Animation for camp project on YouTube
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Hello all!
As I sit this morning having my waffles (a real treat) It gives me great joy and I am very proud to present some of the final video shots from my project for a local camp called Gull Lake:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P75G_5jjmRM
As some of you know, I'm fairly new at all this, and I guess that this project was pretty ambitious. The terrain was a little tricky and the sheer amount of trees.. well wow -thanks to Alan and Tom, I was able to display them reasonably well enough in SU. There are issues, and things I'd do differently for sure, but I'm glad to be done and fairly happy with how she turned out.Thanks for looking!
[Shaun Tennant]
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Smart job Shaun, is it all and only SUP?
Too bad we have to see that through "youtube", we probably lost a lot from original.Patrice
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Shaun, I know I have been there before... havent I? I am sure I have...
That is great! What a wonderful use of SU!
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Patrice,
I neglected to mention how the project went together:
Modelled all in SU, except the trees and the trees and the far landscape - but those are just planes. Some of the Textures I made in Wood Workshop (awesome app). The first two zoomed images from above are SU output - but the animation stuff was done in VUE5i, rendered out as JPEGS and virtual dub to make AVI's from. The audio was atmosphere deluxe, the SU images zooming were part of the overall presentation for a trade show, and I used Photostory 3 (free from micro$oft) for the SU/Slide portion. Some of the animations took so long to render, it's a pity to see them so low quality in a form like this - but what are you gonna do? The deck portion of the video took my machine 60 hours to render out at DVD quality, 30 Fps. Thankfully I've now built a bit of a farm so this would take about 18 hours now.I found SU to be amazing for building this model, except the speedbump with the trees in SU, and still don't love the solution - but it works okay.
Eric,
If you mean you've been to the location - it is a Christian Camp near Red Deer, Alberta - there is a small town called Lacombe about 15 KM outside of Gull Lake - that help?
If you mean you've been there in the stresses - well, tell me about it..!
Thanks for the kind comments.
[Shaun Tennant]
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Right on Shaun, looks great!
60 hour render!! Yikes! How did you accomplish the walking down the deck and turning the corner with no clipping with such a large ground plane? I have had to resort to doing my inter stuff with a smaller model exported out from the big model to minimize the clipping.
Have you thought about getting a high res satellite picture of the site and placing as your ground plane? Check these guys out for some options, if you're interested: http://www.terraserver.com/
I am usually not a fan of sound with my architectural animations, but the birds were really perfect. Not distracting, but definitely assists in putting you "there"
I would love to see the DVD version.
I'm not entirely convinced about the fade to linedrawing portion, though. I wasn't quite sure what you were trying to accomplish? Was it to distill the building shapes without the background, or showing different methods of display for future additions to the movie, or were you just experimenting? Usually, when I go to line or wireframe, I use it to draw attention either to something specific or to allow backgrounds to fade away for emphasizing something.
I thought the trees look great! Did you end up rotating/copying png's on the vertical? I use this technique a bunch (thanks Alan, if memory serves where I first heard about doing that).
[kannonball]
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Chuck,
Most of those are rendered in VUE although you can't really tell with the reflections etc.. the original file is 140 MB, and I cut er down to about 9. So - yeah, you'd like to see the DVD.
I had a few billion polys in that scene, but VUE doesn't have a clipping problem - so no worries. Yeah I have a farm now, but it is still not powerful enough.. (MORE, MORE! MOREEE!!!!) I would LOVE to get some Linux genius to help me with a PS3 hookup - I tried it, but failed and took it back. PS3's are sooo powerful for floating point operations. 1 of those would likely equal about 200 of my machine! (see the Stanford U Folding@home project for more of that)Thanks for the link - I need some hi-res satellite imagery, I was looking a while ago and couldn't find what I needed. Thanks!
The sound - go back and crank er up... I used full 5.1 on this and did some hard panning for tree leaf blowing and wind etc.. but you gotta crank er. Couple of misplaced birds, but, what can you do!
The morph section (for which I just noticed that one of the frames is out of place - oh well) was a sort of "plan to reality" idea that didn't really work out as I had hoped, but the client loved. This was what he remembered most... the blueprints on the site, to some linework, to color to textures and finally add trees. I would do it differently next time I attempted it, make it slower and I would have SU output that I actually liked. I got to hating the SU output on this project (only because of the model)
If you look at the first 2 pans again, you will see that I did use the PNG rotate tree business, but the rest is all Vue Trees.
Thanks for the comments man!
[Shaun Tennant]
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Shaun, really nice work and presentation. I liked the birds and wind too...the owl cracked me up and scared the cat (me cracking up, that is). Best, Tom.
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Nice anim, sound helps so much with one of these.
A while ago I took an old anim and threw out 4 versions, each with a different track added, a classical, a rock etc. just to show the boss the differing effect but he wouldn't but it.What did you mean by "I got to hating the SU output on this project (only because of the model)"?
When I finish a model I usually hate it because all I can see are the faults and the things I'd do differently next time.
If other people you trust think its good then trust them, it is. -
Paul,
thanks for the comments - you hit the nail on the head with this one. All the faults and things I would do next time. The trees were a large issue for me, not being able to use trees that I liked quite a bit - the trees did the trick, but I disliked the ones I made. I think I also spent so long on the model because of issues with getting colors from them and design changes, that it really wasn't fresh anymore. I also really wanted to get on with rendering.I haven't checked out your youtubes yet, because I want to have lots of time to digest 'em. Your church is absolutely amazing and I am looking forward!
[Shaun Tennant]
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yeah, it's funny how a client can like the things you are not as happy about. I just gave a presentation for stage two of a development I am working on. The first go around was basically a big slideshow with a few parts animated. For the second, I animated the whole thing, which took forever, and looked pretty good if I say so myself.
The client watches the whole thing and the first words out of his mouth? "I really miss how you used a lot of slides in the first one."
Oh well, now it's off to cut a bunch of full motion out and throw in some stills. You just never know what people are going to react to the best, I guess.
You are right, the sound is most excellent! Nice job on that, for sure.
I hear you about the model starting to get that "not so fresh feeling"
I am right there with you on this big development.[kannonbal]
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@shaun tennant said:
Eric,
If you mean you've been to the location - it is a Christian Camp near Red Deer, Alberta - there is a small town called Lacombe about 15 KM outside of Gull Lake - that help?
If you mean you've been there in the stresses - well, tell me about it..!Thanks for the kind comments.
Actually I was eluding to the realism of the video. I felt like I was there. Plus I have been to Camp Sumatanga in Alabama quite a few times. A methodist camp. While it is not as upscale as your project, it felt like I was at camp again.
Good stuff.
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