Canyon

Canyon - XSI screenshotUpdated it with a couple birds in the distance. Just from this simple animation, I am really liking XSI...

I animated the birds using two non-linear animation clips, one for flapping, one for gliding. Setting that up was much easier than I thought, as was the render layer setup. My only complaint with that was when rendering a Z-depth pass, the premultiply setting seems to be forced on. Not that I really need a Z channel for this project, but I just wanted to try it out.

The original plan for this project is below, but I never had the time to actually work on it. So, since I had a little free time this weekend, I resurrected this short animation.

I finished the textures, animated a camera, and created three render passes (sky, background, and foreground). Here's a short video clip (WM9).

An alien civilization has sent a research colony to the earth to collect soil and atmospheric samples. An outpost has been built to house 250 scientists in one of Earth's deep canyons. Built into the walls of the canyon, structures perform a variety of functions: air/soil sample collection, research laboratories, lodging, craft landing platforms and docking bays.

Shoot your own still image plate or find one from the web / a book / etc. The image must be at least 1k using a 1.85 aspect ratio (1000x540 pixels). Any canyon will do, (grand canyon, bryce canyon, arches national park and so on).

Design and integrate the alien colony into the canyon. Create subtle animation to bring the still image to life. Example animation can include flying birds, landing spacecraft, rising steam, blinking lights, operating machinery and so on.

For the rest of the information, view the thread at CGtalk.

photo
frame

Left: The original found photograph.
Above: The clean plate in 1.85 aspect ratio.
skymatte fgmatte canyon2matte canyon1matte rivermatte Mattes for various elements in the scene
sketch1
A quick sketch (without a wacom) of an idea I had at 3am. Flock of birds in the background, alien ship flying into a subterranian tube. Little pods on the side of the river, with some sort of biodome structure on the other side. The blue things are supposed to be cold fusion tanks or large capacitors or something. I also plan on adding CG water, since this will be animated.
sketch2 Another idea came to me.. some metal or glass domes in the side of the rock.