Artisitc Merits

Sort of, and 'set up and let go' is a bit, optimistic!

Basically yes- you can create a scene with a random land,random clouds ect in seconds by letting it go- but chances are you wont get what you want. And thats when you need to get into the bits and bobs of it and do some serious tweaking- this can be as simple as setting (say for clouds) the altitude, depth, spread from centre of radius- and you can get some neat effects.
But if you want some different clouds, or specific types or in a specific place or with specific ligthing ect then it gets complicated.
When it comes to the clouds I know what effect I get doing certain things- I would not even pretend to understand what half the stuff I do is actually doing under the hood- you need a maths head for that.

Here for example is the atmosphere node for the above picture-



It looks pretty simple (this one is not too complex in fact) but as you can see each cloud layer can have different types of shaders, fractal controls ect plugged into different values- currently these clouds only have a fractal plugin which is connected to the clouds main depth scale.

Heres what those look like in the tabs versions- here you can see that there is a lot to tweak on each tab, and on each tab there is usually somewhere where you can plug in other stuff to create different effects.







Populations work a little different, like the trees, as they are object models not shaders or fractal generated.
With them you can also plugin various stuff, the main one here being used is a simple distribution shader to set maximium altitude, maximum slope ect.
You can also add a fractal shader to effect the pattern of distribution as well as manually tweak populations with the editor tool.

Artistic tweaking is something I enjoy, great picture !!!!!!

Did someone mention a sunset? (Probably not what you had in mind though!)-

Reminds me of the film "Ghosts of Mars"

ooh that's spooky

"War of the Worlds" was on last night, Did it get your juices flowing ? My fav is still the dalek one you put up earlier

Which version wa son- 50's or Speiolberg- becuase both of those get my juices flowing- my crabbit juices that is

I mean which is worse- the 50's version was elevates the Priest to a bloody martyr type where the roiginal book is critical of religious though and its inability to deal with rational thought, or Speilberg who is such a coward he blends the priest character with the soldier, makes it neither and turns him into an ambulance driver (I mean why?) and completely wimps out of dealing with the religious topic (a large chunk of the bloody book) altogether Shite the both of them! (Though I do like the design ethic of both and there is a superb fake single camera shot when the cars on the highway which is simply a stunning technical feat of filmcraft- but still shite!)



I know logically where the cuts must be, but bar a few, damned if I can actually spot most of them.

Oooooooookay then !
Maybe I should read the book

Its a short book and a good read- I also like knowing how it was written- Wells would bicycle about his local neighbourhood picking places to blow up

Its Speilbergs version really gets my goat- oh yeah he can do serious topics when it comes to Nazis and Jews and slavery, but give him a work which is directly critical of Christian thinking and he runs away like a big coward and wont even touch it- if you don't have the balls Speilberg to tackle the material you shouldn't be adapting it


Anyhow new render- Ghostships-

that one is indistinguishable from a photograph! Well done.

I never recognized the the WotW highway scene for the technical wizardry it was the one time I saw it. I think the cars passing between the camera and hero-car were added post production, but with pull-away shots pasted in when they went to the back and lost the actors but still didn't have much surrounding scene.

Yes Az, I recommend ANY of Welles' books. He's a very entertaining writer, and his style will change somewhat from book to book. I'd recommend Food of the Gods for the light humor that sparkles the narrative. He really is the birth of modern science fiction, though Verne was the first to make technology an integral part of storylines.

Thanks Halfy- though I always feel when I do a sunset or sunrise picture its basically cheating as they hard to make look bad.

I think that single shot is the best example of its kind anywhere in cinema. Its an almost seamless blend of green screen, at least two real cars (one has a cutaway back so the camera can pan round it and then into the vehicle, the other has a rear window screen in place and you can see that when the camera pans to the front) and cgi.
But the shots I really cant get my heads round are where the camera pulls out from on the actors interior to looking at the car exterior racing along the highway- thats pulling the camera into the green screen! Which is impossible, which means there is a transition there somewhere to a real highway shoot, and either the actors, or the entire vehicle are added post. And damned if I can spot where the join is. But really I haven't a clue how they did that one.


My only criticisms of Wells is that his social politics and personal interests are often thinly disguised in his characters- the character of the Priest in WoW basically exists so Wells can say what he wants on the subject of the Church. The soldier similarly, whilst given more character, also serves a thinly veiled purpose of allowing Wells to give his feeling son the social structure of England and on the ethics of Empire.
I find the blatantness of it sometimes overrides the story telling need to develop the characters. But then its not a trend uncommon in UK scifi to the present day (the recent Doctor Who Zygon story was a modern example of it) and its not as front and centre in plot as say Day of the Triffids is its social commentary. Still bugs me a bit though, especially the Vicar who could do with having his mental collapse and inability to deal with a reality that is not filtered through his Christian prism would have been more profound and effective I feel had we known more of him as a person.

I think if you're embedded in British society the social commentary jumps out at you more. Not sure there's much of it to see in The Strange Island of Dr Moreau or Food of the Gods, so those can be read without interference.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
But the shots I really cant get my heads round are where the camera pulls out from on the actors interior to looking at the car exterior racing along the highway- thats pulling the camera into the green screen! Which is impossible, which means there is a transition there somewhere to a real highway shoot, and either the actors, or the entire vehicle are added post. And damned if I can spot where the join is. But really I haven't a clue how they did that one.

I've watched a couple of chase scenes being filmed and here's my best guess: All the scenes where the sound was synced were filmed on a sound stage with green screen, possibly with the mock-up of the car on a rotating platform and the camera on an articulated boom crane, each digitally controlled to coordinate the motions of the two. The exterior shots all look like choreographed live-action to me. They'd be filmed at low speed with a camera truck and articulated computer-controlled camera crane zooming in and out, high and low as the camera truck weaves it's choreographed course. However they did it, I'm sure every move was choreographed and computer mapped well in advance to allow the motion to feel continuous as they cut between the two. If I were looking for the cuts, I'd watch the lips.

I really like "the ghost ships",VERY atmospheric !! I like it a lot !
And thank you for the recommendation Halfy

that car scene is pretty amazing.

I like Ann Veronica by Wells. Its very interesting early feminist fiction written in 1909, and its a great story too. He was into free love and its amazing how forward thinking he was.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:
Anyhow new render- Ghostships-

It is beautiful!
I've got a small quibble though.
It appears by the small waves on the water that the wind is coming from a few degrees left of the sun, but the sails on the ships are braced to fill with the wind astern, maybe 70 degrees right of the sun. I suspect that your ship models won't let you brace the yards though...

Um, well they are Ghost Ships- blown on the invisible winds of hell- yeah that'll do!

Bit of trek-

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Um, well they are Ghost Ships- blown on the invisible winds of hell- yeah that'll do!

Of course! The Winds of Hell!
I should have thought of that!

Race!

are they comin or goin?

They look 'going' to me, great pic

Well they are kind of rounded pods that look more or less the same front and back (I liked the shiny reflectiveness of them) so you can view them as coming or going. That choice lies in the particularities of the viewer.

What if I was cross eyed ?