2 posts tagged “war games”

So here's my first Cinema 4D model and animation:  water!

I could have bought 3D water but instead, I chose to learn C4D by trying to make it.  The reason why I needed water was that I had a scene in my novel trailer (WAR GAMES) where one of my characters, "G," is climbing a cliff above water.  I started my animation of G on the cliff in DAZ and just stuck a background of 2D photo of water (see "G w wrong perspective").  First of all, the perspective is wrong - it looks like he's crawling out of the water onto the ground.  Secondly, when I animated it, it looked very wrong to have the water so still.  So my challenge was to make water so I could choose the perspective and also animate it.

To make water, I followed this tutorial.    I used the "metal" texture that comes with C4D for the material reflection, and "water" texture for the bump and environment.  I tried a few of the other tutorials where the water looked better (by using caustics) but when I tried it, it took a l-o-n-g time to render and my results sucked.  So this was the best way I've found.

Once the water model was made, I needed to animate it so it looked alive.  I ended up applying "vibrate."  Right click on the water in your objects tab, cinema 4d tags> vibrate.  In the Attributes menu (click on the vibrate icon in your Objects menu), I used the following vibrate parameters:  Relative, Enable Position, Amplitude 10, 0, 0.   I'll refine the parameters as needed.  I may want a gentler motion.

The next challenge will be to combine the animation of G climbing the cliff with the water animation.  I have two choices:  "green screen" G and composite it with the water animation in After Effects; or import G's scene into the water animation (or vice versa) and combine them.  I'm totally new to 3D so everything I do will be an experiment.  I've also never used green screens before so that will be a learning experience too.  Right now, G and his climbing animation is in DAZ and the water is in C4D.  I'll need to figure out how to import one into the other if I choose that route.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about my first modeling results!

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

Wow, an unintended break.  It's been almost 2 months since I last posted.  I didn't intend to stop blogging, I just got distracted and before I knew it, 2 months had gone by.... During that time, a Russian economist has declared that the US is disintegrating, 2008 turned into 2009, YouTube changed from 4:3 to 16:9 and then went HD.  SAG is still threatening to strike - they  might as well threaten to go on a hunger strike because that's about how self-destructive it would be. 

So what have I been doing?  At first, I went into a creative mode where all else was consumed by my obsession over making an animated book trailer for my novel, WAR GAMES.  Then, I remembered I had never done animation before, ran into technical difficulties, and I geeked out.  Right now, I'm somewhere between my creative mode and geek-out mode (I know, some might say I'm always in this state).  I just bought Cinema 4D from someone on Craigslist who may or may not be part of the Russian mob; I also bought one of the last Comic Book Creator programs despite the fact that it looks like the makers are going out of business; ordered a new over-the-top mobile battlestation (aka "notebook computer"); sent out some DVDs of TOOTH FAIRY to film festivals; killed my power supply in my desktop which is now open under my desk with its guts spilling out; got a new terabyte (!!!) second hard drive for my desktop and a 64G (!!!) USB drive for Christmas (I hear other girls want jewelry as gifts -- can you imagine?); got my butt kicked clear across silicon valley by a group of graduates of the Stanford EE masters program in a game I never heard of before; and I ate a pound of Trader Joe's milk chocolate with almonds.  There you have it -- now you're all caught up.

Happy New Year!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com