Scene From A Movie - Questions and Answers

[glynnsmith]

Originally Posted by TheMegaMaster

Exactly dude. No way to build a scene with less then 200000 Tris with the CE² and since it´s the only engine I´m really familiar with, I propably can´t participate...

Relax. Breathe deep. Read above

[TheMegaMaster]

Originally Posted by glynnsmith

Relax. Breathe deep. Read above

Yup, just posted at the same time. Good, so I´ll continue working on my scene now and hope to get a proper answer later.

[glynnsmith]

Originally Posted by TheMegaMaster

Yup, just posted at the same time. Good, so I´ll continue working on my scene now and hope to get a proper answer later.

Absolutely. We're not going to discount CE2, just because of this issue. As for a proper answer, my idea is that I'll just try to avoid answering until someone with the raw knowledge comes here to school us all

[Snipergen]

Give Stefan Morell or [HP] a PM, I bet they know an answer
What you off course can do is hide the sea and the sky in the options in the editor, and model your terrain and props and import it all as meshes. If you get what I'm trying to say

[sideshowbob]

iv seen another team/or guy making a scene from an animated movie .. are 3dcg/animated movies allowed now ?


thanks in advance

[x_frame]

Originally Posted by glynnsmith

LET THERE BE ANSWERS!


A mini-series isn't a film. I can understand any disappointment you might have (Farscape is cool - blue chicks are ace) but I can't give you the ok, as it's in no part a movie. The good news is there's about a million movies out there for you to pick!

Excuse me for being persistent but generaly i'm not satisfied with your response..
I'm a Vfx artist working in the Movie industry and i don't quite get it...
Perhaps you were too busy tryin' to answer all other kinds of technical questions that you didn't noticed what i was tryin to say.
So to make it clear:
Some guys shot over 3 hours of footage on a live action set with the cgi extentions vfx stuff actor make up and so on, later on it was edited and cut into mini-series as well as a single 3 hour ...ummmmm movie .... and so it was distributed around the different parts of the world as a different end product based on the needs of the market....
*blahblahblah*
Logicaly i come to the conlcusion that you are tryin to say that only movies on the big screen are movies (which are suitable choice for this competition)

And don't get me wrong i'm not really into blue chicks (i like the aussies better ) Anyways me and my team have countless other options indeed but the question here is the definition of "movie" and the rules of the competition so pleace be more specific

[x_frame]

Originally Posted by MatthewNovak

Yea lol, thats what I was asking about. Your over 200k because of the water and sky, as well as your height map. But pretty much everyone who uses CryEngine is gonna be at a 10-30k Poly loss.

No matter what I do the sky is there. Even if im not creating a outdoor scene the sky is there, you can't get rid of it (at least I don't think I can), and it takes up 10-30k polys depending were your looking.

I still don't really think I have a final answer to my question even though Im using the UT3 engine probably, im sure this can avoid confusion with others.

If the CryEngine always has that sky, no matter what. You can't get rid of it, its always taking up tri's. Even if you make a indoor scene and cannot see the sky at all. Does it still count toward your 200k tri usage. If so, then wouldn't that mean that all CryEngine users loose 10-30k tri's instantly. Or if we make our own skybox/building and enclose our whole scene in it (so you cant see the cryengine sky at all), can we omit the CryEngine sky thats automatically made. And just only count our assets that we put into the scene.

And is the CryEngine poly counter allowed to count your resources. Like if someone has their scene say 150k for the tri count, the scene is gonna be much more because theres likely objects that are blocking other objects and then the culling kicks in.

Thanks, sorry glynnsmith, im probably giving you a headache with this question. I just wanna make sure others don't go modeling their whole outdoor scene and then finding out when they import it into CryEngine that 20kish tri's are used even when nothing is there and then having that count towards the contest would really hinder their scene. I under stand what your saying about particles and stuff because you add that in, as for the sky, in the cryengine, its not optional, it always forces itself there.

There are the Render Settings Just uncheck what you don't what to be rendered (e.g. fog, sky box, terrain, ocean and so on). As far as i have tested it doesn't count what it does not render

[[hP]]

hey guys!

Yeah, CE2 might be a bit of a pain in the ass to control the poly count in this specific situation. Because, let's say it's very procedural and automatic, it applies geometry where it needs.
For instance, terrain. The engine gives a lot more poly density near the camera and less far away. It's automatic, but you can control it. Or give it a work around.

Let's start from the begging.
The SKyBox, the default SkyBox alone (this one generates stars automatically, etc, etc) has 20.000 Polys!!
To get rid of it, just go to the Environment tab, and select any other skybox from the list, here's how:



To get rid of the ocean, just go to:
Terrain -> Edit Terrain -> Remove water.
(After this, you will notice the ocean is still there, It's just flat. So, you need to hide it from the Hide By Category -> Render Settings panel on the right. (The engine never renders what can't see, obviously) and just tick of "Ocean" and anything else you might wanna hide.

Now for the terrain, this is a bit more complicated to control, and I guess I can give you two possible options.
First, create a very small island, small enough to encompass your scene.
File -> New -> HeightMap Resolution: 128*128 Meter per unit: 1
Still, this will eat up more then 50.000 tris!

So, the other workaround is, do the same as above. model your terrain as you see fit, then select the option: Edit Terrain -> Tools -> Export Terrain at Marker As Geometry.
And then, export it as OBJ, and import it into 3dsmax (or XSI, whichever you're using) and optimize the geometry, once you're done import it into the game as a ordinary prop. (Brush)
(Don't forget to disable terrain render after you do this)

This last suggestion I haven't tried it yet, but in theory, it should work.

Hope I could help.

GL


EDIT: There is also another way to save up poly count on the terrain, I completely forgot about this!

In the RollupBar, go to Terrain and then Holes. Press Make Hole, select a radius, and start erasing terrain.

[glynnsmith]

Originally Posted by sideshowbob

iv seen another team/or guy making a scene from an animated movie .. are 3dcg/animated movies allowed now ?


thanks in advance

Nope. Not allowed.

Originally Posted by x_frame

Excuse me for being persistent but generaly i'm not satisfied with your response..
I'm a Vfx artist working in the Movie industry and i don't quite get it...
Perhaps you were too busy tryin' to answer all other kinds of technical questions that you didn't noticed what i was tryin to say.
So to make it clear:
Some guys shot over 3 hours of footage on a live action set with the cgi extentions vfx stuff actor make up and so on, later on it was edited and cut into mini-series as well as a single 3 hour ...ummmmm movie .... and so it was distributed around the different parts of the world as a different end product based on the needs of the market....
*blahblahblah*
Logicaly i come to the conlcusion that you are tryin to say that only movies on the big screen are movies (which are suitable choice for this competition)

And don't get me wrong i'm not really into blue chicks (i like the aussies better ) Anyways me and my team have countless other options indeed but the question here is the definition of "movie" and the rules of the competition so pleace be more specific

Shows like Fringe have quite a bit of VFX, but this is obviously a TV show.

Your link is a TV mini-series, which comes from a TV series. It even says so in the text you pasted into your questioning post, so really your own post answered your own question. It's not the same as saying something like Firefly isn't allowed, but Serenity would be.

The competition isn't called "Scene From A Movie And Mini-Series And Any Other Movie Picture Production That Features Visual Effects" for a reason. There's enough scope already by only allowing movies.

@HP: many thanks mate

[x_frame]

Thank you for enlightening me mate i just thought i lost my common sense
for now i guess i'll chose some real great movie and next time i'll write between the lines