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MrSide — Short animation- Hexagon world

Published: 2011-08-08 04:21:38 +0000 UTC; Views: 3614; Favourites: 29; Downloads: 102
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Description Link to animation here : [link]

So this is mainly a reproduction of a tutorial on Blender nerd by Greg Zaal that you can find here : [link]
If you watch it, don't forget that you have to set "blend" on in the world pannel or the mist won't work. It is not mentionned in the tutorial.(I had a lot of fun guessing this by myself)

I then animated the color ramp of the displacement texture to make the hexagon columns rise and I also set the texture to an empty that I also animated to make the columns rise and come down. The light beams are made with spot lights on halo and rotating spheres with deleted faces. I also added floating cubes for the ambiance and some boids particles for the balls of lights. The boids are in fact a group of 2 empties, two little spheres and one big sphere set on "separate" and "flock". The spheres have a shadeless white material and are editted in the compositor for the glow effect. The music if from an artist on newgrounds.com named Tommy Robin(Ockeroid) and the title is "Stranded in time". You can find this music here : [link]

What is sad about this piece is that is was mostly done in 2 days. I then spent day 3 (unsuccessfully) trying to get better results with the mist; day 4 on trying different methods to do the light balls with halos (without achieving any); day 5 on the light balls as well; day 6 on the render(which was pretty long) and day 7 on the "after render tweeking", as some frames where burned, for no particular reasons, and had to be corrected manually.

Working on this piece I have learned on :
- Ambient occlusion
- Indirect lightings
- spot lights on halo
- halos
- boids particles
- post processing
- video editing

I hope this piece pleases you, and as always, I hunger for critics and comments.

Have a great day.
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Comments: 23

meetai [2015-06-01 10:49:30 +0000 UTC]

Nice!

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IsiacDaGraca [2011-12-12 17:43:49 +0000 UTC]

ever gonna get a larger render of this? i'd love it as a wallpaper

atleast 1360x 768 XD

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Managuan6 [2011-08-08 22:16:30 +0000 UTC]

Well since everybody is making some effort to write in english... Well I have actually 1 question, how long does it take to make something like this with blender? It is impressive but since i don't really know what blender do it could be a simple 5 minute command imput.

For the part about the flying cube, i think that the one in the midle of the screen a lil bit on the left is the only really weird one he dont move enough and stay in the midle of the screen atracting our foccus to him. But if you try to ignore this one, the other cube add this space ambient effect who goes well with the music. I think it's more about how they move than why are they there.

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rikere In reply to Managuan6 [2011-08-09 05:55:15 +0000 UTC]

Time with anything production wise is kinda relative. Blender itself has limitations in how fast it can work and your hardware has limitations in how fast it can process things... Like MrSide said, there's a lot of tweaking, and for half of your tweaks, you need to render, adjust and render again...

Someone working at this who knows exactly what they want can rough it out in probably half an hour to an hour... Its just then, your product is rougher as some of your work is literally, just guess work...

Just work at it and really, don't rush... The fine tuning/tweaking which takes the greatest ammount of time is probably the most important step in all of this anyway...

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rikere In reply to rikere [2011-08-09 05:55:37 +0000 UTC]

A. DA Needa a Comment Edit Button
B. I hope the above isn't gibberish...

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MrSide In reply to rikere [2011-08-22 23:18:02 +0000 UTC]

I fully agree with the Edit Button.XD

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MrSide In reply to Managuan6 [2011-08-09 02:56:20 +0000 UTC]

Well, it is kind of a 5 minute command input once you know it. But it is longer to understand it and making it work the first time. In fact, Let us say that the rising hexagonal towers are really easy and fast to make. I actually only make one of them and duplicate it all over the place. Making it move isn't too hard either once you have understood how works 3D procedural textures.

However, The colors, the mist, the vignette(darker on the edge, brighter on the center), the ambient occlusion, indirect lighting, spot lights and boids particles all require a fair amount of tweaking. But for an expert, I guess that a scene like this could take less than one hour to make.

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Managuan6 In reply to MrSide [2011-08-22 20:44:42 +0000 UTC]

Thanks to both of you for the explanation, I will remember this next time i see a blender project. ^^

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Karnia [2011-08-08 19:13:32 +0000 UTC]

Oops, I'm sorry !
I replied to the last comment ( 's comment) when I wanted to add a new one ^^"

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rikere [2011-08-08 05:30:22 +0000 UTC]

Ok, first off, I admit to being in a really BAD and NEGATIVE mood, so... if I do go spaz-out evil on feed-back... sorry....

Ok... so... generically, I think its a really neat idea that shows off one of Blender's lesser used features... That said, its execution comes out pretty good on the technical end, but, I find 2 or 3 flaws to it in design (as far as what I look for anyway, so, these are purely opinion flaws.)

First off, the Good:

As far as the tutorial goes, you've hit the mark on making the intended project and then adding onto it. The particles moving around the scene are pretty cool. I've never worked on boids particles, so, its interesting to see something different from the usual simplistic particle systems. The Halo spots create an interesting effect as well. They're not used too often like this, so, it really stands out.

The Bad / Stuff I Whine about b/c I'm a sleepy perfectionist:

When I first look at it, I think cool, surrealist image of sorts. And then, I see the cubes floating there and I'm left thinking: WTH? As, they just clash with it in my mind. I kinda think of them as background objects/details, but, they really seem to clash with the scene and throw it out of focus/whack.

This leads to my next thought... As Blender Guru I believe puts it: "What's the point?" I can't find a focus behind the image (I can't for most of mine either... so, yea, I'm the pot calling a kettle black right now.) I'd like to find a unifying theme/message in there. In the tutorial for this, what I found I liked was that the camera angle got in close and showed the textures. My reaction to this is that we're getting really close on an advanced, ancient construct-type shape. On yours, I'm seeing a lot of distracting elements and a wide field of view without much depth... So, it feels like a lost/empty scene...

[End whining]

So yea... I find that technically speaking, your right on target... Though, artistically, it feels off....

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MrSide In reply to rikere [2011-08-09 02:44:08 +0000 UTC]

You destroy my art like this anytime you want man. Seriously, thanks for the critic, it's always a good thing to have a hard judgement on a creation, it helps to improve.

Okay, for the cubes, it seems that I'm the only one to like them but what can I say, I just love floating geometry in the air. It must be some kind of post math-classes traumatise of some sort. I just love what is geometrical and unrealistic at the same time. I never thought they would look so weird though. I'll try to keep my strange fetishisms for me next time.XD

For the "what's the point" critic, I must admit you are absolutely right. Now that I look at it, there is no sense, meaning, there is no story in this picture/animation. I kind of have some ideas about what I could do with it that would have a story but I'm just not there yet. With little more time and a lot more practice I might be able to put it together. I'll keep in mind to try finding a story or "a point" for my next creations. If I can.

Anyway, fealing any better?

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rikere In reply to MrSide [2011-08-09 05:37:26 +0000 UTC]

Eh, I'm always sleepy.. Just that I seem to stay up too late for me' own good...

If the design were a little different, I could see some sort of floating objects... Such as, if you were to make the ground rise and fall rapidly and give it green wire-frame mesh (or possibly make it larger and fly through it), that could duplicate a 3d chart/graph in an older computer system... Then, a cube/prism/shape of some sort with a similar material might fit in better..... I think it just all falls to design...

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Karnia In reply to rikere [2011-08-08 19:09:20 +0000 UTC]

To make it short : I like it. Very pretty. But the floating blocks are... errr... what are they ? They are there, floating, and... that's all. I don't know. I don't understand the blocks.

The music is nice

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MrSide In reply to Karnia [2011-08-09 02:47:22 +0000 UTC]

No one likes my cubes....

I like the music too. What is funny is that I found it on first try. It was like : "let's try this one... hey, it's exactly what I need!"

Ho, and read the response to rikere's post for my explanation of the blocks. You'll probably like it.

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Karnia In reply to MrSide [2011-08-09 04:50:10 +0000 UTC]

Fetishism. YEAH, riiight... I like it.

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MrSide In reply to Karnia [2011-08-09 05:29:30 +0000 UTC]

I knew you would.

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plantm [2011-08-08 04:27:24 +0000 UTC]

You did an amazing job on this, from the lighting, texture, movement, even the music was an excellent choice. Outstanding

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MrSide In reply to plantm [2011-08-09 02:48:11 +0000 UTC]

Thanks a lot!^^
I'm glad you liked it.

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plantm In reply to MrSide [2011-08-09 02:57:21 +0000 UTC]

no problem i just started to do fractal animations, little different but i understand how long it takes to do all those things. still learning though lol this is what i have so far [link]

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MrSide In reply to plantm [2011-08-09 03:05:50 +0000 UTC]

Hey, that's pretty neat. I never tried fractal art before, how does it work? You have a bunch of sliders that you move over time to make different shapes and colors or...?

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plantm In reply to MrSide [2011-08-09 03:13:29 +0000 UTC]

mostly, its hard at first but gets easier after awhile, ive been doing for a couple months now. the user face looks complicated at first here's how the last verisons looked [link] but now you mostly only need three windows to really make fractals, there's a lot of tutorials out there and helps a lot. i also can help out if you need anything at all. mostly consists of silders inputting numbers and creativity lol

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MrSide In reply to plantm [2011-08-10 02:19:54 +0000 UTC]

Thanks for the info. If the urge to try fractal art I'll go poke you or watch your gallery for tutorials.

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plantm In reply to MrSide [2011-08-10 02:26:19 +0000 UTC]

cool, also i have a group that focuses on fractals and has a ton of infomation, if you need anything hit me up nice talking to you and keep up the great work

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