Dark planet animation WIP

Is it ok to post WIP’s here? I hope so.
Ok, so I’m working on an animation, it’s sort of a intro, and a logo animation at the same time. I thought I’d be posting my progress here, and maybe get some critiques, or advices about some stuff.

So, the idea is that the camera points at a dark sky, and then lower, at clouds, moving constantly forward. Then flying into the cluds and from them instantly into a rapid sandstorm, from which it escapes to fly over forest and river (or maybe some stuff more, we’ll see), to end it’s journey above a mountain, from behind which a star (ok, let’s say it, kind of a sun…) appears. Then the scene turns into a logo.

So, here’s what I’ve done so far:

  • modelled the ground
  • prepared clouds
  • prepared some textures and shaders (mid detailed)
  • prepared camera movement
  • modelled and shaded and animated the “sun”

To do:

  • work on the shaders and textures
  • lay the trees on the ground
  • light the scene properly
  • find a better way to render clouds efficiently with cycles (the results are great, but it takes aaaaaages to render them)
  • composit the whole stuff (after rendering ofcourse)
  • ??? (I’m sure I forgot about something…)

So, here are the pics:

Sun

Clouds test render
[ATTACH=CONFIG]409949[/ATTACH]
Sun test render
[video]https://youtu.be/1pnhFPQnm-Y[/video]

Attachments



I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to get volumetric (cycles) clouds looking good, I still find it difficult. Yours looks a bit like the default settings, which isn’t ‘whispy’ or sculptural enough for my liking. You can probably improve this changing the radius and the turbulence (strength) on the point-density texture for the cloud.
Performance:
For my clouds, I like to cut the number of particles in the particle system down under 1000 (this is for a single cloud not a bank of clouds like you have). But I don’t think that will help much because the performance is probably related to the size of the volumetric domain. What I would consider doing is using procedural clouds using a noise texture. Usually you would make this a sky texture on the ‘World’, but because you are above the clouds and traveling through them, you would probably put them onto transparent planes and keep one volumetric cloud for flying through. Of course you could save the renders of your current clouds and reload them as image textures on planes instead of using procedural clouds.

Thanks for reply Kauranga. I don’t really get what you mean by “deafult settings”, as my material settings were pretty much different from defaults. Maybe we use different materials? In above image I used gradient tex with noise to change its coordinates, method kilbeeu described in one of his tutorials. How do you make your cloud materials, if it’s not a secret?
Anyway, I experimented with both samples, bounces, and compositor (to blur the clouds a bit), but the results compared to the render time were never acceptable. So probably I’ll just go with BI render, as I like the results I achieved much more.
Below is an example of a frame rendered in BI in 10 minutes (and 2 seconds I guess). When I compare it to the image from my first post (render time 8:37, 9 samples, a hell lot of a noise, and weird artifacts), the choice seems to be obvious.


OK, so here we go with another image, which is going to be the last frame rendered, and after it the logo will appear. Two versions here, pure one, and one with the logo elements already on it (these elements are going to be animated). Tomorrow I’ll probably post more renders. The two below are composited to some point, but still I’m not yet happy with them. Will try filters, mist and other stuff, but today I’m just knocked :slight_smile:



Ok, so here we go with a first frame of the ground part of the scene (before the sun rises), and final clouds version. I’m not 100% happy with the clouds, they could have more resolution, but I believe the results I achieved so far are good compromise between quality and render times. I’m thinking about adding falling stars to the scene, we’ll see how much time will I have left to the deadline after finishing most important parts. Still I need to somehow show a sand storm.
Again, no filters, and I’m not sure yet about the colours. Well, still some post-pro ahead :-).
So, let me know what you think.




PS: Is there some special way I should upload my files to avoid them being so compressed (look at the sky on sun renders in my prev post…)?

Ok, so here we go with the first part of the animation. Unfortunately, there is strongly visible colour grading in the BG, which I thought shouldn’t occur, as I used procedural blend tex in compositor for the purpose of the sky. Anyway, I haven’t found any nice and fast way to dither that tex in compositor, so will have to make a new one in say, GIMP or watever. The last part of the animation has some errors, that also need to be fixed, but apart from that, I’m very curious about your opinions.

[video]https://youtu.be/ImrvQkrebXU[/video]

Ok, so here we go with the almost final (?) version. At least it’s the one I prefer most (there also is one with some sandstorm in it, but I don’t like it, so won’t post it here as long as the client decides to go with it - and I hope he doesn’t :-)). I still may have to make some corrections, so I’m not calling it finished yet.

Your cloud’s looking great now. One suggestion is to pass through a wisp of cloud at about 14 seconds - the last gasp of your bank of clouds.

Thank you Kauranga. Good suggestion with that wisp of clouds, but unfortunately, there’s no time for further changes. I had to rerender half of the animation anyway, as the client requested slight camera path change, and other minor changes. And the deadline was like 2 days ago so…
Anyway, here’s a second version, with the client’s suggestions implemented. I don’t really know yet if this is the final, we’ll see. I personally seem to always find somethings to improve… :slight_smile:

Ok, so I’d say the below linked version is the last before final. Hope you like it, but, I started this thread to get some critiques, so don’t be shy…