Bob McDob Learns To Fly (August 14, 2005)

[ChrisReid]

Last month we reported on Privateer themed wallpaper for The Reckoning. It turns out that the source for that scene is a neat video that Bob has arranged. Rather than take video from other sources, this is a new animation that combines various familiar Privateer aspects. It moves to the turn of "Learn to Fly" by the Foo Fighters. You can grab the 21 meg divx here.

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Original update published on August 14, 2005

 

[BrynS]

Hey Bob, great work!

The music complemented the action and visual cues well and there was a good mix of shots. Which packages did you use for the rendering and composition? Light Wave & After Effects? I really like the last shot where the camera is fairly static and slowly swings round behind the starbase.

Cheers,


BrynS

 

[Bob McDob]

Thanks for the feedback!

Actually I used 3DS Max and its built-in video post (and VirtualDub to compile the scenes together and dub the music, I'm cheap in that aspect ) The final shot I was hoping to be a great deal more elaborate (fade to Privateer cover) - actually, I was hoping for a great deal more for the whole movie, but I was hamstrung by both time and a lack of ideas (this was actually made for a school project).

 

[ChrisReid]

I still wish someone did something more or less like this and turned it into a 30 minute (60/90/whatever) feature story. Seems like it'd be a lot easier than creating an entire mod, and a big step up from fan fiction.

 

[Edfilho]

AAAw, so that was made in 3DS? I thought it was one of the mod engines

BTW, great work. very good video. I agree with Chris, It would be awesome to have a WC cg fan movie.

 

[Maj.Striker]

Yeah I'd love to do a little movie but the truth is...to make a CG movie entertaining for even 20 minutes you're going to have to have characters in the movie and that's where (for me at least) things start getting pretty difficult. Animating a character is a lot harder for me to do then a few ships cruising around...

 

[Edfilho]

why not make just the battles between existing cutscenes? take the ones in WC3 and4 and make good looking versions of the missions. It'll be probably more interesting than just recording gamplay.

 

[AD]

why not make just the battles between existing cutscenes? take the ones in WC3 and4 and make good looking versions of the missions. It'll be probably more interesting than just recording gamplay.

Making a video out of recorded gameplay is certainly challenging. I think I've managed to streamline my process enough that I'm finally becoming proficient at it. There are plenty of different camera's built in to the WC 3 and 4 engine (heck... even wc2) to make it interesting. It just takes some time and alot of patience and practice at manipulating them to get all the shots you need to edit together a meaningful sequence that is somewhat exciting.

I would love to see someone make a CG version of some of the various missions. It would make my life alot easier. Here it is, down and dirty, my first atempt at this that was posted a while back just after I solved the problem of finding a way to record the gameplay in the first place:
https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/6137
http://download.wcnews.com/files/fans/samplewc4adgameplay.avi

 

[Kilrah]

Nice work Bob McDob, I really liked this animation.

I still wish someone did something more or less like this and turned it into a 30 minute (60/90/whatever) feature story. Seems like it'd be a lot easier than creating an entire mod, and a big step up from fan fiction.

I completely agree with you. For quite some time I have this dream of a Wing Commander animated movie. It would be fantastic.

I’m giving my first steps in 3DS Max, so right now I’m unable of doing something as demanding as an animation, especially if it includes characters, however my goal is to achieve enough knowledge to do it. Obviously this will take a lot of time, as my free time is somewhat reduced, but I hope to achieve it eventually. When that time comes I hope to find some help around here, because an animation is, I think, too much work for just one person.