Greetings!

Welcome to Scifi-Meshes.com! Click one of these buttons to join in on the fun.

AnimationAfter effect space scene

komarokomaro348 CanadaPosts: 752Member
edited April 2014 in Finished Work #1
I am trying to learn a bit of after effect, to make some nice space scene. Since it takes forever to render space scene in 3dsmax or cinema 4d, I feel AE is a nice solution. So basicely I was making those following some tutorials.
105659.jpg
Post edited by komaro on

Posts

  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    well rendered, the both of them but unrealistic in the sense of scale. in the first one a ship would have to be going considerably faster than light to see that view of the nebula in the time frame you scaled it to, a nebula(except for planetary nebula formed during stellar death) is usually several light years across and individual details are atleast light hours across. what's more the density of particles in a nebula is higher than the surrounding space but still far lower than the density of air, we only see vivid colours in hubble photos because of long exposures and the sheer depth of nebula making up each pixel of the image. up close you might make out some faint cloud like features in the far distance but it wouldn't look like dense clouds rushing past. the second video, the planet shot is very cool and could be viewed from a sublight craft however judging by the way the asteroids stay so close to the camera despite moving the camera past the planet they would be travelling very fast, also for the asteroids to be close together like that they would all have to have been formed from one asteroid breaking(or being blown) apart a few minutes to hours earlier. there is no doubt these are visually impressive and a still taken form any one of them could be quite convincing but looking at the rates of motion they become deeply unrealistic due to scale of the things involved. i can understand how hard it is to truly show the scales of these things and even in graphics shots from tv documentaries these mistakes are made but they are annoying. my personal advice for your next space scene is:
    1)scale it up, don't try having a small object in the near background to represent a huge one a huge distance away, it works in a still but as soon as stuff moves you get parallax and the illusion breaks
    2) put your stars and really distant stuff on a background sphere, make this sphere vast, in blender i can have for example a sphere 2x10^6 units in diameter and a model in the middle of a craft or whatever that is around 4 units across. stuff with this scale difference renders perfectly fine although the clipping on the camera (and viewing window)must first be adjusted. i don't know if after effects can go to that scale but hopefully it can get atleast a scale difference of 10^4. this way, just like in real deep space, rotation changes the background you see but translational barely alters it.
    3) when your sphere is at maximum scale that the program can cope with the foreground stuff can always be shrunk down to make the scale difference larger, this might let you boost the scale difference by 10^4 again.
    4) make gaseous details more faint, they look vivid in hubble pics only because of long exposures and false colouring.

    your individual details(rocks, planet, local star in background) for the planet scene were great it's just the scaling that is really the problem.
  • komarokomaro348 CanadaPosts: 752Member
    thanks. Well they are my first ones. I think I will still do some in 3d...I need to study the particles emitters a bit more.
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    Those are good first steps. (you've gotta walk before you run) Sure, they're not super realistic, but that wasn't the point. The point was to learn new techniques, which appears to be going well. :thumb: Though, realistic or not, I really liked them both.
  • SanderleeSanderlee1 Posts: 0Member
    I agree, the imagery and practice is more important than the "realism," especially considering what site we're on! :D

    The first one is kinda trippy, reminds me of a sequence I saw in the film adaptation of Heavy Metal. The second is nifty, too.
  • TralfazTralfaz412 Posts: 846Member
    Look pretty good, but I do see a problem with the planet video. The things like the sun/star, planet and asteroids would all be moving at different rates of speed. Except for the background, the sun would be the farthest thing from the camera and at those distances, it would be moving very, very slow if at all. The planet is much closer to the camera so it would be moving much faster. The asteroid chunks would be moving the fastest and the individual chunks would also be moving and rotating at different rates.

    It is easy for me to sit here and offer my opinions, but I know I would have a hell of a time trying to come close to what you have achieved.

    Al
  • komarokomaro348 CanadaPosts: 752Member
    Thanks for the inputs. Practice is what I need for sure.
  • komarokomaro348 CanadaPosts: 752Member
    I have made another one, following another tutorial. This tutorial however doesn't use pictures for the clouds, so it's all made with trapcode form and an obj file for the basic shape. Hope you enjoy.

    [video=youtube_share;l5weFKTEIc4]
  • komarokomaro348 CanadaPosts: 752Member
    Wel I found a way to do an interesting nebula in 3dsmax with Fire
    http://www.3ddub.net/space-scene-3dsmax/
    At least it is fast to render. I try with particles, but oh god, how slow the process is...and I think I have a good computer, so...

    I tried also to export my 3dsmax model and animation into After Effets, by using statesets. Well the model export fine, but everything is black. They say it's a gamma problem but I don't know.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    anything with particles will be slow to render, most programs have to work out the physics of where each particle is in each frame as they go along which is very much a process hog.
  • komarokomaro348 CanadaPosts: 752Member
    anything with particles will be slow to render, most programs have to work out the physics of where each particle is in each frame as they go along which is very much a process hog.

    Agree. I am doing my animation with the Conviction with the fire scene and videopost. The only problem will be to light the scene properly. Because doing the path of the ship and the camera is straight forward for now. I assume the fire volume has some light on it's own...will see.
Sign In or Register to comment.