Magicians, here's a challenge for the Pro if you are brave enough accept it :)

[vinyvince]

Ok, here's a challenge if you accept it

 

I built a full CG city myself, mostly procedural with custom artistic inputs and real data. Heres some preview , raw render, wip, haven t merged my vehicules traffic yet... I tried using Deep learning for mask generations of my hundred different input facades variations but finally, i went for an old school trick. So far, so good for now

 

Now i need to have the full env being affected by a massive black hole, emergy from below, absorbing the city like a worm coming from underground. But the coming disaster is first seen with the sky and atmosphere which turned amazingly wild and stormy...

 

It's almost 20km2 square area with tons of elements, geometry topology is very mixed so i need a global approach based on point clouds or whatever. My brain is more artistically oriented so this is the kind of things which was usually given to a more technically VFX oriented person.

I have all kind of slow moving camera from above, distant and more close to the ground and building too. Night time..

At the end i need to export the all things back to Max and Vray... (Not my choice but need to..)

 

Which approach will you take yourself? how would you solve this problem knowing the limited ressources and budget but on the other side creatively open ?

 

Cheers, to every suggestion from the magicians

vincent*

 

________________________________________________________________

Vincent Thomas   (Avalailable January 2017)
Senior Lighting Lookdev / Env DigiMatte Artist / Creative Designer VFX supervisor since 1998

 http://fr.linkedin.com/in/vincentthomas

 

 

(PS: actually looking for freelance Houdini artist to hire... On location Geneva/Annecy or possibly remote)

[vinyvince]

In fact, what i would like to give a try is to treat all the affected area env as one element, like a point cloud from a lidar scan if you want with the shading baked, treat this point cloud which could include deformations , fractures and creation of new edge so with a new mat, emit new particulesFX from this data, then being able to export back this point cloud keep the initial shading + new defined shader matid....

 

Does that make any sense to anyone here? Yes, im aware this is not a purely right way to do, it s not very religious but for what we need and considering the ressources , it might work...

[vinyvince]

No magician here? Even in christmas time?

[vinyvince]

The job position for a freelance interested on this feature film, is still open..

[howiem]

Whelp, I'm fairly new to H, so this may or may not help (love your cityscape so far, though. Very nice)

Strikes me that you need a storyboard, shot by shot, rather than just a description of the overall effect you're after. It's unlikely that a single sim would give you the shots you need. The best approach for the wide shots won't necessarily be the best approach for tighter ones.

Tighter shots of detailed destruction (eg a bridge and water being sucked into the ground) could be done effectively with sims, but then for wider shots you may well find you can get away with 2D warping, with simpler particle sims and smoke over the top. As long as we've seen a quick tight of a building falling apart brick by brick, the wide shots don't need anywhere near that sort of detail for us to perceive it as the same destruction.

So you've got a great asset built for the wides, but it's the mix of wides and tights that'll really sell this kind of sequence. Storyboard storyboard storyboard

 

[vinyvince]

Oh well god, i didn t expect this kind of answer.. haha. So what to say?

Well first thanks you . Now, just to let you know, im have been in the industry for more than 20 years from big to small studio, dom different position to supervisor, im also an independent artist and filmmaker so i agree with that you said but i have already knew all of this

 

Thanks anyway and happy new year Howard