Author Topic: Cutscene Upgrade Project  (Read 374526 times)

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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
This is relevant to my interests.

First, I must applaud the effort and pace of work. :yes:

Then to business: the MediaVP's offer a wide range of very, very good stars to be used. They are basically a result of this thread and they work very well in-game; I would love to see how they look in cutscenes.

There are also better starfields than what you have been using. The background stars seem oddly uniformly bright and they have thus strange blurred thing around them, while in space they would be crisp and come in multiple brightnesses and the brightest stars would usually also have a discernible hue to them, either reddish or bluish (yellow stars appear white to human eyes, and dim stars are usually too dim to register as colours in our eyes due to the relatively high threshold of colour detecting cells).

Here's my view on a generic starfield; something a lot like this is used by the MediaVP's. However the version in MediaVP's turned out to divide opinions quite strongly, so I'll just say that this or something similar is what I would prefer to see:




(not using lvlshot for that one because it would basically just show a black square due to massive downscaling...)

This is a 4096^2 resolution starfield and can be mapped cubically on a sphere to effective 16384 pixels of horizontal resolution. That means you can use field of view as low as 22.5 degrees and still take 1024^2 renders that maintain singular stars as pixels rather than upscaled dots.

Cropping a 2048^2 section of this map would work just as well down to 45 degrees of field of view angle. The resolution you would choose should depend on the view angle, because starfields are things that typically don't downscale very well at all, so mip mapping is somewhat problematic.

Nebulas, hmm. Unless you are intentionally emulating the look and feel of FS1 nebulas, I'd say having a bit of additional detail couldn't hurt. However, as I've come to notice, convincing nebulas are damn hard to make. The best results I've had are using GIMP's Plasma render, then recolouring it to certain hues. I really have not devised a method yet to mimic the complex, real nebular gas formations yet, though. :nervous:
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
That is a rock awesome starfield. Let's see how it looks, shall we? Thanks!
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
Regarding nebulas, here's what I got with three different plasma layers (blue, red and yellow) each using the same solid noise cloud layer as alpha channel:



It's a bit colourful but that's because it is just an experiment. Here's also how it looks with a starfield (which makes a massive difference):



Main things I have come to notice is that nebulas usually need to be very low intensity to look nice. There are exceptions to the rule, but low intensity, high saturation nebulas tend to produce acceptable looks.

Still, this sort of methods can't really produce the complex, fractal-like formations seen in real clouds or nebulas. A good idea might be to start taking images of clouds with a high resolution camera and use them as source textures, then edit them accordingly into different kinds of nebulas.
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
And what did you use to make those?
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Offline jr2

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
Don't you see his co-pilot's body though?

In a very brief moment, yes... you have to freeze the video and then you can just barely make out his helmet.

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
And what did you use to make those?

The GIMP, of course. Can't beat open source in price/performance ratio. :)

Or are you referring to the actual process of making that nebula? I can post a PSD/XCF file of it if you want to.
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
Nah, that's cool. I'll take a look at my options. Like I said, I'll hand draw them if I have to.

That starmap looks fantastic! I'll get screens up soon.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2010, 11:50:40 am by mjn.mixael »
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Offline Galemp

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
Here is what I have on Ancients 5 so far. The fire is really giving me a hard time... I figured I would post it and see if anyone has any suggestions.

Images Deleted

Yeah, that fire needs a lot of work. I think you need to try entirely different techniques from the one you're currently using.
Perhaps you could animate a 2D bitmap and use that for the corona?
« Last Edit: August 01, 2020, 12:34:11 pm by mjn.mixael »
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
I just uploaded an update (you can see it in the quote above). It's getting there.

It's taking time because I'm working with about 4 particle systems based on dynamic fractals. At the same time I'm rendering out the Asteroids for Ancients 4. My computer has plenty of power, but not THAT much... Poor thing, it might be crying inside.

Quote
Yeah, that fire needs a lot of work. I think you need to try entirely different techniques from the one you're currently using.
Perhaps you could animate a 2D bitmap and use that for the corona?

There aren't a whole lot of techniques for creating fire. Particle Systems and Fluid Dynamics (really advanced particle systems) are the best ways. And even with those it's difficult to make it look great. Basically I am animating a 2D bitmap using particle systems with the source being the layer containing the sun. I think the shape of the fire is looking nice now, I need to work on it's colors.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2010, 01:27:43 pm by mjn.mixael »
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
Here is the most recent Ancients 5.

Images Deleted
« Last Edit: August 01, 2020, 12:34:19 pm by mjn.mixael »
Cutscene Upgrade Project - Mainhall Remakes - Between the Ashes
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Offline Galemp

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
I dunno, I still prefer the blobby, cloudy look of the original to the stringyness of yours.
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Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
If I may make a suggestion, blur the fire quite a bit and make it move very slowly, just so that you can see it being animated.

The thing with animating stuff like that is that it takes hours if not days to discern any real motion with things like this in reality. The scale is huge, we're talking about flames that are the size of Jupiter here...

Though my stance regarding realism is reasonably well documented. :p
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Offline Nighteyes

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
you can also use some post processing to make it look even better...


*no, the lens refraction is fine and thats how its supposed to render...
« Last Edit: February 20, 2010, 04:48:37 pm by Nighteyes »

 

Offline Kolgena

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
i think that rainbow's backwards :/

Shouldn't it be blue side facing towards the star?

 

Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
Woah, nice flare Nighteyes! I like to the hoop. I was planning on adding flares when I got the fire right, but I guess I'll get em in now because it will change what the overall product looks like.

More changes on the fire. Compromise of bluriness w/ detail. Flare added also.

[image removed]
[image removed]
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Offline Nighteyes

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
the sun should be smaller and the flames longer, a bit less bright, the lens flare color wash can be all over the screen, and the rainbow effect should be more transparent... :D

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
I don't think those glowing dot particles should be there. Can't remember detail like that in the originals at the very least.

Consider fading the border of the star's photoshphere and the corona flames. At the moment, the transition from full white flames into "darker" area of the photosphere's edges look a bit odd.
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Offline Spoon

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
Late to the party, don't really have anything constructive to add
Just have to say  :yes: nice job! and keep it up!
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Offline Kolgena

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
I still think the colors of that rainbow are backwards :P

 

Offline Retsof

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Re: Cutscene Upgrade [Updated: Ancients 5] (56kers be warned!)
I think you've about got it, but to match the original it needs more "blobieness"  mabe something like a fair-sized solid noise alpha channel.
EDIT:  here's a quick GIMP of what I mean.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2010, 09:16:19 pm by Retsof »
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