SciFi - Mech Destruction Animation

[petes]

Here is my new "Mech" animation.

I created the mech from scratch. The chopper is from Turbosquid. The building in a mix of 3D and 2D effects.

Lightwave and After Effects was used.
Thanks for viewing.

Pete

[Woody]

Wow, that looked great Pete! The fireball seemed...odd somehow, like was pasted on, but everything else was very nicely done.

[piteur]

I am impressed !
everything looks good and realistic (even if something is disturbing me in the building explosion).

Light and mouvement of camera are perfect.

We want to se mooooooooooooore...

[Escelce]

Very cool and impressive work my friend. Show off

-E
(That annoying brit )

[Rigel]

This is well done. However, I don't think there is enough movement in the helicopter; they rarely sit that perfectly motionless.

[DigitalOrigami]

Very cool. What I wouldn't give for one of those things during rush hour traffic jams....

[JTech]

WOOOW!! that was Awesome!!! make another shot please I love mechs, giant robots, Gundams, Armored cores, ECT

by the way is that live footage or is that a still shot.

[Meurig]

Very cool, and a great attempt.

I think the most successful element is the building destruction - behind the explosion which as Woody said, looks like a pasted on element. I think it's main problem is the scale; it looks like a small explosion element scaled up to look big.

The lighting is nice, as is the comping. The FX are quite pretty too although they shoot by very quickly.

My main gripe is the animation. The mech's walk is very labourious to the point that the pilot would be splatted all over the inside I think the walk just needs to be toned down a little.

Great stuff though, show us more

[petes]

Thanks for the feedback. I understand the crits of the building, it IS allot of 2d work that was not to true scale. But that is what I had to work with as this piece was just for fun and had no budget behind it. Infact this whole piece is full of cheats to work on a budget. Had I had something of a budget (in both time and money) I definitively would of approached it differently. But real LW jobs are piling up behind it, and my extra money is going towards a short.

As for the mech, I suppose it is a personal feeling. I like the sort of lumbering feel of it. Especially in such a small amount of time, I wanted to get across this was a low tech, heavy mech. Perhaps if it went on longer I would have been more sensitive to it.

Overall a fun little exercise,

p

Originally Posted by Meurig

Very cool, and a great attempt.

I think the most successful element is the building destruction - behind the explosion which as Woody said, looks like a pasted on element. I think it's main problem is the scale; it looks like a small explosion element scaled up to look big.

The lighting is nice, as is the comping. The FX are quite pretty too although they shoot by very quickly.

My main gripe is the animation. The mech's walk is very labourious to the point that the pilot would be splatted all over the inside I think the walk just needs to be toned down a little.

Great stuff though, show us more

[petes]

Originally Posted by JTech

WOOOW!! that was Awesome!!! make another shot please I love mechs, giant robots, Gundams, Armored cores, ECT

by the way is that live footage or is that a still shot.

JTECH, I am so sorry i missed your post. it is not video, actually it is several stills shot with a cannon 5D composited together, then broken into foreground, mid ground and background elements. It is then put into 3d space in AE with a 3d camera in AE to create a little bit of a parallax.

The main still is a very large piece, approx 3500 px. wide. Once that is complete, it is brought into a new composition (HD) and I move my AE camera around. The large base image gives me room to move the camera like a real camera. make sense?

Regards,

Pete

[Anermay]

OMG!
Thats soo Cool!!! I have a'lot of learning to do, before I can even think about being that good,
fantastic stuff!

[KageRyu]

That was pretty nice. I am curious to about how you achieved the debris falling off the building, was it with a plugin or effect such as Shatter? The pieces look far more irregular than the shatter plugin.

[petes]

Originally Posted by KageRyu

That was pretty nice. I am curious to about how you achieved the debris falling off the building, was it with a plugin or effect such as Shatter? The pieces look far more irregular than the shatter plugin.

The debris is a mix of things. The main chunks are done by creating a stand in building. Then by using a irregular shaped "cutter" shape, I delete parts of the building out then put them onto a different layer. I do this until I am satisfied with the sizes. then i hand keyed the falling down part, since the dynamics didn't get me the looks right off the bat and was easier to do it by hand. The rest is particles and 2d composites.

p

[iczer]

Let me start off by saying, great animation!!

Now, I could be wrong, but isn't the 'copter a bit close to the building; and would a news 'copter really fly that low? Just points to ponder..

[avar4500]

Wow!!

[KageRyu]

Originally Posted by petes

The debris is a mix of things. The main chunks are done by creating a stand in building. Then by using a irregular shaped "cutter" shape, I delete parts of the building out then put them onto a different layer. I do this until I am satisfied with the sizes. then i hand keyed the falling down part, since the dynamics didn't get me the looks right off the bat and was easier to do it by hand. The rest is particles and 2d composites.

p

That's helpful information, thank you. I'm always interested in alternatives to 3D sculpting/shattering and rendering an object for debris.