make sure your director understands that just downloading a map from nasa and sticking it on a sphere is not going to allow you to zoom to street level - actually, manhattan is hardly distinguishable on those maps – get the highest res that is available, zoom in and you’ll be sorely disappointed – and that a google printscreen is not going to allow you to zoom out, (well, a few hundred printscreens is more like it) - it is just going to look like a lousy 2D zoom on a photograph. It’s exactly like Morten says, it’s the difficult part in between those two that will sell the zoom. And everything you can model ofcourse on ground/city level – decent hires roof imagery is not so easy to come by. I’m not a big fan of a cloud transition, especially if it serves to cut out the middle part of the zoom, going from an earth scene to a city scene. But it can facilitate the task considerably...
The camera movement is crucial - you’re likely to go from a top down (-90 degree angle) to a somewhat horizontal view – and where/when exactly you do that rotation determines what you really need to model – a couple of houses, a city block, a whole city or even the landscape around it? As for ref: the opening scene of Ted is one of the best takes on the “earth to street level”zoom I’ve seen. http://iloura.com/film/opening-sequence-of-ted-vfx-breakdown/ (video is unavailable for me but you might have more luck) Go rent it, perhaps even look at it together with the director – make him see how much work is involved. hint: if the budget is for a two week job for one person, you know what time it is . From: Morten Bartholdy Sent: Tuesday, November 12, 2013 3:06 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: semi OT: flying from space to street level Scale of your scene becomes important here, as you will likely find numerical inaccuracies in one end of the animation if you don't make sure the scale is somewhere between what is comfortable in either end. If possible, it can help you to do transitions between LOD versions of your scene in obscuring cloudlayers or motionblurred camera shakes. It requires a lot of hard work making it seamless - no satellite generated map will get you all the way in, and I have often found it difficult to get sufficient detail in the middle range between satellite texturemaps and aerial stills. Prepare for a lot of landscaping, and, going into a city with skyscrapers, a fair amount of citymodeling too. Good luck! Morten Den 12. november 2013 kl. 13:41 skrev Ed Manning <[email protected]>: Depends on so many factors -- how quickly you're moving, does your landing zone stay in frame the whole time or do you fly over the horizon to get there, can you fly through clouds to create a transition, etc. etc. Mainly try very hard to map out a single smooth trajectory and stick to it -- don't try to use, say, an aerial still from the wrong perspective for a section. Try to keep everything truly 3D -- there's a surprising amount of parallax on things like landforms, clouds and buildings when you're moving ridiculously fast. It's also super hard to match color, sun angle, contrast, detail, and noise from multiple stills at different scales. Good luck, let us see the final! On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 7:09 AM, Paul Griswold < [email protected] > wrote: Has anyone on the list done the shot where you start from space and fly towards the earth, eventually landing at street level? In this case, I'm being asked about flying in to a recognizable location rather than a generic city in the future/alternative sci-fi universe. Specifically Soho in NY. I'd appreciate any tips or warnings about what methods work well & what to avoid. Thanks, Paul
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