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3D Missile Launcher - Work in Progress **Update 10/11/10** Texturing Stage

nboy22

nboy22

Diamond Member
I thought I'd show everyone here a side project I'm working on in my free time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76rAYyfnM8I&feature=player_embedded

My objective is to create a missile launcher in the parking lot of my work. In the end, the missile launcher will focus in on it's target, and fire a missile. (If you're in Phoenix, the film was shot right at the end of the 143 highway.)

I used a Canon t2i at 1080p, brought the video clip into a camera tracking program called Boujou. From there I track the camera and get a 3D representation of what the camera is doing in real life. I then export that 3D camera solve, and import it into my 3D software. I'm using Lightwave at the moment, but I plan on using Maya for animation and the dynamics with fire/smoke firing out of the back of the rocket.

Keep in mind this is just mainly a camera tracking test, so my 3D rocket launcher and missile don't look photoreal. Later I will reshoot the film with better shadows so I don't have to deal with really long shadows


**** Update 9/30/10 ****

I was looking at my previous model and decided I wanted to go with much more detail and make it much more accurate. I decided to remodel the whole missile launcher inside of Maya, because I had originally modeled it in Lightwave.

For the past 4 days I have put in a lot of hours into this new model, and it's looking pretty sweet. It will add to the overall realism of my final piece! 😀

Anyways, here's the newest visual, I still have quite bit of modeling to do. Next stage will be Texturing.

mayarender4.jpg


**** Update 10/3/10 ****

It's been a long weekend modeling, but I have finished the model now and only very minor tweaks might be made from here on out. The next stage is texturing this beast. It should definitely be a challenge!

Here are some renders of different angles.

Maya_Render_Final1.jpeg

Maya_Render_Final2.jpg

Maya_Render_Final3.jpeg

Maya_Render_Final4.jpeg

Maya_Render_Final5.jpeg

Maya_Render_Final6.jpeg



**** Update 10/7/10 ****

It's been a long past few days. I am really training myself hard on texturing now. I am using new techniques that are much more advanced than the previous techniques I've used before. Usually this gun has a nice clean metal look to it, with maybe a little bit of grease smears in certain spots, but I decided to make a grunge look, like the gun has been worn and is a bit older, and has been sitting outside for a while.

Anyways, here's what I've got so far, the rest should start coming in a little bit faster now that I'm getting my techniques down:

mayarendertextured8.jpg



*** Update 10/11/10***

Here's an update of where I'm at with texturing, check the next pages for more pictures of the textures. OP is limited to 10 images!:


*** Update 10/21/10***

I finally finished the texturing after much tweaking and getting all the really small parts done, there was a lot of them! 🙂

Here are the pictures:

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/nboy22/Missile_Launcher_Textured_1.jpg
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/nboy22/Missile_Launcher_Textured_2.jpg
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/nboy22/Missile_Launcher_Textured_3.jpg
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/nboy22/Missile_Launcher_Textured_4.jpg
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/nboy22/Missile_Launcher_Textured_5.jpg
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/nboy22/Missile_Launcher_Textured_6.jpg
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/nboy22/Missile_Launcher_Textured_7.jpg
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/nboy22/Missile_Launcher_Textured_8.jpg
 
Last edited:
MagnusTheBrewer said:
How long did the rendering take?
Click to expand...

For the rocket launcher, rocket, piece of wood, and shadows it took about 4 1/2 hours with the default rendering engine from Lightwave. It has global illumination too, so that increases time.

For the final I want to have like 9 render passes done in Maya so I can make everything photoreal and really tweak it in post.
 
wow, thats awesome!

nboy22 said:
I used a Canon t2i at 1080p, brought the video clip into a camera tracking program called Boujou. From there I track the camera and get a 3D representation of what the camera is doing in real life. I then export that 3D camera solve, and import it into my 3D software.
Click to expand...

thanks for the explanation, very cool stuff. can't wait to see more
 
augmented reality is so cool, although I guess this is a little different because augmented reality stuff is done in real time.

Out of curiosity, do you know much about how the camera track is solved? I do research on autonomous driving, and solving for a camera track like that is effectively how a robot would navigate given only vision and no other sensors. Of course, you have the constraint that your solution has to be able to run in real-time, which looks like a stretch for boujou. Looks like Vicon bought them recently. We have a Vicon setup in the lab for the smaller robots (Vicon is a system of cameras that track markers in space, used in hollywood for mocap, used in academia to provide "truth" pose for small robots, including things like segway based robots and quadrotors).
 
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LordMorpheus said:
augmented reality is so cool, although I guess this is a little different because augmented reality stuff is done in real time.

Out of curiosity, do you know much about how the camera track is solved? I do research on autonomous driving, and solving for a camera track like that is effectively how a robot would navigate given only vision and no other sensors. Of course, you have the constraint that your solution has to be able to run in real-time, which looks like a stretch for boujou. Looks like Vicon bought them recently. We have a Vicon setup in the lab for the smaller robots (Vicon is a system of cameras that track markers in space, used in hollywood for mocap, used in academia to provide "truth" pose for small robots, including things like segway based robots and quadrotors).
Click to expand...

I know what you're talking about with Vicon, we actually had them come to my work and set up a mocap system for Nintendo. Nintendo was doing a mocap shoot for a baseball game.

I don't know the equations that Boujou uses, but I do know that it samples tracking features in the shots and determines their depth and the parallax between those points. From there Boujou will take those parallax data points and solve using some sort of equation.

This stuff is definitely not in real time, it takes a while to get the camera track solid and then it takes a while to model all the things that go into the scene, etc...
 
slayer202 said:
wow, thats awesome!



thanks for the explanation, very cool stuff. can't wait to see more
Click to expand...

Thanks! I will be posting more as time goes on, my boss and I are writing up a little bit of a storyboard for it so it's all well planned. Pre-production is the name of the game and failing to plan is planning to fail in this business. 🙂
 
Tweak155 said:
Looks cool. I'm super picky about CGI stuff though so it clearly looks fake to me 😛
Click to expand...

True, and I agree that's why this is just a preliminary render. I am the same exact way and I have to be that way because I'm the artist making it, so analyzing every little bit of reality is what I will do in the final product.

I will do render passes that allows me to change reflectivity, color, opacity, etc inside of a post program like Adobe After Effects, and that's where you should be impressed. I still have a long way to go and we still have to shoot some more film, but I will keep updating this thread because it seems like some people are interested in seeing more 🙂
 
slayer202 said:
how would the technique here differ from when you do the missile(a moving object)?
Click to expand...

There's two types of tracking. One type of tracking is camera tracking, which you see in the shot in the OP. The other type of tracking is called object tracking. An example of object tracking is where let's say the character needs to be holding a sword, but all you have is a cardboard proxy object with tracking markers on it. The actor/character will hold the proxy object and pretend they are really holding the sword. The proxy object will then be tracked with object tracking, and replaced with the cgi version of the sword.

In this shot, when the rockets/missiles fire off, I will only be using camera tracking, no object tracking. This is why my boss and I are writing a storyboard/script now, because if you don't plan for the movements of the missile, it will be hard to show the missile in the shot.
 
slayer202 said:
ahh interesting. so how do you do it without object tracking? just a lot of work and detail?
Click to expand...

Well, as long as I can track the camera, I can just put the missile inside of the missile launcher, and fire it off and add smoke dynamics and things of that sort. Essentially the rocket will just be moving away from the camera in 3D space. I will definitely post a whole walkthrough of the entire process so everyone here can see exactly what I do. I will try to also add voice commentary and give you guys a general overview of the processes, because there's a lot to know!

I'll just have the missile firing off into the air and it will remain in the view of the camera. The only time I would need object tracking is if I was going to have someone loading a 3D missile into the 3D launcher by holding it in their hands.
 
**** Update 9/30/10 ****

I was looking at my previous model and decided I wanted to go with much more detail and make it much more accurate. I decided to remodel the whole missile launcher inside of Maya, because I had originally modeled it in Lightwave.

For the past 4 days I have put in a lot of hours into this new model, and it's looking pretty sweet. It will add to the overall realism of my final piece! 😀

Anyways, here's the newest visual, I still have quite bit of modeling to do. Next stage will be Texturing.

mayarender4.jpg
 
Homerboy said:
That's the MODEL?!?!
Wow.
Click to expand...

Yup 🙂 I'm still in the modeling stages.. I've spent an incredible amount of time on what you see there, like 10-15 hours of pure modeling. I'm making sure I catch every little detail, down to every single bolt!
 
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