Horrors Of The Skies VFX Project- Making Of Shot 1

Hi Guys,

I have been working hard on the project for the past week, Wanted to do another update, The next update after this will be once the Project is Finished.

Right now I am working on Shot 2&3 but Shot 1 is Final, Grade might be a WIP. This shot consisted of the Hero plane (The Sopwith Camel), getting its wing shot out by a German BiPlane casuing an explosion and the engine to catch fire. I used the Animation from the Previs as a starting point, I used the High Res Sopwith Asset which I rigged to control the flaps and add flapping to the wings through FFD's.
The Destruction of the wing is done with Rayfire, However I did not want a bog standard RBD Sim, I wanted it to look like it was breaking from the stress from the explosion and Bend then Snap. The wing was manually cut into Face Fragments, then using Activation by Geo to get the progressive destruction of the wing over 10 frames, This looks alot more realistic then it just exploding. I then used a Noise Modifier to bend the fragments as they break so the flap about as they fly off, so they look more like wings breaking rather than concrete or rock, I also used a few FFDs to have the wing bend as an flap to again make it look less like rock and more realistic.

The Fume FX sims were really good fun, from the outset I know if a Biplane had its wing shot out it would not explode, but I needed it to for this shot to not only make it more entertaining but also more engaging to show the plane is falling out the sky and cannot recover.

Alot of my work on WarThunder For Gamescom 2014 came in useful here, especially doing the engine fire, this sim here is no where near as Hires/quality as the one I did for the trailer because I dont have the time on this short 1 month deadline, plus on WarThunder I was doing FX, on this I am doing everything. The Wing Explosion I wanted it to be traily, but not too much, in the end I used Colour caching to get the diffrent colored smoke trails in the same grid as the main explosion. The Engine Fire was in a seprate grid, using wind to fake its velocity as the Grid was parented to the plane to save not having a huge Fume Grid.

For the Clouds I used Afterburn, however these got feathed quite a lot in comp as I used Cloud Pictures on Cards as it was a lot quicker, ideally I would of wanted to spend the time getting the AfterBurn clouds working well. Comp Was Done in AE.

FULL BREAKDOWN/MAKING OF SHOT 1

Thanks For Looking

VFX Project- HOTS- Update 01

The Animatic Of the Final Shot (Plane Crash In North Sea)

Hi Guys!

 

So right now I'm working on a VFX Sequence about WW1 Dogfights, its a kinda freelance project for my old project, its 7 Shots- 30 Seconds- Under 2 Months Deadline- And its for Project with the aim to be as close to photoreal quality as possible.

 

Catch is, theres only one artist doing the whole gig. That's Me!

 

Its day 3 right now and already I've done the shot list (Lots of drafts also!), The Previs/Animatic (See Above) and also Model Prep of the hero plane the Sopwith Camel and full texture painting and UVing for the asset! Been a one man band I really mean only one man, I have no other artists working on this, I started with a brief and a Lowres Biplane asset I made in college last year.

 

The Sequence is no doubt FX heavy which makes it even more complex, but even more awesome, all 7 Shots are FX heavy, I have about 1 week for pre production then less than 1 week per shot, the Final shot involving the plane crash is going to be extremely complex and will take the majority of production time. I feel at an advantage been an FX Artist because I am able to do FX, and because of that have grounded skills in Lighting, Rendering, Animation & Compositing, so this project will be pushing the bar on them skills and really pushing the bar on my FX Skills.

 

Because of just finishing some FX jobs, I've now been able to expand computing power, also upgrade to V-Ray 3.0 and be able to use an Alembic Pipeline on this project. For the destruction FX I will be heavily relying on nCloth in Maya so Alembic is going to help there, also RealFlow for the Final Shot (Fluid Simulation/ Big White Water Splash!) now supports Alembic. And Ofcourse V-Ray 3.0s Alembic Proxy is amazing and will be used heavily not only for assets from scene to scene, but also for Rendering RealFlow Particles for the big Final Shot! I'm also looking into maybe using Houdini for some of the Fluids, I plan to do a RnD to see if the pipeline is quick enough from Houdini to Max, Via Krakatoa Magma, Frost, and V-Ray Alembic. Via PRT and Alembic ROPs

 

I fully prepped my Lowres Sopwith Camel (BiPlane) Asset into a Hires Asset, and re UV'd and fully Textured it within 8 hours! I learnt texturing before I went to college  and use it now and again but not much now as an FX Artist. I used Mudbox, 3DS Max, Maya & Photoshop for this, I've not used Maya for a while!

UV'ing and Model Prep In Maya & Mudbox

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Final Asset In Maya With All Maps Painted Within 6 Hours

 

 

Final Rig Done In 3DS Max

 

Some Time Lapse Screen Captures of the Texturing and Rigging Process:

 

 

I don't think Modelling and Texturing is for me, but I had to do it and make it the best I could with my limited knowledge in these areas! Can't Wait to Destroy this Asset!

 

As you will see below I have my own cloud solution for the project which is very fast and again I created it lone wolf!! In the coming days I will be doing Look Dev for the Planes and environments, Preparing some Preset FX scenes to use for Foundations in Production which starts next week, and doing lots more research and starting some if I have time FX RnD.  I'm taking constant Notes, Screenshots and ScreenCaptures of my working so I can share how I solved problems and show how I got on with the sequence. I plan to do updates for the project once a week for now, and then more as the Deadline on November the 9th Closes in (Project is for Remembrance Day).

 

 

I feel pretty crazy when I think about doing the whole thing alone, but I'm up for a challenge!!

I hope you will enjoy watching the project been created over the coming weeks!

 

Thanks For Looking!

-N