Alien Invaders - Page 3 - Simply Maya User Community

# 31 02-04-2007 , 02:20 PM

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' Lucky its only the CG that needs redoing and the live shot.'

personally I would consider colour grading the whole sequance and you will be a wiser and better man for it user added image

take it easy and life will be easy

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# 32 02-04-2007 , 03:23 PM

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Mat, I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of rendering your clip with a color grade just to show you how it may look. Quality isn't great as I only had your .wmv vid to work from.

PS: I used 1 of the presets from the Film Magic Pro library from videocopilot...

https://www.kickarz.com/Mat_color_grade1.wmv
(3.5Mb - right pic - save target as)

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# 33 02-04-2007 , 04:25 PM

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I don't mind at all,

it makes a huge amount of difference!

I'm not really at that point yet, getting closer by the second though. I've added an extra light into the Colour render pass in the Maya scenes that illuminates the legs a bit better and have set up a Reflection render pass using the back plate for an IBL node.

R@nsid: I thought about having the shadow and reflection fall on the building but the way that the light is cast doesn't permit it.

I'll make an upsated version of the movie available as soon as I've rendered out all of the scenes.

Cheers,

Mat.

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# 34 03-04-2007 , 01:28 AM

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tiddles proved my piont but I think it needs shadows on the ground yoo..,

there are a lot of those magic presets too in that magic bundle.., you can go 'bleach bypass' even and make your movie look really creepy.., as in 'seven' for example (an example of bleach bypass)

take it easy and life will be easy

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# 35 03-04-2007 , 09:00 PM

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Hello again,

I've had a go at making the character vaporise, a bit overkill maybe? I've also tinted the picture a little. There are also reflections in the UFO, the shadows have been darkened and the legs have been given a bit mopre light.

Apologies for the poor picture quality but I forgot to resize it when I edited it together and didn't realise until I had already uploaded it, you should get the idea though.

RIGHT CLICK AND SAVE

Take it easy,

Mat.

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# 36 03-04-2007 , 09:27 PM

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Matt this is looking a lot better, and its kinda inspired me to create a small composite/vfx. user added image

So I am having to start on a storyboard.

The attack and burn up looks good, but can you get the skeleton in faster and "the victim" out of shot as the mix isnt quite right. I know is still quite early stages. I am liking it.

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# 37 04-04-2007 , 01:31 AM

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Nice job rotoscoping the skeleton m8 user added image

very 'Mars Attacks'. Perhaps you could elaborate a little on how you did it?

My only other comment at this stage is the very final shot. Your UFO flys towards camera and the shot seems to stop a little early. I rekin it would be worth rendering a couple more frames until the front porthole completely fills screen then add 1 second of absolute black. This would then be a cool place to add the words 'COMING SOON' or 'TO BE CONTINUED...'

"If you think you can or if you think you can't....... you're right!"
- Henry Ford.

KickarZ Studios

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# 38 04-04-2007 , 03:44 AM

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yea, tell us how this is done..??

take it easy and life will be easy

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# 39 04-04-2007 , 07:56 AM

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No probs,

it was pretty straight forward really...

1: In Maya, animate a skeleton to follow the approximate movements of the person that you want to disintegrate.

2: In After Effects have the layers so that the person is in top, then the skeleton and finally the empty plate.

3: Animate a mask to eat away the person revealing the skeleton and then do the same to the skeleton to reveal the empty plate.

4: Stick some effect around the edge of the mask and Bob's yer uncle you have a disintegrating person.

I'm sure that there are better ways to do the process but I'm glad you liked it, Mars Attacks was the style that I was after so it must be working on some level!

R@nsid: I need to work on the effect a bit more and get the other 3 victims sorted too, part of that work will see the body evaporate faster.

Dave: Good idea, a few more frames coming up!

Cheers for your thoughts,

Mat.

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# 40 04-04-2007 , 08:56 AM

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a few minutes ago was looking at the 3 piont lighting you made for me, it was great user added image

i think you need to show some 'chemical' reaction or lava, fizzle effect around the body as it is vaporised, more drama, more colour, more for the eye and imagination to play with. again, I guess this is the next thing you were going to do...

i did this blown away by a space ship a while back for uni too but had to do all the footage, ect.., alone.., anyway, i found it was easy to lose track of the timing, I was the victim in that and I was eaten away too quickly and the effect was lost.., its a matter of keeping your eyes on the frames I think. Also the latest thing I have discovered is to render a AVI to an image sequence and from there (imported to maya) it is so much easier to keep track of where when and how.., but I dont think I am telling you anything new.

take care and thanks

take it easy and life will be easy

Last edited by mirek03; 04-04-2007 at 09:00 AM.

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# 41 04-04-2007 , 09:19 AM

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Hi Matt this looks great, I think if you have time you can still play around a bit on the animation side and how your ufo moves. (Don't get me wrong, it doesn't look bad at all so far)
I might suggest this technique too often, but it is a simple way of getting your cg footage to "sit" nicer on life action shots. It basically makes some of your backround footage to spill a tiny bit of light onto your cg stuff. And it's all done in post.

here's the link

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bi...ill/index.html

looking forward to see how it goes.

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# 42 04-04-2007 , 09:50 AM

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Glad you got something from it Mirek!!

You don't need to render the AVI to an image sequence to import it into Maya, if you just attach the AVI straight to the image plane on the selected camera and hit the use image sequence button in the image plane attributes tab it'll run fine. It is a very useful thing though, to be able to animate on top of your footage.

I think that you may have sent me the spaceship thing that you made, is it the one where you're sitting on a bench and gett zapped?

I'll try to get a bt more fizzing and light, it's all still so new to me I'm surprised tha I've got this far!!

Farbtopf, cheers for that, I'll definately try to incorporate the lesons from that tutorial.

Cheers again,

Mat.

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# 43 04-04-2007 , 11:48 AM

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haha just watched the video mat! looks very good soo far and funny user added image

great job with the skeleton scene etc lol ... what else do you have to do with this project?

marlon

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# 44 04-04-2007 , 01:29 PM

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yeah - this is looking very cool!

I like the way you've animated the ufo - it's kind of a bit jumpy - but I think that really adds to it. good job on vapourizing the student - might be nice to vapourise a few more - it would be cool if you had the ufo fire off a few more shots as it flies toward the camera!

one thing that i did notice is that the guy who gets vapourized seems to grow a little bit, just before you cut to the interior scene. not sure if this has already been mentioned - i haven't looked through the whole thread yet.

of course all of your work is looking great, but I have to say, what really makes this animation is the class acting from some of your fellow students! user added image

arran3D

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Last edited by arran; 04-04-2007 at 01:34 PM.

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# 45 04-04-2007 , 02:53 PM

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fantastic job! the addition of the slight reflections as the ufo flies over the building and the increase in lighting while it's landing are definitely a vast improvement.

on the disintegrating man: a cool effect, surely! after watching just that part about 10 times or so i've noticed that he takes one awkward step to his right and back as he's mid-disintegration that the skeleton doesn't follow. i don't think it would be difficult to fix and keep the rest of the skeleton tracking correctly at the same time. just an observation.

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