Alien Invaders
 

Hello,

As well as my TELL TALE HEART project, I have a compositing project that I need to complete before the end of the semester. The idea is that aliens are invading so, on footage that the class shot last week, I need to composite a spaceship and make it kill one of the students.

Being as there's less than 2 months before the end of the semester, I thought it would be a good idea to make a start. So I spent the day making this spaceship (as well as looking after my 2 kids, who says men can't multi-task!!).

I've not finished it yet but it's modeled, rigged and partly textured which isn't really toobad, in my eyes, considering I had nothing this morning!!

THIS is a link to a very quick test render, nothing special, bad animation, no shadows or any prettyness, I just wanted to see the controlls working and get a feel of how it animates. It's a little under 1Meg so right click and save as to sve my bandwidth please.

enjoy,

Mat.

wow, really like your texturing, nice multi tasking bro! :beer:

nice work...
 

Hey matt, yeah i was thinkning of starting this myself...thats pretty damn amazing for the time you had...and distractions. Think the hovering motion is excellent and the movement of the ship as the legs and gun pops out.
No sure if its the effect you're after but when the turret, comes up its almost as if there is excess room between the outer ship and where the central turret meet, giving a kind of oldish and worn feel to the movement. If this is the feel of animation you're trying for then excellent, dare i say it but overall its looking like 'wild wild west' gadgetary. Nice work...

Hey man, Batteries not included?

Hello Jonni,

How's it going?

Cheers for the words, the gap was due to my hasty rigging effort. I kind of liked the way the turret moved out of sync with the rest of the body but it caused problems with movement when the turret was down, see in the animation that the gun hatch doors are an issue too. It's all fixed now but I might still see if I can add a stable version of that moving effect, it adds character.

Steve,

it never crossed my mind but now you come to mention it there is a definate similarity.

Take it easy,

Mat.

I got to support this project, if it has aliens in it I'm there :)
Keep it up Matt and get it perfected ,you already have a good start.

ey mat, great start on the animation with the model, texture, and animation, looks awesome and i like it very much :)

goodluck with the rest, hope to see more updates

marlon

Thanks for your encouragement,

I've taken my first steps into the world of After Effects, I'm not finding it a very easy package to get my head around. I'm sure that I'll get there in the end though (I need to otherwise I fail my module!!).

HERE'S my first attempt at compositing then, hopefully I'll get better at it!

Enjoy,

Mat.

Hey Mat,

Theres lots of ways to composite, I prefer to render in layers then comp them all together, including a occlusion layer.

Theres a good book on after effects that i've got,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/After-Effect...4930816&sr=8-7

It goes over lots of ways to create nice little clips "advert style" if you will, showing how to use laters, time warp, sound fx, tracking markers etc etc, as well as a tutorial on compositing layers from a 3d programme (lightwave in this case but it dosent tell you anything about it just that the model was done in lightwave).

theres also another book "maya 6 the complete reference" that has 2 chapters dedicated to rendering in layers (as well as camera mapping a simple scene) and compositing in after effects which follows the same method as the After effects book (I think that its the same guy who did the tutorials for both books), Its also coming out as "Maya 8 the complete reference" soon, but there might be differences in the tutorials.

Cheers for that Steve,

I get my grant next monday so I may well get myself a book on the subject as I'm lost when I look at the UI.

I remember having trouble with Photoshop when I first used it, I'm fine with it now but I think that Adobe user interfaces aren't very friendly. Also having to learn a new set of techno-babble in a short time space is enough to send anyone loopy!!

My tutors have put some good tutorials (that I was meant to work through) on the university website, I'll take a look at them too.

I think that the main thing I need to remember is something that I'm totally used to with Maya, you get no quick fixes. If I want it to look good I need to spend time learning how to do it.

Thanks,

Mat.

hi mate, Id go with Gster.., rendering images for example, it takes forever in maya, better to hide the background and composite in After Effects, save you hours.., when you get the hang of AE you'll be sailing. use as many layers as poss.

looks good mate

Hey Mat, You're off to a good start. Trust me - if you spend a little time getting your head around after effects - you wont look back.
Here is a LINK to some great video tuts for AE from a guy who knows his stuff. There's a couple on compositing too from memory.

Good luck M8 & keep us posted :beer:

Hello again folks,

and cheers for your feedback and thoughts.

Mirek: I'm getting there with After Effects, it's a bit of a slog at first but then once you gain momentum there's no moss gathering!!

Dave: Cheers for that, I've already been pointed in the direction of that site....... must be good!! I took a quick look at it and many of the tutorials are AE 6 and 7. Unfortunately, I'm using 5.5, I can't see that so much will have changed. If it has I'm sure I'll get good pointers from the tutorials!!

Anyway, here it is then......... I've worked hard this week getting this together and would appreciate any crit that you folks could spare the time to give, Cheers.

RIGHT CLICK AND SAVE this link to see my work so far. I still need to put seperate images on the screens in the UFO, make the laser effects and the effects of the laser on the students.

Later,

Mat.

is there a reason it's running so fast? it kinda reminds me of the silent movies where they used to turn their cameras 10 18 fps while filming to save on film, and then during playback (24 fps) everything would be faster...

edit: as far as crits go, i'd have to say that the lighting of the top of the ufo matches your video shots, but the underside (especially the feet when it lands) are way too dark/underexposed.

Lookin cool Mat!

The composite is nice and clean (aint alpha grand ;) ). In a couple of shots the UFO looks a little dark. This is tricky to solve without rending a dozen passes with reflections/shadows/hilights/etc. A quick fix may be to add an adjustment layer in AE and use that to remove some hue or even make it sepia (there are even a few AE plugins that can give ya vid a nice movie look).

Also, if you want quick special effects, grab the trial of Particle Illusion (from wondertouch.com) its great for lasers, explosions, dust, smoke, etc.

I disagree with Neo on the pace of the shots. I dont mind the quick cuts. A bit of fast paced action movie music in background would certainly sell this shot for me. But I do have 1 suggestion - at the end where the gun pops out and fires, we then see the victim look scared, points up then gets hit and falls back. I think a re-cut might add some pace. Try to have the gun draw - victim react and point up - cut back to gun which then fires - then back to guy falling back.

Remember to have loads for fun :beer: