[pecenipicek]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=z24brRciwnY


in short, i was having some fun today in cinema 4D

[Retsof]

It's ... different.

[Droid803]

Its a...worm thing...

[FreeSpaceFreak]

It's funny. I like it

[pecenipicek]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UzveBK3tNBw
and another one, this time with a fighter of mine, could anyone comment on the trail in particular? i'm using something similar to the technique used to make that squiggly line up there.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Well, the trail looks as if there's a ribbon attached to the engine. Perhaps add a bit of motion? I do like the way it turns with the fighter.

[pecenipicek]

its actually on the fly generated geometry from a spline that follows the ships movement and the outline of the engines. but tweaking the material shouldnt be too problematic i think. just have to set it up right and off we gooooo


the trail texture is just a gradient with transparency and a bit of refraction.

[Droid803]

If it flickered a bit it'd look less like a solid ribbon...
I think...

[Retsof]

Or if it looked more insubstantial, just some varaiation in transparency....

[pecenipicek]

i'm working on it, i dont have much experience with animating procedural textures at the moment.

i think i might have something better looking tommorow.

[Raven2001]

Maybe try particles?

[pecenipicek]

too slow to render, too difficult to achieve the desired effect. besides, this is exactly what i wanted to do sort of sooo (except the material that is, its still givink me headaches a bit)

[pecenipicek]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ySRwG0f_BLk

an update... any thoughts?

[edit]can any of you folks actually access the bloody vid? to me it says tis been removed

[Mongoose]

I can watch in normal quality, but not the high-quality I have set as a default.  Weird.  But that's definitely a big improvement from the first attempt.  Still looks maybe a bit too ribbon-like, but the particle effect helps break that up a lot.

[pecenipicek]

about the ribbon like thing, any ideas how it would look better?


yeah, the high quality is busted for some odd reason -.-

[Mongoose]

I think trying to give some illusion of depth would go a long way towards that.  As it stands now, it looks for all the world like a completely two-dimensional stream of particles out the back, especially when it twists around as the ship rolls.  I know nothing about rendering, so I couldn't tell you how to achieve any sense of depth, but if there is some way to add a height component to it, particularly one that tapers off at the top and bottom, I think that would help.

[Aardwolf]

Yeah, make the ribbon get thicker and wider as it fades out. Also it might help to have a scale/speed reference in the clip--I can't tell from this how fast the stuff is supposed to be coming out of the fighter, or how big the fighter is. Also it matters whether it's in an atmosphere or in space.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

The particle effect is Apart from some added depth, I think it would be a good thing to work on the edges a bit. A thruster tail shouldn't have sharp edges like that IMHO.

[pecenipicek]

rendering new one with some "added depth" in short, i added in a glow postprocessing effect, which looks pretty nice at the moment


i'll upload it in an hour or so.

[pecenipicek]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=RGGOyuDsqr8


once again watch the good old normal version since the high res one refuses to work...