Shooting A Model Spaceship

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

One of the weakest points in the 22 minute production is the way we shot the model spaceship with fishing wire as strings. Removing silver wire is next to impossible.

For the 40 minute production, I am looking to re-shoot the model spaceship with a new approach. My prop master will add a stand under the ship and paint the stand greenscreen green. Put in front of a greenscreen, the stand should vanish. I asked to make the stand long enough so we can mount it on a radio controlled toy truck and keep the truck out of the picture frame.

The cockpit glass will be repainted too for a less glossy finish not to cause a reflection on the greenscreen.

Here is the ship.

See how a glossy painted glass presented this problem?

So, we have work ahead. I think the new approach for shooting the ship will yield better results.

By the way, the ship is like 9 inches long.

 

[knightly]

Another option would be to make the windscreen a different color, so you could key it separately and make the reflection on it you want.

Clear fishing line or green thread would help alleviate the problems you're having with the suspension.

 

[IndieBudget]

Is the spaceship moving at all in your greenscreen shot ?

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

Thanks Knightly. I suggested to the prop master to paint the wires greenscreen green as well for shots of the ship rising up. There was too much wabble when the ship was moved puppet style by hand across the screen. The ship on a stand on a radio controlled truck should yield smoother movement. We have to invent a poor man's solution. A bigger budget production could have a motion controlled set with stepper motors and servo controlled cameras and stands for the models.

 

[directorik]

You're going to have fun with the radio controlled truck - talk
about too much wobble... but I'll let you discover that.

 

[knightly]

Don't move the model, move the camera... put tracking marks on the 'screen and the foreground and use motion tracking software to get your background to move correctly.

No actual motion in the model = no possibility of wobble.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

Yes we will. But it will be more like turbulence like a ship flying through the atmosphere of a planet as opposed to an uneven pendulum swinging movement.

For the 22 minute production I took bits and pieces of the takes with different backgrounds. I even pulled off a teleporter scene of the cyborgs being teleported from Andromeda.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

We can try it with ship still too.

 

[gebo]

Are you going to fine tune the lighting? It seems off right now...
Have you considered making this in CG?

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

CG is too expensive.


There will only be one scene made with CG and that is the battle in space between Andromeda and the silver demon hunter mother ship.

The second photo is not the final version.

 

[gebo]

CG is too expensive.


There will only be one scene made with CG and that is the battle in space between Andromeda and the silver demon hunter mother ship.

The second photo is not the final version.

How expensive would CG be for this? It seems real simple to make in CG. Is it just the ship moving in a straight line with planet earth on the background?

 

[knightly]

I think you may be cutting too deeply with the 'screen filter as well. There's plenty of luma value difference between the background and foreground spill... you should be able to pull this correctly as it sits.

Just use a few different 'screens to target the separate parts of the image.

 

[knightly]

http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/create-a-spaceship-part-1
http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/create-a-spaceship-part-2-of-2

CG really isn't that hard if you take the time to learn it. And Blender is free, so there's no cost to get into it.

A couple of photos of your model, and you can recreate it pretty fast in blender by just copying what you've already made. I turned a photo of a hand sketch for a building into a walk through in about an hour.

 

[Aspiring Mogul]

Looks good. When I was thinking of making models, I visited the local hardware stores for parts.

 

[gebo]

Ok I made a small animation of some spaceships passing by the camera.
I didn't model the ships, they are free models.
All the other work here was done after my last post, so it took me about one hour to make this.
It's not great... it was rushed, of course. But with a bit more work it would look great.
I can't believe such a simple CG shot could be expensive... that's why I'm curious to know what you mean by expensive.

Here's the animation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2rKf-bqNKI

 

[knightly]

Yep, then a little camera shake to the camera and the parallax shift between the foreground and extreme background will make it look very dynamic.

Run the ship toward the planet, parent the camera to the ship's motion, and shake the ship and camera with separate functions and you'll get some really nice turbulent looking stuff.

This could also be done with the model just as easily, but you'll need to start tracking your shots and give more room between the 'screen and your foreground element to eliminate that spill... maybe 10 feet or more? And what ever you're using to screen seems to be a single pass screen whereas you want to do separate core, edge and glass screens to get the best possible results.

With a reflective thing like this, you may want to try a white screen (green is used as a pure tone complement to skin tone, blue works just as well, but more clothing is blue than green)... because you're keying a black element, perhaps a white screen will allow you to luma matte the ship better than you could chroma matte it. Take the time to really adjust and flag the lighting to eliminate the reflections you don't want. Or key the window separately and add the reflections back in to your taste... the luma key would be easier to do this with.

If this were a simple thing to do, there wouldn't be specialists in the industry dong just this one thing.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

It's very over priced here in the States. Too many animators price themselves out of jobs.

I'll probably get someone in China. India, or Russia to do the space battle next Spring.

I don't do CG ships. I have to farm out that type of work.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

Too much discouragement growing up that I'll starve to death as an artist killed my growth as an artist. Too much time away from art where all my skills deminished.

 

[rayw]

Also consider the location of the lighting.

There's clearly a (strangely blue-light) "sun" in the distant foreground low on the 11 o'clock horizon with the ship being lit from what looks like the high 1 o'clock position.

Light sources need to geehaw.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

The prop master wants another stab at getting the ship done right as well. The stand painted greenscreen green under the ship seems to be a better idea than wires. We will have to light the ship for the background.