all for us in Lightwave, but he has decided that he doesn’t have time to do the shots for us. However, the director really likes this guy’s version of the Shekinah so now I’m trying to figure this out in Blender.
I have included some samples of what the other guy did. Key points are ensuring it’s 3D so the camera can rotate. Both the fiery glow and the rainbow will need to be seen from all angles. It needs to look organic as well. Not simply fire with a a sphere or something around it. Reflecting off the gold walls and objects is a plus, but not completely necessary. We would like to keep this in Blender so as to be able to use the rest of the scene and objects. If you work in a another software, that is not a deal breaker but we would need you to handle all of the animations at that point, so please take that into account.
Please let me know if you think this is something that you might be able to do, or point me in the right direction if you’d like. We would have you create the effect for 1440 frames, deliverable is a .blend for import into the scene. [email protected]
Not something I can do, but from what I’m seeing, Voronoi and Emission are going to be your best friend… The fire in Blender is too uncontrollable in my opinion, so using some sort of advanced shader (combined with compositing), would be ideal for this. Anyhow, I absolutely love the sound of this project! I’ve made a low poly version of the Ark of the Covenant myself, and I love looking into this kind of stuff! Good luck with the project, and please, message me when you finish it… I don’t know how much publicity you can get, but I may be able to help a little when you finish!
Hey there! I am a Christian myself and am interested in your project! The problem is, there is a little delay in getting my computer. I should be ready next Wednesday. Please contact me at [email protected]
That is an interesting topic of design. Because there is some discussion, I think, needed to determine whether to show such a phenomenon as traveling with the camera view, or having it be sort of static and staying mostly in one area as the camera moves. Your guy seems to have it occurring up in the eye of the beholder rather than emanating from a certain xyz point. I mean its a theophilosophical discussion waiting for your finished work. Also have you considered trying to convert or export the Lightwave files with effects into 3DS Max first and then exporting them from MAX into 3ds to blender ? Very Interesting.
We ended up bringing our Blender models into LW, and setting up the lights into the proper position and set up objects to occlude and reflect the light. Then we animate the camera in Blender, export the camera animation as a Nuke .chan and bring that into LW. We now render a fire pass and a rainbow pass from LW, with a master pass in Blender for the textures of the scene. The LW renders include speculars. These three passes are composited after in Nuke.
