Cinema 4D Space Battle WIP

Testing some space atmospherics and special effects compositing with Cinema 4D. All Animation, Planet Earth model and small ship model done in Cinema 4D r11.5; big ship model done in 3DS Max 2010; explosions, film grain, and other compositing done in After Effects CS5; and final compositing with music and sound FX done in Adobe Premiere.

Next I will be trying to add pyrocluster explosions, a better sun, and some background atmospherics.

[hellenictech]

Amazing work! I will take inspiration from your animation, to make mine. I had 4 videos about space battles but i erased them. I didnt like them. I want to make better.

[arjunyg]

Awesome. I don't really like the flames, but I can't quite imagine what to put instead; what do they do in star trek/star wars?

[Darksagan]

Wow and here I was being all proud about a few nice 3d text I made in Cinema 4d.

[MindbendStudios]

@11tyleragent11 C4D has good built-in methods for stars: In the material editor, under Color, click on the arrow next to "Texture", then select "Surfaces" and then "Starfield". You can also use a "Noise" texture as well for a different approach.

[MindbendStudios]

@wh15tler Thanks for the comment! Certainly Pyrocluster is nowhere near as good as Afterburn with 3DS Max, but I've sort of taken it on as a challenge for myself. I've spent about a week so far with Thinking particles and the Pyrocluster shader and the results have been pretty good so far. I've also been doing a little documentation with my experiments, and if all goes well I'll post them.

[whtler]

animation is nice. big ship too. and those explosions are simply beautiful. i wouldnt recommend you pyrocluster explosions though... pyro is not so realistic, and it takes too much time to render it. and the biggest problem is time that you will spend much time to get something that simply can not beat this. or at least that is just my problem :) hope you will figure it out and maybe share with class :D

[BlackPantherElite]

@MrVitaspy :O, think you are right.. thx dude :D

[MindbendStudios]

Haha, that's quite alright, professional astronauts and scientists are welcome to voice their opinions about space atmospherics. :)

[MindbendStudios]

@StuntmanJake The stars was just a high contrast noise texture on a really large sphere surrounding the scene, and the sun was a light with a lens affect added although I should have done the sun in After Effects using Optical Flares instead. The explosions and fire were all assets from VideoCopilot's Action Essentials 2.

[MindbendStudios]

@Arjunyg Back in the day (pre-2000), even for films like Starship Troopers and Star Trek TNG, they used the same technique. Only difference here is that they had better elements to work with and probably had a demolition stage to record and key specific explosions for their scenes. I only have Action Essentials 2 to work with, so that severely limited my scope. But this was just a test for bringing 3D cameras and other elements into AE from Cinema 4D. Thanks for commenting!

[MindbendStudios]

@wonderwall135 I'm not sure the entire render time, but it was rendered scene by scene over the course of a week on an i7 Xeon 2.53ghz, 8gb DDR3.

[MindbendStudios]

@11tyleragent11 The lasers were done in After Effects. I animated lights in C4D and then added Optical Flares in After Effects, and animated on/off at the point of firing/collision.

[StuntmanJake]

Hey how did you do the space atmosphere? I am trying to get a good star field effect with C4D and I am having trouble. Also, is all of the fire in this done with C4D or did you go out side of the program to with like After Effects or something like that? The explosions obviously look like Pyro, but how did you do the fire?

[MindbendStudios]

There are lots of waves in space, but 99% we can't hear. Obviously, what I have here is incorrect, but that's not the point of this animation...

[MindbendStudios]

Methanol gasses and heptane, even NASA rockets have been lighting fires in space for quite a while now. It just acts and reacts extremely different than inside our atmosphere, certainly NOT like in my test animation thought :)

[SaisamyStudios]

You, are epic! could you make tutorials per chance or is that pushing it?

[vanhakaveri]

Did you add explosions in cinema 4d or after effects?

[DrFrasier]

@MardeyStudio There is oxygen inside the ships you know :)

[creativevissioncom]

this is epic, i have seen your tron stuff too. just one mistake. there is no fire in space

[BlackPantherElite]

In space you cant hear any sounds! So why do the explosions make some? :D:D Just kiddn, nice animation !