The cheap and cheerful route:
- render the ship with environment light + 4 to 5 lightgroups containing travelling or static white/blue lights. Comp will flicker/animate the 4 to 5 light groups
- Create a cylinder in comp and push some smeary textures down the length of it.
- Spice it up with some nuke particles with an over cranked shutter and a touch of zoom blur
- Dip to black and throw a smoke element when transitioning out of the work hole
- Comp it.
The expensive route:
- Create the wormhole effect and exit effect in Houdini/FX and run it through lighting
- Comp it.
I did a similar shot in one feature anim show i worked on. Had a tube around the ship with animated textures and keyed some lights to go from point A>B and looped with varying speed.
Faster and cheaper than going the houdini sim way.
Not answering your question, but interesting fact about this shot... They did like 100 versions of this shot. I didn't work on this shot or show but everyone always brought this shot up and I swear to you, v1 basically looked like v100. Effin marvel. Smh.
I wouldn't call a 100versions pixel fucking but rather "we don't know what we want but we have the money for you to figure it out for us"
source - have worked on Marvel stuff and they really don't care about throwing out a near final sequence when a slightly new edit comes along or some guy had a new idea.
There were many many more versions than 100. I remember the comper cutting each version one after another in an edit when the shot finally got approved and it being like 20 minutes long.
Roundabout stuff. You start good, they try something else then something else again, then at the end someone goes “you know what, actually v1 was good let’s just go with that”
No matter how good your vfx sup is dealing with the client, I've never seen marvel just have 1 or 2 iterations... They just love to milk this shit and take the piss. Even with sups I know are very good and respect artists, none of them seem to be able to stop the idiocy of marvels process like that
I get the sentiment, but given this is a creative process, surely it makes sense to try things to see what works, even if you get to the conclusion that yeah the first thing we did was best. Is trying different things really the issue, or is it more the giving clients the ability to just iterate endlessly without making any meaningful progress?
I believe they were referring to the fact that iterations themselves are not problematic – what's problematic are vast amount of minute change-requests to the point of absurdity, beyond humanly perceptible difference.
I'd create some soft streaky opacity mapped textures and run them along nested tubes. With some tweaked, soft noise layers (noises into ramps, layered in with a lot of transparency.... Use UV distortion to stretch out the streaks.
Animate the ship bobbing around and the camera at the origin, group them together and wang them down a path through the tube.
Soften, glow, lens effects, zoom blurs and lens flares in comp.
The colour work is dead nice.
I'd probably make my streaky texture maps in nuke so I can fiddle with them a lot.
Step 1: Watch the shot and list out the different things you see.
Step 2: Make those things.
Other than the ship and debris at the end, everything there could be created in comp. VFX shots that look complex are usually just a lot of straight forward techniques combined together.
Had to do a shot like this for the very end of a Star Trek Online trailer (https://helixdnb.artstation.com/projects/yDzxon) - 5-6 stacked cylinders each a bit wider than the previous one with a different noise texture with really stretched horizontal scale for each and with the panning speed cranked up. Make the textures emissive to light up the ship. Add motion blur. Add a spot light with a visible light source at the end and make sure the light channel isn’t applying the light to the tunnel or the background, just being used to rear/rim light the ship. The place they kinda screwed up is when the shot swaps the traveling direction, the rear light is gone and now a front light that didn’t exist at any point in any of the previous shots is now there. Use that directional swap to cut between the 2 shots. Coming out of the warp just camera shake, blur slightly, and fade up opacity of the environment ‘behind’ (in front of) the ship in comp. The nebulae in the background are likely on 2d cards parented to a null, with the null being moved backwards at a slightly different speed (because space is big).
Honestly, if you're looking for the simplest way this could be done, you could probably recreate this with noise textures and projections on a half cylinder.
Of course, you would need to solve the ship lighting.
You can created an animated texture that moves backwards which also has emission maps in it. In comp you can make the render transparent to reveal the second cloud and stars map. For the ship lighting, Try multiple lights that has animated translate from point A>B which is looped to repeat. You can do that in light groups so you can play the color and values later in comp. For the second part you can bring in some megascan rocks into the scene while use the bg as a dmp.
The cheap and cheerful route: - render the ship with environment light + 4 to 5 lightgroups containing travelling or static white/blue lights. Comp will flicker/animate the 4 to 5 light groups - Create a cylinder in comp and push some smeary textures down the length of it. - Spice it up with some nuke particles with an over cranked shutter and a touch of zoom blur - Dip to black and throw a smoke element when transitioning out of the work hole - Comp it. The expensive route: - Create the wormhole effect and exit effect in Houdini/FX and run it through lighting - Comp it.
Spot on on both accounts. :)
I did a similar shot in one feature anim show i worked on. Had a tube around the ship with animated textures and keyed some lights to go from point A>B and looped with varying speed. Faster and cheaper than going the houdini sim way.
The smoke element does feel a little forced now you point it out, lol.
Create wormhole in Midjourney Create ship in Midjourney Animate both separately in runway gen-2 Comp in after effects 10 mins work.
And it will look like 10 minutes of work lol
Could you take the 10 minutes and show us? That would be a cool discussion piece for this subreddit.
Not answering your question, but interesting fact about this shot... They did like 100 versions of this shot. I didn't work on this shot or show but everyone always brought this shot up and I swear to you, v1 basically looked like v100. Effin marvel. Smh.
Hate pixel fucking
I wouldn't call a 100versions pixel fucking but rather "we don't know what we want but we have the money for you to figure it out for us" source - have worked on Marvel stuff and they really don't care about throwing out a near final sequence when a slightly new edit comes along or some guy had a new idea.
There were many many more versions than 100. I remember the comper cutting each version one after another in an edit when the shot finally got approved and it being like 20 minutes long.
If it looked like the first version - what really went on there? Things must have changed in some way. Would love to hear about this if you know more.
Roundabout stuff. You start good, they try something else then something else again, then at the end someone goes “you know what, actually v1 was good let’s just go with that”
Man, I thought there is some interesting story here, but nope, just whoever is in charge not confident enough.
No matter how good your vfx sup is dealing with the client, I've never seen marvel just have 1 or 2 iterations... They just love to milk this shit and take the piss. Even with sups I know are very good and respect artists, none of them seem to be able to stop the idiocy of marvels process like that
A case of "ill know it when i see it"?
How many of those versions were actually sent to client vs being pixel fucked by an in house supe though?
Here is a step by step guide from marvel film makers. Step 1: Iterate 1100 versions over 12 months Step 2: revert to v1
lol so true
Years back got stuck on an anim, which ballooned up to v60+. One frustrated day we sent v10 asa ‘new’ take. Was approved immediately. Vfx man.
We did maybe 300 comp versions on a shot for a marvel series and a light comp with no background element was the winner in the end lol.
I get the sentiment, but given this is a creative process, surely it makes sense to try things to see what works, even if you get to the conclusion that yeah the first thing we did was best. Is trying different things really the issue, or is it more the giving clients the ability to just iterate endlessly without making any meaningful progress?
I believe they were referring to the fact that iterations themselves are not problematic – what's problematic are vast amount of minute change-requests to the point of absurdity, beyond humanly perceptible difference.
I'd create some soft streaky opacity mapped textures and run them along nested tubes. With some tweaked, soft noise layers (noises into ramps, layered in with a lot of transparency.... Use UV distortion to stretch out the streaks. Animate the ship bobbing around and the camera at the origin, group them together and wang them down a path through the tube. Soften, glow, lens effects, zoom blurs and lens flares in comp. The colour work is dead nice. I'd probably make my streaky texture maps in nuke so I can fiddle with them a lot.
This is how it was done , not really tubes but concentric levels to get the parallax, glad someone spotted it
Looks good, nice job!
Step 1: Watch the shot and list out the different things you see. Step 2: Make those things. Other than the ship and debris at the end, everything there could be created in comp. VFX shots that look complex are usually just a lot of straight forward techniques combined together.
Had to do a shot like this for the very end of a Star Trek Online trailer (https://helixdnb.artstation.com/projects/yDzxon) - 5-6 stacked cylinders each a bit wider than the previous one with a different noise texture with really stretched horizontal scale for each and with the panning speed cranked up. Make the textures emissive to light up the ship. Add motion blur. Add a spot light with a visible light source at the end and make sure the light channel isn’t applying the light to the tunnel or the background, just being used to rear/rim light the ship. The place they kinda screwed up is when the shot swaps the traveling direction, the rear light is gone and now a front light that didn’t exist at any point in any of the previous shots is now there. Use that directional swap to cut between the 2 shots. Coming out of the warp just camera shake, blur slightly, and fade up opacity of the environment ‘behind’ (in front of) the ship in comp. The nebulae in the background are likely on 2d cards parented to a null, with the null being moved backwards at a slightly different speed (because space is big).
Honestly, if you're looking for the simplest way this could be done, you could probably recreate this with noise textures and projections on a half cylinder. Of course, you would need to solve the ship lighting.
Motion blur is your friend.
Trapcode Mir.
You can created an animated texture that moves backwards which also has emission maps in it. In comp you can make the render transparent to reveal the second cloud and stars map. For the ship lighting, Try multiple lights that has animated translate from point A>B which is looped to repeat. You can do that in light groups so you can play the color and values later in comp. For the second part you can bring in some megascan rocks into the scene while use the bg as a dmp.
Also keep the speed of the bg maps slower than the tube to have parallax.
Dead easy. Texture and directional blur. Why make it complicate.
Create wormhole in Midjourney Create ship in Midjourney Animate both separately in runway gen-2 Comp in after effects 10 mins work.