Street-Racing fully animated short film

[ale_x13]

Hello,

First of all, thankyou for taking the time to read this post. Now I will get to the point.

I wish to make a short film, but I need help. I wish to make this short film 100% animated, and based on street-racing with both modified cars and exotics, I will consider every well-modelled car from a Honda Civic to a Toyota Supra to a Chevrolet Corvette to a Ferrari Enzo.

My problem is this: I have limited experience in 3d modelling, I will be using some cars of my own design but I wish help. I wish to build a city, of extremely high detail and realism. I need help, donations of buildings, cars, people, trees, basically everything. I basically need to build a small world for this movie.

I am writing to you to request your help. I would like people who wish to, to donate their models, make their suggestions, and basically help me with everything from modelling to lighting to camera movement. Even script writing!

This movie will NOT be commercially released, it will be offered free with whoever wishes to host it (as long as they provide credit where due), and credit will be given for every bit of assistance (individual models will be credited to their maker, verbal help under "special thanks" etc). I expect it to take months to produce, I am willing to dedicate DAYS of rendering to each individual (30 second or less) take. I will be making a series of low-quality, low res takes to check everything before doing the final high-res take of course (plus single screens from final high-res takes)

I am not part of a corporate body. I am, in fact, a 19 year old doing a major media assignment and most work will be done from school, but I do not intend to cut corners and I believe this could be an incredible work if i can get the help i need.

There will be lots of research done to substantiate the acceleration times of cars in this movie. You may host this email on your site if you wish, for people to read and decide whether they want to chip in. I do not wish money donations of any sort, and I swear to all of you that this is not a commercial scam, and I have no wish to release this commercially (it will be rendered primarily on school computers, so even if I did want to sell it, I couldnt, the school licence makes this illegal!).

If you wish any more info, feel free to contact me at this email address. ale_x3d@yahoo.com.au

I will be setting up a dedicated email for this if I get enough positive feedback to give it the go-ahead.

Thanks for your time,

Alex

Note:- There will not be any recompense for this assistance, and any assistance is voluntary. The credit I will be taking will be from the camera angles (directing, if you will) and producing, and from any of my own models. Any assistance in these areas will also be mentioned, I will contact people as to how they wish to be credited (eg under an alias, or real name).

[DPA]

alright, i can help you out in every aspect of what you require, but i am already involved in 2 other massive projects, but yours actually sounds extremely easy to do.

i need to know a few things first though:

1. what software do YOU possess?
2. can i make this in whatever software package i desire?
3. when is the deadline?
4. how much processing power do you possess?
5. do you need human characters with speech involved?
6. how long does the entire movie last?
7. do you already have source images for the cars you wish to use in the movie? [images of top, front, right, and at a 45 degree angle of each vehicle?]
8. you probably want smoke and fire, and most likely something blowing up right? these effects take insane amounts of time to draw to even look decent, and youll have to consider having scenes that include any of these being either cut out, or just shortened all together.
9. have you got the script and scenes already drawn out, this must be done before i even touch the animation reel.

not very many catches are there? Also, i probably can't be expected to complete this within 3 months unless there is some "incentive" i am already dedicated to gentry_joey as of now, and must finish that project before i can begin to run animation scenes for other people.

also, odds are, you're gonna want about one or two more of me to get this done in any reasonable time frame.

your turn

[ale_x13]

alright here we go:

1. 3d studio max R4, lightwave 3d, (both academic licenced) and an evaluation version of Rhino 3d 2.0 which I am actually quite good with. But the project will be mostly (if not entirely) made in 3d studio max, though I am definately open to different renderers.

2. As long as I can get complete compatibility, yes. But preferably 3d Studio Max if u can.

3. Deadline is July next year (with interim submissions)

4. I am using an AMD Athlon 2600+, 512MB DDR400, Radeon 9600non-pro 128MB, Seagate Barracuda 80GB HDD on Ultra-ATA 133.

5. I am definately considering this, it really depends on how much support I can get. If I can get enough (including character models, i am no good at character modelling!) then yes.

6. 30minutes minimum, up to about an hour and a half max. but probably 45min-1hr.

7. I dont have a specific list of cars. I wish to get people to model any cars they want and submit them, and depending on quality they may or may not be used. I want to do it this way so the cars are better modelled, if people model the cars they want to model they will pay more attention to the small details. I can get source images for any cars easily enough though (shame chillouts blueprints went offline though!). there are places like suurland etc still.

8. yes, smoke fire and things blowing up.

9. not yet, again I want to see how much support I get before I put too much work into it! I dont want to put hours into a script and scenes if its never going to happen. I do have a rough idea though.

What I really wanted is something like the websites where you can download cars, people etc for grand theft auto 3 or Need for Speed etc. Where people make and submit their own designs because they want to.

I'd like to set up a dedicated forum (or major thread in a known 3d site, preferably dedicated to car models!) to deal with this. To do this though, I need moderator support and alot of help.

Thanks for your reply though, makes me think this might actually go somewhere! Also, I would like to get ALOT of people involved, the more the merrier!

Forum Thread Idea:

Street-Racing Project (major folder)
-------------------------------------------
sub folders:
Car Models
Character Models
Environment Models
Script
Special FX
Scenes
Miscellaneous

something like the above, where everyone can make their own comments and help with every aspect.

[DPA]

well, if you require a 30 minute short film, i can tell you this, i wish not to be involved with the modeling portion, rather, involved with the animation/special effects portion, as this is my strong suit.

Its going to take insane amounts of power to render 30 minutes worth of movie, as well as a sick amount of hard drive space... im talking HUNDREDS of Gigabytes.

Personally i cannot stand 3DSMAX, i hate the software, i hate the company, so anything i do, will be strictly in lightwave 3D. I can import and export .3DS so compatability is not an issue.

any scene with smoke/fire/boom is going to take nothing short of a multi GHz server if you have any form of detail or anti aliasing, so you had better start allocating power if you wish to have this sort of scene.

Your due date is July? You'd better start taking acid now, because that may sound far away, but its going to come rushing up on you and render times will take a considerable amount of your time, plan on it.

let me know if you need some help or whatever else may come across your mind.

[Soheils91]

Did you choose this assignment, because i would never expect a student to be able to do something like that. I might be able to assist in rendering power, Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB, 3.2 Ghz, 240 Gigs of space. I still dont know though. Talk to your teacher, if he/she can get you a couple of 5000 dollar computers than you're good to go, but if not, id hate you be you.

[ale_x13]

hahah yeah help with rendering would be good, ill take all i can get. also, thanks for the offered help with special fx. yeah i chose the assignment, its for media at uni, and I may also hand it in for another assignment I get in graphic design (though im not sure of the exact criteria yet for that one).

Im only gonna do a 5-10minute version for school, with lower gfx and maybe only 1024x768. the full version is for me (and anyone else!)

with regards to the 100's of gigabytes, im gonna render it scene by scene not all at once. maybe 30 secs at a time at the absolute most. then I will save to CD that file, delete it, and continue working.

i know it will take a long time to render on my setup, but with your help (and others) it can be done. and I have another (not as good) computer which I can use, so this one can render 24/7 for weeks if need be.

but soheils and DPA, if u could give me a way to contact u (besides this forum) then ur help with rendering and special fx would be greatly appreciated! though how I am going to transfer you 100's of gigabytes not even god knows!

id like this to be fairly realistic, but i dont expect anything like final fantasy! as long as the cars look good. if rendering time gets too long I may cut out the character models and stick with just car scenes. But that makes it hard to have a plot...

[dezz]

I would also be willing to give you some rendering time on my machines. They are not veryfast or powerful (that one i use for work) but I do have 2 at home the can be used 24/7 also. I will install 3dsmax on them this weekend in preperation. Let me know if I can be of any assistance, and good luck with your project.

[ale_x13]

awesome, ill probably take you up on that thanks!!

what I really need now is modellers to help out, then I can get started!

[ale_x13]

oh if anyone has any experience (or even would just like to give it a shot!) with sound editing it would help too! that is one area i have very little experience!

[DPA]

ale_x13:

its no problem for you to send me hundreds of MB, soon ill have my FTP up and running, at T3 speeds, so if you need to send me some video to edit or whatever, thats no problem.

you can get me on my email: dualpolymeractionAThotmailDOTcom

i use a 3500+ to render with right now, and i have 200GB of storage on this machine, so if you have some models, a scene, and an explosion that needs to be done, tell me and FTP me the source material, and if i start now, maybe it'll be done by next year

oh also, if you render it at 1024x768, thats a waste of pixel space, render at something such as D1 NTSC widescreen to give your film a cinematic feel, as well as cutting down on the render times. Plus, if projecting, the resolution will come out right, as most people are adjusted to seeing D1 quality film from a projector at the theaters, they aren' t going to notice that its 1024x768.