Battleship Attack FX Shot

(Re-Uploaded A Re Comp'd Version- See Below) These Screenshots are from the original comp^

Hi Guys, Once again another Battleship Shot, this is Version 3 and hopefully you can see some improvement, I put a lot of work into this shot, lots of render time and lots of render passes! I have just had some great feedback on the shot and know what I need to work on next, Everytime I do a new iteration I like to change the shot completely so this time I decided to actually put in an ocean,sky to make the shot feel more complete. The Battleship Model is from a free 3D Model site, and the BF109 is an amazing Model and Texture Paint by Anders Lejczack.

Total Turnaround time of this shot was around 2-3 weeks although I was not working on it all day in that time as I had been ill for a full week, also this includes all the sims and render time. The time also included writing over 3000 words in notes!

A Section of my Shot Notes

I started as I do with all shots on the layout, animating the Plane, the ship and the camera, This took around 2 nights to get nailed down. I locked all the geo and cameras and like usual split the scenes into two folders, one for the FX Scenes and one for the Geo Rendering Scenes.

Scene Setup

I started working on the FX Side of things, I actually started working on the Flak Fire first, I went for a more spikey looking Flak explosion over the later invented Proximity fused rounds which were used after 1942 I think. I had a quick burst of Particles (PFlow) and they would spawn trails with some inherited speed and divergence which would then delete and let fume take over the simulation.

 Flak Preview using Method Described Above

I then merged this Flak Fume FX Grid into a new scene to create the flythrough, I used the same sim but from diffrent angles so it kinda looks like different sims:

Flak Flythrough 3DS Max Playblast

I then started working on the MG Fire coming from the plane as it strafes the ship,  Back in Januray I was working on a system for college which would enable 3DS Max novices to merge a scene file and be able to create Machine Gun Fire without having to go into Particle Flow, I re worked the System so that that even though its hard to see when the Bullets hit the ship they cause bullet holes and sparks.

MG System V2- Was Made For College Students With no knowlege of 3DS Max and PFlow

Here is a Video I put together showing off the system for anyone that's interested:

MG System V2- Demo/Tutorial Video

For the MG Fire smoke trails I used facing particles with a simple smoke material on, this is also How I did the White Smoke trails/ Technically Called Streamers in the Pyrotechnic Industry, I actully got away with it and not having to have a huge FumeFX Grid.

Awesome Way to Fake Smoke Trails using Facing Particles and a basic Smoke Material

The Explosion Itself I think Could have looked better and I will try and get some more shape on it in the next version of this shot. But I started working on this just based on Basic PFlow Systems for the fireballs, Nothing mega special here, Very similar to my other FumeFX Works. I rendered 3 Versions of it out before I was happy with it, The problem is when you have a Fume Explosion, it looks awesome against black, but as soon as you try and blend it into the overall comp you loose a lot of detail. Along with the Motion Blur, I was using RealSmartMotionBlur (RSMB) for the motion blur but I toned it down in the end due to worrying I was going to over do it as I have done in the past. However I sharpened the explosion so that the motion blur would not hide it too much.

 First Render of Fume FX Explosion Pass

Third Render of Fume FX Explosion Pass With Facing Trails

Also you should notice the water blast I added as if there was a Submarine trying to fire a Torpedo that Misses the ship as the Plane goes in for the strafe, This was done in Realflow 2013, Using a Basic Sphere and Noise Daemons to create a low res core fluid sim Hybrido FLIP which then drove the Splash and Foam SPH Sim which was added into the scene.

Water Blast FX Element Creation in Realflow

Next Was the Lighting/Shading/Rendering of the Ship, The scenes were split up into rendering the Ocean pass with just the ship and plane reflections, then another pass for the ship and plane with the ocean geo masking the ships hull (Using MtlWrapper Matte Shadow). Lighting the Geo was done with a HDRI for the overall lighting although I kept this rather diffused I used V-Ray lights one spherical light for the sun, and one behind camera illuminating the ship. Also the Explosion was lighting the ship with its GI pass. All the Shading/Lighting/Rendering was done in V-Ray Excluding the Fume FX and Smoke trails which were rendered with Scanline, and the Water Shockwave was rendered with Krakatoa. I really need to work on my Lighting and Rendering Skills so thats why I am starting to add environments into my shots so I can get more practise.

Render Testing

Render Testing

Once all the renders were done which took over 5 days, bearing in mind some renders had to be redone. My PC was rendering for around 14 hours a day, I ran a few other sims for RnD aswell during those days but mostly it was left running while I was out.

Compositing was a big part of this shot, so many passes that had to all blend together, and I agree its not perfect and defiantly needs work but I feel its better than my past works.

Lots of Colour Correction, that was the main part of it, some Roto work to get some of the passes that were not working well together work! Also stuff like the Explosion Reflection on the water and the DOF of the Horzion was all hand tracked into the shot.

Making Sure the MG Rounds Don't Penetrate the Wings

 WIP of the Comp

Some of the Comp Layers

Around Two days were spent on comp. I uploaded the shot this morning to Vimeo and got some really great feedback, So I have replaced the original Shot (Screenshots at top are of the Original Comp) with a new comp. I added Haze on the Horizon, More Motion Blur with RSMB and Also Colour Correction on the Explosion that works better along with a lens flare. 

Shot Version 1 vs Version 2 (Re-comp)

A Screenshot of Comp V2- Looks a lot better I think

Once again I will be revisiting this shot in the near future- The Water Scale needs sorting out also the ship needs to have destruction sims on also with aftermath Burn Marks/Damage Marks and Aftermath Fires.

FINAL SHOT

Thanks For Looking!- Gonna have a rest from this shot for now, gonna work on my Lighting and Rendering Skills and also some more Fluid Sim work. Also have a big college project which involves lots of CG Smoke and even some Fluid sims.

Sea Monster Splash- Realflow 2014- V2

Hi Guys,

I am currently working on a new version of my Battleship Explosion Shot. However while waiting for some of the renders today, I uploaded this version of my Sea Monster Splash shot done in Realflow 2014 which you may have seen on my new Showreel.

With this Shot I took advantage of the improved & faster Meshing tools in Realflow 2014, Realflow 2014 has many exciting new features and is great fun!

Final Shot

Thanks For looking, Got some other very cool work coming up including a 16 second fully CG Virtual Shot for a college project!

Ship Bombing FX Shot

Hi Guys,

So been wanting to do another World War Two, Battleship FX Shot since I did the Battleship Explosion which I Plan to re do soon (this shot was a great opportunity to learn from my mistakes). I really do want to do a "Jaw Dropping" Battleship Explosion shot and do it properly, By that I mean full 3D Fluid interaction, because it looks really cheap just using PFlow to fake splashes which again I resorted to it in this shot, but I will be Testing do the water interaction for the next shot. Also need to do proper destruction of the metal tearing and the explosions bursting out. Also a Really amazing thing is my Granddad who is currently 91 served as a Royal Navy Gunner on HMS Lively which was sunk by a JU "Junker" 88 German bomber in May 1942, He Survived but many died. And that really makes me want to make a realistic Battleship Explosion shot! Anyway thats another story.

So this shot idea came after seeing WarThunder Heroes by RealtimeUK, I will be honest and say that I feel aspects  of this shot could be better I had a hard time with the water shading, Also I feel the Explosions are to fast.

Method:

I started on this shot one night just did a basic Model of a Dock Wall which surrounds the ship, The ship is meant to be on its way to sea but gets bombed at the harbour. All of the layout and camera layout was done and locked, I then split the scene into a FumeFX Scene to work on and also a Scene to start working on the rendering side of things. Also Scenes were saved to work on the Water Splashes and also the Smoke Streamers see below!

The Next Day I worked on the Fume FX Explosions, For this shot I was actually looking at the film Pearl Harbour and the one shot which is 1 Hour 27 Minutes and 15 Seconds into the film where the Japanese Dive Bomber attacks a ship, you see it drop a bomb which causes two explosions, these bombs explode on the deck of  the ship. So thats what I was going for. So I used 3 Fume Grids, One for the first explosions, One for the Second Two Explosions and one for the smaller smoke trails. The Long smoke trails you see were made using Facing Particles which had sprites of smoke texture map on and it saved a lot of time because theres no need to use a huge fume grid to simulate thin smoke trails when you can do it this way. When you look at images from World War 2 of Ships Exploding you can see big thin white trials of smoke, I believe this is when the Ammunition explodes.

                                                   How Facing Particles Look/Work

The Explosions were all particle sources and also there was some smaller smoke trails which were simulated. I think I made the mistake of the explosions been to quick, its hard to get the balance right because I did not want them to look like they were in slow motion but at the same time I want to see a quick burn rate of the fire.

                                                         An Early Iteration of the Fume FX Sims

While I was working on the explosion sims I also started working on the Water Explosions/Splashes surrounding the ship which Add to the scene and populate it. I have done tests with Realflow in the past, but for this scene I started using Fume FX but later used a PFlow System, Using Spawn and a lot of inherited speed along with a water shockwave. I rendered 3 Splash Elements, also a Water Shockwave which you see go off under the ship. Also the Final Explosion Elements were rendered. For Next Time I will be using a Fume Setup/ Realflow Setup to create a water blast libary of scenes and caches I can add into my scenes.

                                                             Fume FX With Colour Correction Test  

Once All these were rendered it was time to focus on the geometry renders. The Lighting was based on a HDRI but also some V-Ray Lights to show on the waters Reflection, Water is very hard to get looking realistic when looking top down, this is due to its refraction so By using a lot of Lights I could define the surface deformation. On That note the Ocean was created with a High res Plane and using Houdini Ocean Toolkit. The Ships wake was actually also fake, using Texture maps of Foam and a Real Ships wake. The Shading and Rendering of the ship was nailed down in my last shot so I just used the same setup. As I said I had a hard time with the ocean shader, probably rendered a good 30 different iterations and it still I think needs to look better.

                                                     The Original Water Shader in a Slap Comp

                                                                 B-29 Look Dev

All the passes were rendered with V-Ray including a Fume FX GI pass to cast illumination onto the ship. A lot of the work that makes the shot look as good as it does was done in comp, I actually 3D Tracked use AE's Camera Tracker the Battleship Pass so I had a 3D Camera in After Effects doing the same cam move as the camera in Max, I know theres ways to export the camera from 3DS Max to AE But its a really weird workflow! So all the Water Splashes were layered in as 3D Layers and positioned over the water. All the rest of the passes were comp'd with a lot of key-framed blur to get it looking more realistic, the Camera shake was added in comp aswell using the Wiggle Expression. Also all the Fume Elements were comp'd and look so much better for the colour correction on them! Then I Graded the shot aswell.

                                              Composting Work In Progress Screenshot

Breakdown Of All Passes

FINAL SHOT 

Overall I like the shot, But really want to start testing for doing a proper nailed down Battleship Explosion Shot, I learnt alot in making this shot. I really need to work on shots for longer instead of trying to do as much as possible, I kinda worry I don't have enough work for my reel! However I don't think I could of got this quality of shot say 2 months ago, so I feel definite progression!

Gonna be Working on this Battleship Explosion shot to get better and better along with some other shots I want to have a go at!

Thanks For Looking, 

VFX Reel 2014 V2

Hi Guys, Been improving my skills since the start of 2014, I deiced to make a new Showreel: https://vimeo.com/93417224

Thanks For Looking!