The sci-fi film that never was.

Daniel Skubal

Daniel Skubal

Veteran
When the sci-fest was announced, I started teaching myself motion tracking and 3d modeling. I planned on doing a UFO film and wanted to make sure I was capable of creating a semi-believable composite.

This link was created as a test with some footage I had shot previously. The program used for the model was called wings3D, and did the motion path of the model in poser, and composited it in after effects with motion tracking.

The lighting of the model and an issue with frame rates of the composite layer and the original footage kind of made it unbelievable.

I was cleaning out my hard drive and found it. I figured I'd let you guys take a look at it. I wish I would have gotten myself together and gotten a piece together to turn in, but like a lot of you, I ran out of time.

Sorry for having it compressed, my webhost doesn't allow files above 10mb.
 
Dude, that was pretty good because of the grain of the shot. You could have totally done a 50s style and make it look legit.
Rar files are a kind of zip file. Any zip program should open it.
 
Sweet! That was so totally 50s sci-fi. It was a combination of the grain and the music.

Great job!


I so need to sweet-talk one of the many obviously talented VFX people on this site to build me a animated logo. I never realized how many people here had skillz (like nunchuk skills) :)
 
Looks pretty good! I agree with the others who said it was very retro.

Only criticism I'd have would be size... based on the perspective and where it looked like the UFO was coming from, they must be some mighty small aliens ;)

I'm totally new to 3D myself... how exactly did you utilize Poser?
 
Wow, I can't believe you got Danny Elfman to record score for such a small clip. It sounds just like his previous work on Mars Attacks. ;)
 
Wow! Didn't expect this many replies so fast.

@editphish: I made the model in wings3d (just a squashed sphere with a bit of tweaking on the shape). I saved it as like a 3ds file I believe and imported it into poser. From there I painted the model gray, gave it a textural shine, applied lights on the stage (just a guess of where the main light sources would be coming from based on the video) and did motion tweens with a rotation on the model.

Once I got the motion of the ufo worked out, I exported it with a transparent background (which apparently all uncompressed avi's can have transparent video... didn't know that) and imported it into after effects.

I did motion tracking (sampling the smoke stacks on the factory in the background) and applied that data to the ufo. I masked the ufo from the edge of the rooftop and did a motion blur when the ufo pulls up and away and then did another motion blur when the camera pans left to the actor. After some minor contrast changes (the contrast was too high on the ufo so I lightened it) I began to tweak the entire video. I desaturated and inserted the vignetting plugin from magic bullet and exported the video.

After that I went into fruity loops to make a low-toned whirring noise of the ufo and laid that in, then I took a sample from Danny Elfmann's Mars Attacks score and that was that.

It's a pathetic 4 seconds, but that whole process took around 6 hours.

I think now that I know how, it won't take as long, but it's still quite grueling.
 
Thanks for sharing dj... I have Poser and use it myself for some things, but never considered using it the way you did. It's good to hear how others accomplish things using the "cheaper" software... Being I'm a long way off from affording Maya (or having the skill set to use it), it's nice to explore alternatives. Don't expect I'll be making Star Wars with any of it anytime soon (not that I could make Star Wars even with the best software, LOL), but a little effect here and there... well at least there are some options ;)
 
Man, that is neat! I don't care if it looks a tad unrealistic, it could definitely tell a story. That's all that counts.
 
I used Maya on mine but I'm far from Starwars myself. lol It is very complicated, but I've tried Poser and it's interface is just TOO cumbersome for me. Maya's interface is much more freeing and open. At least to me. I have a few friends who use Maya professionally and they teach me things. What you had was great. You should totally finish what you had set out to do. It would look so totally cool. I want to do a 1950 cheesy sci-fi horror about a giant pigoen that tramples NYC, but I'm tired of trying so hard to pull greenscreen off miniDV. I need an HVX. :( Uugh!
 
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