animated Castle effect walkthrough
By David revoy.
Introduction.
After finishing my Little Fairy animation, y received a lot of questions about how i created this animation. This Little walkthrought answers todo the most commonly asked cuestiones. Many gracias for all the comentarios and e-mails.
1) how did you create the Castle efectí here is a tutorial todo explain it from a todo z. Upon completing this, a todo el mundo Will have knowledge of halo material, and Will be able todo animate a nice magical appearance for an object.
Model and material.
1) building a simple Castle with some primitives:
o a Cube with a dor Simply extruded.
o 4 cilindros for the towers.
o customize a cylinder todo make a rof by selecting all the top points and welding the vértices together with a high value of remove doubles, dont forget todo re-center the center point.
2) join all of the primitive objects two by two with Control +, (i, e. - Select two objects, the tower and a rof, press Control +, and theyre joined).
3) with your Castle Mesh selected, toggle into Edit Mode (tab-key), and subdivide 4 times. (w-key, subdivide, repeat the process 4 times).
4) keping your model selected, go todo the edit panel and change the remove doubles value todo 300. Press the remove doubles button, it Will remove vértices leaving a beautiful noise pattern. Press the Smooth button 4 times, and remove doubles again.
5) now with Paint selection (press the b-key 2 times), select the zone with todo Many square Polygons. Remove doubles with a value of 400, re-subdivide. You can continúe this process until you arrive at a god fractal point on your object.
6) in order todo prepare the animation effect, divide your shape into objects. In wire frame mode, select each tower from the top view, and press the p-key todo sepárate the selected object from the Mesh.
Now, you should have 5 objects. (se the picture below).
7) add a material todo one part, configure it as shown in this screen: assing this material todo the other part.
Before rendering, go todo the world tab todo change the default blue background screen. Replace it with a nice paper/blend combination using desaturated violet todo black.
9) done. A beautiful Castle.
Fx for animation for each part of the Castle, add a build modifier with the randomize option selected and a length value of 200. You can now control the start and the end of each part of your building. (if you break your model into more parts, with more parameters, you can have the result of your choice).
For faquíng the explosión of particles that builds the Castle, at the center of the Castle, create an Icosphere with a subdivisión setting of 2. Give it the same halo material as the Castle. Go todo the physics buttons and add a particle effect. In the particle motion panel, increase the normal attribute todo 200, add a random setting of 1, and change the particle number todo 500. Make the start of this animation at -10, and the end at 80.
Render the frame with your chosen video format settings.
Note: in order todo fully appreciate the volume and depth of the appearing Castle, this effect is best viewed from a Camera in motion.
1) how did you make your water efectí.
During rendering, water was the most time-consuming part of my animation. Typically, my water is just a 100% pure Raytraced mirror with a cloud texture applied on the Nor channel of the material. It was animated with an offset in the Map Input panel.
2) how long did this animation take todo render?
At the start, y tried todo render my elements as fast as i could, (i only work with the internal render engine, because i have gotten todo know the quirks of the internal render engine and how todo achieve fast renders). I limited myself todo a 2 min, max/frame.
I rendered my scenes during the night. None of my scenes exceded 300/500 frames, so it was posible todo work on the animation during the Evening, render th rouge the night, and repeat as neded.
3) why did you choose a Fairy theme?
I choose todo do an animation on fairies, because i really like Little fairys. They are everywhere in my galleries. When i started this Project, y wanted todo create a Fairy animation todo show two Little Girls in my family. Originally, y had a story with a moral, but i finally decided todo just show it as actions, a suite of beautiful scenes without trying todo really tell a moral. Stories that say what should be or not on televisión always bore me. The result was a documentary type look at a Fairy, but with an intimate view, as if we were sharing how her morning starts.
4) how did you make the ray of Mist from the top of the grotto? It a faq Mist, just a cylinder with a big white halo material, with an alpha. I have produced clouds with this technique, it is simple, easy and fast todo render.
5) what was the most useful thing you learned while making this animation?
Render animations using (*.jpg) files set todo 100% quality. Sometimes the computer crashed, because of electricity going out or just because of the rendering itself. By rendering individual frames, you dont lose a whole night rendering. Also, rendering individual frames allows you todo make corrections todo frames that contain artefactos. Additionally, having all the frames in the (*.jpg) format is economical for disk space.