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I remember a nightclub on the High Street called The Cat's Whiskers - maybe the same place but rebranded.
My center of interest on High Street was a toy shop..It had a display of Hornby trains.. I think I flattened my forehead permantly staring through the glass. This was WWII and there were no metal toys. It bordered on cruelty to minors.
No Streatham Locarno and Streatham Ice rink were 2 different places. the Locarno had several different names, finally ennding up as a bingo hall before being finally demolished.
http://landmark.lambeth.gov.uk/siteimages/pic05/fullsize/04918.jpg
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1256/2592/1600/Ice rink.jpg
Chohole,
My memories of the Locarno are from the outside..as shown. My older brothers and sister went to the dances there.
Don't be so sure about that...
Looks like the Locarno that you remember was the same place I remember as The Cat's Whiskers - interesting article on its history, it got demolished ealier this year.
http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2015/04/the-dancing-is-over-as-streathams-famous-caesars-nightclub-is-demolished/
Wow, Barafundle Bay is gorgeous. Reminds me of the California coast, or Hanauma Bay in Hawaii.
In fact, that image of Barafundle Bay would make a nice, realistic background for compositing some 3D, to make it look realistic.
(just trying to steer the discussion back to the topic of the thread...I don't want you guys to get in trouble by the "after all, this is a Carrara forum, for discussing Carrara" guys...)
Thanks Phil,
I was too young at the time, but I sent the link off to my brother who went there frequently.
Getting back to the thread, before we get our knuckles rapped. I think Joe's thread on compositing is very applicable to the the making of "Anomynous". It seems they not only assembled the 3D components in a compositing application, but actually used them in 3D space. I was quite impressed with the water simulation in Fusion. Although I have used Psunami in AE, what they were doing was more sophisticated at least for river water. I wish I had the time to learn Fusion...I lust after that river water.
I know some of the people on the forum have generated some compound waters (waves and foam for open sea) in Carrara... However to me it is not convincing compared to the real thing. Foam is not something that pops up in a bubbly randomness at the peak of a wave but something that is wind generated and goes through its own dynamic cycle of birth and decay. Actually the 3D water I have seen from any application does not show wind generation at all..but resemble wave generation without wind. I am not faulting Carrara, I don't think any 3D water at present, atleast whcih I have seen, can generate true wind driven water. It has been tried by using a motion texture maps on on top of computer water ... and this can work if you far enough away. I don't see why eventually a convincing computer wind driven water cannot be resolved - I just have not seen it yet. I think the only way to go at present is to use real water compositied with the 3D assets. I hope I am wrong on this..as I would like to generate my own realistic water.
Summing it up I think "Anomynous" is a great lesson in compositing.
msteaka, there are a number of really good water simulations out there for simulating water, wind driven water, etc. My favorite is RealFlow. Here's one of the first youtube videos I quickly grabbed, but it does a nice job of showing some of what you can do.
Like you say, a lot depends also on how detailed you need and how far away you are...
Joe,
That is an excellent breaching of a killer whale...But I would not call that wind driven water. I don't have a good example but I came across this footage which might explain. These are small waves but you can see how the wind pushes the surface of the back of the wave until it reaches a critical slope, then the wave front collapses and starts to foam. The foam continues through a cycle until it is left behind by the deeper wave rhythm which is moving faster than water surface. It is almost as if the surface of the water is left behind by the deeper and faster circular motion of the wave. As you probably know, Wave Mechanics is a very complex field. I don't pretend to understand it, but I have done some reading on the subject - atleast enough to get me in trouble. The above is my visual impression of the process. and certainly not the way it is described in the terms of physics in wikipedia below.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Ocean+calm+waves+&go=Submit&qs=n&form=QBVR&pq=ocean+calm+waves+&sc=1-17&sp=-1&sk=#view=detail&mid=08A0C8F512DA5899469E08A0C8F512DA5899469E
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_wave
As I said earlier, I don't see why this cannot be simulated in a computer.. I just have not seen it yet. You can see in the 3D max, Real Flow that you directed me to, that they are starting to nibble at getting breaking waves right.... Also the clip of a trawler with its streaming wake is very good. Thanks Joe, for pointing these out.
Thanks. Yeah, I know a little about wind driven water. Grew up near the beach, I'm a long time surfer and Master Scuba Diver.
And yeah, you can do a really good simulation of it in a number of apps, like I said. I'm sure a little searching will give you oodles of videos showing the particular effect you're interested in.
And you can find tons of "breaking wave simulations" in many apps, even Blender, which is free. It's not nearly as difficult as it may sound. The only challenge with existing apps is the shading of the foam/white water. Water sims tend to use zillions of small particles for the simulation, which is perfect for simulating the breaking waves part.
And I do want to give a shout out to Mr. Evilproducer. I think he recently did a fairly nice simulation of what I call "light chop" in an ocean, where you get small breaking, choppy waves that form bits of white foam. From a distance, depending on your needs, it can work fine.
By the way, I do want to point out that often the missing component in fluid sim example videos is that they are often designed to solely show the raw results from the 3D app.
But what is done in the professional world in feature films and such is that those simulation results are taken into a compositing app and various effects are added to improve upon the results. Stuff like motion blur in the breaking waves, and a ton of other effects can be used to make a HUGE difference in what you see. Especially since fluid sims are basically particle sims with zillions of particles. And often you can see the individual particles. Post work is often needed to make that blurry and foamy and stuff.
I guarantee there are some feature films out there with water sims that you will be absolutely certain are real images from a camera, not simulations.
So don't make the mistake of judging what you can achieve solely by what you see others post.
And while we're on the subject....
I've found the #1 biggest mistake in simulation of wind driven waves on large bodies of water is that some folks don't understand that the waves are generally the result of wind, and that wind is generally flowing in ONE direction. Instead, I often see water ripples that are random noise-generated.
Yeah, there are complications due to the complexities of water, but in general you want waves and ripples to be mainly in ONE direction.
Just sayin'....
Joe,
I know a little about wind driven water myself. I race a sailboat, was in a rough and wet race on Wed night - I'm still drying out. I have seen a lot of water through the years and in a lot of places. I supppose this can give you a very critical eye. Actually I think it is very tough to simulate wind driven water... As I said I have not seen one yet - atleast one to come close to real footage. I played around myself with Psunami a few years back, making my own wakes and trailing foam....It was not bad, but could not compare it to the real thing. Since then I have decided to use real water and real wakes with 3D models - but always looking for a simulation breakthrough.. Anyway thanks for the links, Time to shut down and get some sleep.
Just keep in mind...there's a difference between "perfect" and "believable". It's the same argument around unbiased renderers. A lot of people claim that realism = unbiased renderers. And I always respond that the film industry has used simple, biased raytracing for their 3D renders for decades, and the movie-going public (including you and I) finds it 100% believable. "Anonymous" is a great example.
Now, if your goal is absolute photorealism, then as you say, why not just use a photo? That's what a lot of people do. Or you get as close as you can, and most of the time it works because most of the audience doesn't need 100% photo realism, they can often work with 90%. As long as you know what you're doing and know some tricks and magic and sleight of hand.
I have looked at films where CG water is used, and watching some of the "making of" videos, it as Joe said. You will have a main water mesh or fluid simulation, then there is usually some composited foam and spray. I also notice a lot of times that additional elements are added depending on the scene, such as blowing mist or fog.
Msteaka, my mind is blanking on the name of the phenomenon that it sounds as if you are describing. I think it has to due with the surface tension on the water. Skin is the wrong term, but you could think of it loosely in those terms. It is similar to the process that allows water skimming insects to skate across the surface of the water.
evilproducer,
I think the term you were seeking is surface tension. I agree you have a mesh and then a grey scale is used to shape the mesh. The grey scale is manipulated so that it miimics the oscilation of waves. These waves thus generated resemble waves which are left over after the wind that created them has ceased. They can be described as swells. Most of the wave generating software does a fairly good job of creating this type of wave. The difficulty lies in mimicing the real world wind driven water that created the waves in the first place.
If you think about a flat calm large body of water ..it is like a sheet of glass. A wind starts to blow..and soon there are little cats paws ripples on the surface. If the wind remains blowing say at 2 to 3 miles per hour, the water will retain these ripples but nothing larger will develop. If however the wind continues to increase, the wind will cause these ripples to develop into larger wavlets and if the wind continues even more, small waves will begin to grow. The small ripples will continue to be generated but will now be on the back of these small waves. The effect is as if the wind is rubbing across the surface of the water, which it is. Of course the water is effecting the wind also. Where it transfers its energy to the water, it is slowed down, and the now faster air above,in a leapfrog manner, moves over this slower air until it too to drops down to push the water. In other words the wind and water are in a symbiotic circular movement . It is amazing that something so simple can be so complex.
However the surface of the water can only move slowly as water is dense. The energy from the wind is converted into a rhythm-wave or pulse almost like sound waves. These rhythms move in a circular fashion below the surface almost as if you could roll a paint roller or ball under the surface. And like sound waves only the pulse moves and not the water molecules. There will come a time when the wind blowing up the back of the wave causes the front of the wave to become steeper and steeper, until the crest begins to collapse into foam down the front of the wave. But because the rhythm or wave pulse is faster than this surface effect, the foam gets left behind and the rhythm-wave moves on. You can see this effect in the series of images taken from this clip.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Ocean+calm+waves+&go=Submit&qs=n&form=QBVR&pq=ocean+calm+waves+&sc=1-17&sp=-1&sk=#view=detail&mid=08A0C8F512DA5899469E08A0C8F512DA5899469E
I realize that this not a very good explanation but hopefully the images and video will make up for it. The mechanism is the same for larger waves.
I don't see whay this could not be mimiced in a wave generating software.
I liked what you did with Carrara in generating a wave system and a foam simulation. It was a very creative approach and as Joe, said, it could work if viewed from a distance, say an aerial shot. I have not played with Carrara's wave system yet..I have worked with Psunami... I just wonder if they are sophisicated enough to do wind driven water or do we have to wait for another generation of improvements.
It can. Like I said, do some searches, starting with Realflow. You'll find boat wakes, big breaking waves, small breaking waves, you name it. And keep in mind that big breaking waves are small breaking waves with just a different magnitude setting...
Add some compositing techniques and you can get whatever effect you want. Unless you want some sort of absolute perfection, which might be difficult to obtain, and much easier to use a real video, like the one you referenced.
Which begs the question... is there some reason why you want to generate this effect in a 3D app rather than just using a video like the one you referenced? If there's no "added value" to using your own generated animation, then why not just use an existing video, or take one yourself if that's possible?
By the way, if you want to see some of the latest of what's available in water sims, here's a good overview of the work ILM did in "Battleship" a couple years ago. They used their own version of fluid sims, and made some advances the the technology for the film. Good stuff.
Basically, you can get whatever effect you want, because like I said before, they're simulating a zillion individual water particles, so whether it's a big crashing wave or choppy seas or whatever, it's all do-able.
I think that is the first time I have read "good stuff" associated with that film!
Joe,
Its not absolute perfection I'm after, after all I am only using 640x360, but having the ability to have fly over intergrated footage option, which CG water can offer. To use real footage of water, I am restricted to a camera on tripod or stabilized footage clips - any shots of paning, zooming etc. I find to be too much trouble to work with. I know I can track and paste in AE ..but I find the results disappointing.
The link you gave to ILM footage was quite interesting. From what I could gather they were using a lot of real water footage in "camera Projection" then replaced it with CG water. I was surprised to hear how much time they spent on some shots. You would think with all the computer farms available at ILM that the effects would have been completed a lot quicker...but they spent montyhs apparently on a few seconds. Makes me feel that I should stop complaing about how long I spend on a scene. They mentioned that they have a very large "water library" of real water footage...I would love to get my hands on that.
The clip of the battlship approaching the alien ship is worth examining. The water is typical CG water..no wave driven water. The bow wave/wake I thought was ok but nothing special and nothing better than was in the movie Titanic..and how long ago was that. All the effort seems to have gone into making the cascading water and that is impressive. I am not trying to be critical of the movie, it was obviously a huge and difficult task, but watching it made me think how much power we have in our own single computers at home to create some powerful scenes ourselves if we use fully and creativly the tools we have. I have seen some good modeling on the forum..if it was combined and composited with real footage, the way these large outfits like ILM do..I think it might be quite impressive also. I think it is the artful compositing that separates the ILM' from us more than anything else. They know when to use 3D and more importantly- when not to.
Hahaahaaa !!! Good point
The list of movies that, IMO, have very well done VFX but are terrible movies overall is a mile long.
The unfortunate attitude of many of the producers and investors in feature films is that cool visual effects are all the public wants. And equally unfortunately, much of that is true. There's a lot of crappy movies with cool VFX that have done great at the box office.
All VFX houses keep a library of footage and images and textures and stuff they've produced and can re-use and compositing nodes they've developed and CG sims they've done and so on.
As far as a "water library", it likely includes video they took of real water for a previous production and water sims they've saved and stuff their R&D folks made and so on.
And as far as the "wind driven water", if you're hoping to find a video example of exactly what effect you're looking for then I think you'll be disappointed. Sounds like you have a VERY specific effect you're looking for. The wave effects I've referenced ARE, I believe, the wind driven water effect you're looking for, but with only slightly different settings in the fluid sim, and possibly some compositing techniques to get exactly what you want.
In any case, for the realism you require apparently, and if you don't want to go for real footage, you'll probably have to look at a high end fluid sim. Which is expensive and will take a lot of work. But without that, maybe you're out of luck, or will have to lower your expectations a bit or come up with some cool compositing techniques using Blender's fluids or something like that.
A good artist doesn't necessarily need good software
I wouldn't go so far as to say Battleship was terrible. Just light on plot, heavy on plot holes, and some of the actors sole motivations seemed to be the paycheck. Regardless of plot stupidity (Prometheus anyone?), we don't watch movies for high drama all the time. Sometimes we just want to see heros kicking the shit out of the monsters. (and the scene at the beginning where America loses to Japan at proper football was worth the price of admission alone!
) And be grateful it wasn't a Michael Bay film, cos it would have been 30 minutes longer!
And people like us can always justifiy these films as "CG effects reels with variable quality linking material" LOL
I'm just glad there are movies like Red...and Ted..out there
Or Minions. I kept thinking, "Extend Stonemason's London a bit, and..."
Speaking of VFX in feature films....
I was talking to some buddies at Siggraph, and one of them was talking about the work that Cinesite did on the new movie just released this year called "San Andreas". Some guys were very impressed at the VFX that was done, including a tidal wave. BTW if you haven't seen it, San Andreas is an earthquake movie, where they destroyed all the buildings where I live...
Anyway, it caused me to finally check out the movie last night and watch it. And in true "disaster flick" form, the movie was absolutely terrible. 2 hours of destruction, and a plot and acting that were also absolutely terrible, IMO.
It starred "The Rock", Dwayne Johnson. Need I say more?
Anyway, the VFX done by Cinesite (a London-based firm) and also a German/LA company called Scanline were VERY impressive. And they did a tsunami hitting San Francisco using Scanline's in-house fluid sim software called "Flowline". It's similar to RealFlow, and for some things it's, IMO, much better. And it also can be used in Maya.
Anyway, it's kind of strange to see places near where you live and have visited many times be destroyed in a very photorealistic and incredibly accurate manner. Aside from the physics (falling buildings, etc.) being a bit too fast, it was very well done. I believe they actually scanned parts of San Francisco and LA using a technique called "LIDAR" to generate accurate models of everything.
So if you're interested in the present state of the art of VFX in feature films today, you might check it out.
For my money, I would watch Interstellar. It's a better movie, although it is a bit plodding and preachy at times. There is a water world sequence that is pretty amazing.
The very interesting thing to me, was that about the time it was released, the physicist that was brought onto the film as an advisor, and ultimately a producer, and who did calculations on the behavior of light as it is distorted by the immense gravity well of a black hole, released a paper on the effects to some peer reviewed scientific journal, along with the visual effects crew that was responsible for programming and running the simulations based on his calculations.
If you haven't seen the film, buy it or rent it on Blu-Ray, and make sure you get the Extras disc where there is a more in-depth piece on the science behind the film. The science extra is still rank with marketing hyperbole, but there are some very interesting things from modern physicists about how they are thinking about space/time and gravity, along with a more thorough discussion on visualizing the black hole and some of the surprises over how it looked.
I very recently watched Interstellar and thought it was quite poor as a film - they did manage to make the space flight seem to last years though...
There was another disaster type movie recently (I don't remember the name of it), which had a light aircraft pulling physically impossible manoeuvres between collapsing skyscrapers. Nice effects but totally unbelievable. Things like that often ruin movies for me.