[mjn.mixael]

I felt like showing this one off a bit.

http://vimeo.com/17752650
OR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24fX4VS2QnI

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Hades]

Not bad, but I think the 'scars' left by the beams on the hull could be improved a bit, I'm not exactly sure how, however.

[mjn.mixael]

yeah, I wasn't exactly thrilled with them, but I decided short of actually damaging the Aeolus model, these are good enough.

[Kolgena]

I think you need some slower particulate coming off the glowing trails after the beams have passed in addition to the first few sparks. I think that's how the retail animation goes, or maybe the retail looked bad enough that gimicky explosions didn't look out of place. Maybe you could make the glowing trails fade out a bit less rapidly too? I really don't know how to address this either.

The last beam shot that kills the camera appears to curve out of its way in order to hit the camera, which meant that I needed to watch it twice before I realized that the camera got fried by the beam. Is there a way to make it line up a bit more naturally? Yeah, the rakshasa's moving when it shoots. 'doh.

Carthage/Dashor warp-out looks kinda bad... It's fairly obvious that they come to a stop (fully visible) behind the portal, half fade out, and disappear with the warp hole closing. It looks like they get swallowed up rather than rocketing through them. Carthage could do with bigger engine plumes and lens flares to match in-game appearance more.

Rakshasa also has bits of stuff behind the warp hole that's visible, when it probably shouldn't be. Is there any reason you're not using the invisibility clipping plane method that FSO usually does?

Otherwise, I like very much. Especially the nameplate And of course, you probably know me to be one of the excessively picky people (thick cables), so feel free not to seriously address all my criticisms. I just like to post a dump of what I catch, so I don't have to do more than one post of this.

[mjn.mixael]

Rakshasa also has bits of stuff behind the warp hole that's visible, when it probably shouldn't be. Is there any reason you're not using the invisibility clipping plane method that FSO usually does?

Actually, the Carthage/Dashor don't stop moving. However, the shadow seems to be caused by some post effect. I do not create animations the same way FSO renders its in-game visuals. I rely more on post processing and composition tricks than the hours of scripting work it would take to recreate the FSO in-game rendering style.

[CommanderDJ]

Besides the shadows in the warp holes, I like this.

[MatthTheGeek]

It still looks like the Carthage slows down as it goes through the vortex, I'd expect it to accelerate here.

[mjn.mixael]

Links updated.

Shadows fixed, slight changes on the scarring.

[Kolgena]

Scarring looks much better to me, as does the Rakshasa's jump in.

Hard clipping when the Orion jumps out looks a little funky. Maybe try haze/blooming the edges? Losing the ship shadow is an improvement though.

Still get the tiniest impression that the Orion's slowing down a bit a half second before it disappears completely. I'm not sure what's causing it.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, I know you said you were done, but I guessss some more bloom on the warpouts at the end would help - that Orion clips the vortex messily.

[mjn.mixael]

I'm not going to try to bloom the edges of the warpout. Off the top of my head, I wouldn't even know where to start on creating a bloom effect. Like I said before, this is video editing, not in-game coding. I can't just flip a switch and let there be bloom. I could probably pull it off and create the desired effect. That's what CGI and Motion Graphics is... it's problem solving. But in this case, it's such a small gain for so much work.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

In Blender, bloom can be implemented via compositing nodes, without too much of a hassle (see scheme here - end result here). I can't find the tutorial anymore, but it basically turns the image into a black-and-white mask, then blurs that and brightens up the image with it. It does that three times, with different values for the black level and the blur, in order to produce a better falloff. Perhaps that approach can be ported to the program you're using?
Else, some local hard lighting near the warp could reduce on the clipping as well. Of course, rendered-in tricks like this may be tricky on post-processing.

Furthermore, the ships seem to be missing their glowmaps. But apart from those, good work, as usual

[Nohiki]

I don't know how much is the stick-to-retail standard here, but it always bugged me that the rakshasa used the AAA beam to slice through the aeolus like it was an SRed, aren't things like that supposed to be fixed as well? 

[Galemp]

Haze and bloom on the warp portals are a MUST. They're on the original and they look cool.

Otherwise, very nice.

[mjn.mixael]

Well, bloom and haze are not a "MUST" for me.

FSF, you are right about the glow maps.

Lastly, you all have had me chasing down tiny little bugs on this one for hours when I could have had several more ANIs done... Not every ANI can be a perfect gem. I'm going to re-render to add the glow maps. If you guys want bloom that bad, make it yourself.

[CommanderDJ]

The second version looks a lot better. Well done!

[Goober5000]

Vasudan Admiral has done cutscenes with subspace vortexes before.  It would probably be worth asking him how he did it.