Month: January 2023

Alexander Novgorodtsev (N.D) Linden Tree, Available Online https://www.blenderkit.com/asset-gallery?search_text=tree&query=category_subtree%3Amodel+order%3A_score [Accessed online 27/11/22]

Audio Sound Effect (2018), Cold wind sound effect, Available Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD47Mhzm-CU [Accessed online 05/01/23]

Film Masters (2017), Spaceship Flyby / Bypass Sound Effects Pack, Available Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYDXgLzVpmQ [Accessed Online 05/01/23]

Jan Hecl (N.D), Tree, Available Online: https://www.blenderkit.com/asset-gallery?search_text=tree&query=category_subtree%3Amodel+order%3A_score [Accessed online 28/11/22]

Jingles Sound Bits (2021) Explosion Echo – Sound FX, Available Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo-aLXEbPAk [Accessed Online 05/01/23]

Ruslan Malovsky (2022), Free Spaceship Unitron, Available Online: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/free-spaceship-unitron-20a3bf99baf943f2887cb586b5195224 [Accessed online 22/11/22]

Ruslan Malovsky (2018), Battleship kortes, Available Online: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/battleship-kortes-20f2e424303d47e4a5078f0255ef5689 [Accessed online 19/11/22]

Ruslan Malovsky (2018), Spaceship nortend, Available Online: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/spaceship-nortend-9f99de3657234c939b58610bc99333ed [Accessed online 21/11/22]

Ruslan Malovsky (2022), Free Spaceship, Available Online: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/free-spaceship-891bb91d22ac4115a8e3c423efb44457 [Accessed online 22/11/22]

SFX (2021), Atomic Bomb Explosion Sound Effects Nuclear Bomb, Available Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6NYLWHzvA8 [Accessed online 05/01/23]

Syro Sounds (2022), Distant Explosion Sound Effect, Available Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGkOKJrcnl8 [Accessed Online 05/01/23]

Trickyz360 (2020), Explosion Sound Effect With Echo In Distant, Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ofvtnkPNI [Accessed Online 06/01/23]

For my final piece so far, I have been looking around for different assets that will fit my animation well, such as spaceships and tree’s, these are assets that I cannot make quickly, therefore I found them online under a creative commons license, thus letting me use them freely, granted I give appropriate accreditation to the creators.

For the particle effect side of my animation, I have been watching various YouTube tutorials and videos on how to create semi realistic particle systems in blender, I’m not going for full realistic particles as you won’t see them too well from the distance, therefore to free up processing power I will lower the quality slightly to let me create more.

Spaceship assets used.

Image 1: Red Spaceship.

Image 2: Battleship

Image 3: Yellow battleship

Image 4: Yellow spaceship

Environmental Assets

In my final piece I will have multiple environmental assets, most will be made by myself however due to the complexity of trees, I decided to source these trees from a site called Blenderkit, this helps me quickly add in trees and move them around appropriate to where I want them to be.

Assets that I will create on my own include the floor (grass and pavement), walls/fences, a shed, and some other miscellaneous items found within a standard garden.

Below are two tree assets that I will use within my piece.

Image 1: Large tree.

Image 2: Medium Tree

Audio within my animation.

In my vfx final piece I wish to have some muffled audio, for example muffled explosions or muffled sounds of engines in the sky, I also plan on having a large explosion sound for the final few seconds of my VFX piece. I will also have a slight wind sound so that the shot from the on-ground camera doesn’t sound fake, but instead has some realism to it in regard to wind.

I will source these sounds by recording some myself and also via online royalty free or Creative Commons YouTube videos/websites.

Animations

For my whole animation I will be hand animating everything myself, from the camera movement to movement of the spaceships fighting in the sky, to the laser shooting towards the ground at the end. I want to focus on this as its one of my personal strengths when it comes to this type of production piece.

Problems that may occur during production.

During my production I expect some problems to arise, for example during the fighting shot of the animation, I may have some issues when it comes to so many particle systems running at the same time.

To work around this problem, I may have to do some shortcuts of rendering explosions in a separate blender scene, and then layering them on top of the main animation once it is completed, this will be done if my PC gets bogged down or I hit a limit for how many I can use without sacrificing too much processing power in the process.

This way around explosions also lessens the number of secondary problems that could occur, such as lighting, shadows and similar things to that.

In my VFX piece I have used multiple different vfx techniques/shots that all accumulate into my final piece.

The first of these is my particles and particle systems involved.

Firstly, I created a static mesh laser with a cylinder which i subdivided and smoothed to make it stretch a bit and look less like a static cylinder and more like one that has motion blur enabled and is moving considerably fast.

I made this work as a laser because I gave made it spawn at a certain point, for example the ship cannons and then once I make it spawn and fire, so to speak, it will continue on in its trajectory.

Below is an example of this laser.

Lighting

A further example of my vfx usage is lighting.

Throughout all of my animation, there will be a constant sky that helps light up the whole environment in both shots, the first being within the atmosphere, a few miles up, the second being on the ground in a garden looking at the battle.

In addition to this I may have 3-point lighting with different colours depending on what is being shown, this will most likely be in the initial shot of the spaceships fighting each other, this can give subtle hints to the viewer about who may be good, and who may be bad.

The lighting will also cast shadows, these will mostly be seen during the ground shot, where the trees will produce shadows, same with the walls/ fences inside of the garden.

Compositing/Editing

A final example of me using vfx within this piece is when I will eventually get to layering everything together via composition when I begin editing the final piece.

For example, in one of my previous blog posts, I mentioned that if my particle systems bogged down my PC too much, then I would render explosions separately and then layer them on top of the spaceships when they explode. This is related to composition as in the Blender compositor tab I can use nodes to add layers to a base layer, for example the main animation.

I can also use this for multiple other ideas that I may come across when producing the final piece, such as a cloud/fog card which I can place somewhere in the scene, so that when I render that alone, then i can add that on top of whichever layer I want and then it will appear as if fog is in the scene.

In this blog post I will show a couple of different VFX tests that I have created for my VFX animation.

VFX Test 2: Lasar firing test.

In this test animation I created a particle system which shoots a laser out of each cannon on the ship, when shooting they continue on in their own path and aren’t joined with the ships themselves, therefore they continue on in a straight line until they hit something, for example one of the enemy ships in my animation.

VFX Test 2: Ship chasing a second ship with lasers shooting.

In this test animation I created a short snippet of part of my final animation showing one of the ships chasing another one while firing its weapons at it. This part of the animation will be included towards the start of the final version, just before the viewer is transported into the eyes of the person on the ground who is witnessing the battle above them.

For these tests, I was inspired by Star Wars’ lasers Aswell as sci-fi lasers that are used commonly in space adventure games/ shows. I also chose to have lasers as I could easily learn and then create laser beam particles that are fired out the guns.

VFX Test 3: Flame

For this VFX test, I created a flame which will be used on the ground scene in my animation, for this vfx shot I created a simple flame using the quick flame effect and then modifying it to my liking, including some nodes that I used to edit colour, intensity and strength of the flame. To get this working in my animation I need to render it out and then place it on an animatable plane over the top of the barrel I wish to use to hold the flame. Once this is done it will look as if the flame is actually in the scene and not just an image.

VFX Test 4: Sparking wire/cable.

Image 1: Scene begins, camera walks towards flame and sparks from a barrel and generator. 7-8 Seconds
Image 2: Camera swaps to spaceship in the sky after the first bit sees ships in the distance, it follows the ship. 3 seconds
Image 3: The camera ship fires on the ship that it is following, and it causes it to explode. 2 seconds
Image 4: POV switches back to that of the first scene again, and it shows ships flying around in the sky. 10 seconds
Image 5: Ships begin to fire on each other, and lasers can be seen all over.
Image 6: Continued from image 5 10 seconds
Image 7: The two capitol ships appear in frame, both around the same size. And they both begin to fire lasers at each other. 20 seconds
Image 8: The capitol ship to the right is struck too many times and crashes to the ground causing a large explosion. 4 seconds
Image 9: TV show title begins to play. 4 seconds

For my VFX production piece, I will make an intro to an animated TV show, this being related to the sci-fi genre as the assets that I will be using are spaceships. I chose this because of my interest in Star Wars and similar shows/movies and also that sci fi is very popular nowadays and there are many different variations of the genre spread across the last 60 years of film and television.

In the animation that I’m going to make, I will include different spaceships, big and small that will fight in the sky over the camera, which is in the eyes of a person on the ground witnessing the battle above.

The scene will start out in the view of a person on ground level going towards 2 objects, one being on fire and one sparking, they then look up into the sky to see ships flying around, the shot cuts to an onboard view of a ship in atmosphere shooting down another ship, it then switches back to ground POV and the person watches the battle rage on in the sky, eventually leading to two capitol ships engaging in battle before one is shot down and causes a large explosion, ending the intro.

After this the title for the show will appear and after the title of the episode will too.

Once This finishes the credits for my VFX piece will play consisting of myself and the people who’s creative commons assets I used.