Night Club
 

G'day all,

As part of the music video I'm currently "working on" :headbang: ( http://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...threadid=21424 ), I find myself in need of a scene tracking through a night club / disco.

After putting it off for way too long, I made a start tonight. Thought I'd start with the dance floor and work my way around it. Any help or reference material would be greatly appreciated!

Note: Once this project is complete, the dancers will be replaced with compositied green screen footage of live performers. But for now I'll just have to settle for John Travolta & friends... ;)

Cheers....

and another angle...

g'day, another Ozzy, looks wild. are they models you have there ?? they are laying reflections??

looks like colourful video, a sign of things to come??

Aussie - Aussie - Aussie .... sorry couldn't resist :blush:

The dancers are simply a nurb plane with a image texture. The image is a png file with a transparent background. I actually plan to replace the single image still with a image sequence. I will eventually shoot footage of people dancing infront of a green screen, then using after effects, remove the green and leave an alpha channe then save the result as an image sequence (TGA). Then insert this as an image sequence texture onto the nurb planes.

I've made some test of this in past and it works well. Also with a mentalray render, these digital characters cast reflections and leave shadows. If done right (and I hope I do it right) they can look really cool.

I will (over the next few days) add more & more to the room until its ready to populate. I'll try to post as much as I can....

Looks good,

How are you going to get the reflections on the floor of the people that you've taken from the green screen?? Mirroring in after effects and reducing the opacity of that layer?

edit - Sorry just read that your going to import the image sequence into maya.

You know i've always had problems importing images with a transparancy (either tif, gif targa etc with many different settings) maya just ignores them and renders them white to which I have to make a transparancy map to go over these damm bits!!

Just jumped to what I would have had a go at doing off the top of my head.

yo dude, I'm pretty new to Maya, compared to the guys around here (but an expert at uni;) ) and I have often wondered about the 'film' icon in the hypershade menu, whatever it is, where all the shaders and 'file' and stuff like that is, anyway I have often been tempted to load it with film but somehow it scares me a little nut from what you said it appears to de a shader that can use , what, multiple files (tiff, tga, ) or can it do .avi also. That rave you just gave is a Tut in itself mate. great stuff and keep it coming, (or I'll rip your bloody arm off.)

mirek03 - yes you can use that movie icon to import a .avi as a texture. You still need to check the 'Use Image Sequence' box or it will only show the 1st frame of the .avi. However, if you want to have an alpha channel (transparent area) in your texture, I suggest using an image sequence as it is very difficult to make a .avi with alpha. (PS - Aunty Jack is cool!)

gster123 - I too have had problems importing images with transparancy. After reading your post, I went back and looked at how I fixed it.

Firstly, Maya is very picky about how your image sequence is named. To use a sequence of image files to create an animation, the file names must be expressed in one of the following three formats:

name.#.ext
name.ext.#
name.#

Secondly, contrary to my previous post, I couln't get the alpha to work when importing a .tga sequence. After trying several things, I finally got it to work by using a .png sequence. So if you still want to try it, make a .png sequence using 1 of the 3 naming conventions listed above (I used name.#.png).

Also, I uploaded a short test shot using png sequence and a camera track - http://dhost.info/tiddles/3d_track_test01.wmv (RIGHT PICK - SAVE TARGET AS - only 1 MB)

Anyway, I better get back to this model... :headbang:

Ahh i've never tried a png, have to give it a go.

cheers for that.

:: UPDATE ::

I havn't had a lot of time, so progress is kinda slow...

Roughed in a ceiling which I thought was interesting. I plan to add a large lighting rig suspended there so I wanted something with a bit of free space.

Now with some downlights...

Different angle...

man, you have got a great sense of humour, i laugh every time i look at John and his friends.

looks great, far from finished?????

haven't attempted the 'film' shader; time, time, time, Maya, takes a lot of time, and where did my life go :)

I have to write music for a couple (3) films in the next few months, one of them i just got yesterday and it is due in two weeks, guess I'll be breaking out 'reason 3' and 'rewire it to cubase' the instant music maker, how to be a star by pressing one key on the keyboard, but thats another story; the other side of the coin to your own video story, I emphasis.

do the 'go go'.., John and friends,

keep 'em coming mate

go Ozzy, or Aussie??

:: UPDATE ::

Well, I've made a start on the lighting rig....

This will be the upper ring. Below it will be a second larger one connected via trussed armes...

1st Horizontal trussed arm connecting the upper ring to the collar tie...

Rest of horizontal arms in place...

Had more time to play!! :attn:

Lower ring in place with 1st truss arm...

All arms in place now with completed lower ring webbs...

Next will be the lights (as long as my head doesn't explode 1st ;) )

Nice lighting rig man!

ok, now started on the spot lights...

basic colors

1st 6 lights attached to the rig...

let there be light..... :attn:

May now be the time to dust of your disco trousers & perhaps even boggie a little bit...:p

"You make me feel like dancing....."
"Gunna dance the night away..."

thats cool, tiddles! really neat! :beer:

:: Quick update ::

I gave the top 6 lights on rig some simple animation. Thought I'd post the result.

http://dhost.info/tiddles/lighting_test_01.wmv (right click - save target as - 5.5 MB)

It's only software rendered for this test but looks ok for now :D

I think I'll hold off on doing any more disco lighting for a while and try to finish the rest of the night club. I really wish I knew more about this maya stuff :blush:

:: BACK AGAIN ? ::

Wow its been a while since any progress on this one ;)

I have been very busy of late with other Maya projects and work. But finally got a chance to add something new. :attn:

This is a video pass showing a possible camera trak through night club with some light animation as well. I also went to the trouble of shooting some dancers on greenscreen so I could composit them into the shot. Its worth a look and I would love to hear your thoughts......

http://www.kickarz.com/nightclub_pass4.wmv (I suggest you right pick and Save Target As - about 14MB)

Small Update...

Made a dance cage and a new spinning light...

I would love to also add a disco ball (mirror ball) but cannot work out how to do this :confused:

If anyone has any ideas - please let me know...

spinning light

mentalray render of light

quick render with cage in club. this spin light is mounted at top of cage. it's hard to see & i kept the lights subtle which dosen't look great in render, but look pretty sweet spinning in animation.

i would like to add a few mirror balls also, but still cannot work out how to make them look any good. any suggestions would be greatly appreciated....

is this supposed to be a dance club during hours of operation?

if so then i suggest killing the white lights entirely... i know they might just be there at the moment to show the modeling, but i've never been in a club where it's so brightly lit, especially by what seems to be regular white lights... could you do a render without them so we could get more of the mood lighting?

Tiddles

Looks like you're going quite well on this. I have a minor query...why did you MR that Disco light? IMHO you cant tell the render is done in MR, you could have lit it better with a single spot and raytraced it.

Cheers
Jay

NeoStrider - yes, it sure is bright for a dance club. I have a single point light in middle of room just to show the modeling, this light will be removed for final pass renders. I will soon post a render without this super bright centre light, but first I plan to 'flesh-out' the model by adding in walls, balconeys & the DJ deck.

Jay - Your suggestion on using raytrace is a good one. I will give that a whirl soon. I was simply playing around with the fog settings in the coloured lights and the mentalray render was as far as I got.

Below are a couple of pics of the balconey area which will grow until it starts to look good.

Columns...

and balconey...

added doors to upper level and the pad where the DJ deck will sit...

just a random thought, but i think it would be cool to see a neon light of varying color in each of the insets of the columns on the sides of the balcony... even though it's not exactly easy to mimic neon accurately

neon lights would be so cool :D
can you suggest a way to go about this...?

also, I've made a small start on the DJ deck area by building the 1st speaker. I plan to use a stack of 2 on eack side of the desk...

something like this....