Any ideas how best to make flying crows cgi on a budget? Are there plugins for that for Fusion or other compositing software? Or would I have to make my own flying crows in Blender? Seems this problem must be common, that there would be a solution being shared or sold. I am preplanning for a thriller horror feature I have written, and it takes place mostly at a haunted farmhouse, so of course I want some cawing crows flapping around in the sky, sitting on the roof sometimes. Any ideas?
I am just doing some preliminary searching, found this site
http://www.exchange3d.com/cubecart/birds/cat_31.html
that has 3D models of a crow, raven, raven with wings extended. If I were to learn Blender/Maya in theory is it possible to use these premade models, tweak them, make animations of flying birds and such to composite into a movie using Fusion? Is that basically what would be done?
quote:
Originally posted by Joe999
Any ideas how best to make flying crows cgi on a budget? Are there plugins for that for Fusion or other compositing software? Or would I have to make my own flying crows in Blender? Seems this problem must be common, that there would be a solution being shared or sold. I am preplanning for a thriller horror feature I have written, and it takes place mostly at a haunted farmhouse, so of course I want some cawing crows flapping around in the sky, sitting on the roof sometimes. Any ideas?
Interesting, I was planning to add crows to my movie as sort of cut-aways. I happen to live in an area where crows are plentiful at times though so the CGI didn't really occur although it might be easier than tracking down a murder of crows and trying to film them without scaring them off. Of course with food as bait they become fairly bold.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
Cutaways sound like a good plan; if they're shot against sky, grass or whatever they could be dropped in anywhere without the audience knowing they were shot at a completely different location.
If you get good closeups you could potentially even rotoscope them and drop them into shots of the real location as though they're sitting on the roof in the distance. For groups of flying birds you could probably get away with using a particle system and feeding it an animation or video of a single bird flying with an alpha channel to mask out the background.
Of course if you need to see them close up at the real location, you might have problems; that would be hard to do without getting hold of real birds there.
Well for me the crows are often near the real location, just not on the days of filming (which is good because of the constant sound they make). That sound will help sell the whole thing though as I can overlap it from the cut-aways into the other scenes that take place nearby.
Still the CGI could be nice because I could have a crow or two pecking at a body or something gruesome that I'd be unwilling to stage and plan with real crows.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
One would think that this would be a common need among indie filmmakers-- CG crows that is--that a group of filmmakers with a similar need would create some open source repository of CG crow models, Blender/Maya animations of the crows, etc.
I like the cutaways idea. Cheap and easy, and as was said here the sound of actual crows at the home, etc would be annoying during recording of dialog, etc.
Well, at this point I am just exploring options, multiple ways to do this. Maybe cutaways of crows, plus some easy (relatively) CG crow(s) sitting on a roof top, moving the head and beak, add in fake "Caw".
quote:
Originally posted by rjschwarz
Well for me the crows are often near the real location, just not on the days of filming (which is good because of the constant sound they make). That sound will help sell the whole thing though as I can overlap it from the cut-aways into the other scenes that take place nearby.Still the CGI could be nice because I could have a crow or two pecking at a body or something gruesome that I'd be unwilling to stage and plan with real crows.
Maybe if I superglue some roadkill dead animal to the barn roof, sit back and sip a beer and wait for the crows to arrive! LOL.
quote:
Originally posted by rjschwarz
... it might be easier than tracking down a murder of crows and trying to film them without scaring them off. Of course with food as bait they become fairly bold.
Crows or rats, could be cool either way.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
If I remember correctly, most of the birds in the wide shots in 'The Birds' were just painted onto the negative; so there's a long tradition of faking birds in movies :).
I suppose I could nail a plastic crow to a barn roof, I wonder if a viewer would even notice if the shot was brief and not centered on the crow. Or just composite in an image of a crow or raven to footage, put the composited image on the barn roof. Cheap, simple.
quote:
Originally posted by MarkG
If I remember correctly, most of the birds in the wide shots in 'The Birds' were just painted onto the negative; so there's a long tradition of faking birds in movies :).
I would try both ways. The fake crow shot on the roof. then can try to CGI a crow in the sky above or next to the first, giving movement.
In the movie UNDEAD they did a scene where zombies in the foreground walk away from the camera. On the commentary they said these were still images that they put in frame (legs out of frame) and sort of animated. Something to think about anyway.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
Zombie crows, I love it! LOL
quote:
Originally posted by rjschwarz
I would try both ways. The fake crow shot on the roof. then can try to CGI a crow in the sky above or next to the first, giving movement.In the movie UNDEAD they did a scene where zombies in the foreground walk away from the camera. On the commentary they said these were still images that they put in frame (legs out of frame) and sort of animated. Something to think about anyway.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
Then I might suggest Zombi 3 and Zombie 5: Killing Birds both of which have some kind of zombie crows. Both are somewhat terrible as well so I would recommend netflix rather than buying them.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
Best way to do it is as follows.
Either model or download a crow, rigg it in your 3D app.
The rigging doesn't have to be great, just basic bones for the
body and wings.
Create a couple of duplicates of the rigged crow and animate them flapping their wings at different speeds and amounts.
Set up a particle system that has two or three particle systems set to
follow a single node. This node will be the object you animate in the
direction you want the crows to fly, like they are seeking it.
Use a seperate version of each of the different crows you animated to
be the object geometry for each system that is chasing the target.
3ds Max's particle flow will do this quite easily, as does maya.
Not sure bout blender, but it should be possible.
Cheers
Lewis
Nice suggestion, thank you. I will need to learn 3D modeling and particles, but I think the end result will be worth it!
quote:
Originally posted by lewistaylor76
Best way to do it is as follows.Either model or download a crow, rigg it in your 3D app.
The rigging doesn't have to be great, just basic bones for the
body and wings.Create a couple of duplicates of the rigged crow and animate them flapping their wings at different speeds and amounts.
Set up a particle system that has two or three particle systems set to
follow a single node. This node will be the object you animate in the
direction you want the crows to fly, like they are seeking it.Use a seperate version of each of the different crows you animated to
be the object geometry for each system that is chasing the target.3ds Max's particle flow will do this quite easily, as does maya.
Not sure bout blender, but it should be possible.
