The Making of 'The Interstellar Medium' #6 - Saturn's Rings

April 27, 2017

Saturn is a cool planet. It has rings, over 60 moons and is made of gasses - this always amazed me from even a young age - I remember reading 'The Magic School Bus Explores the Solar System' and then playing the computer game on my fathers computer. The rings in particular really captivated me... But we're getting a little off topic here, lets get a little more into the shot itself.

But just before we do that, this shot is actually somewhat accurate to how astrophysicists believe the rings may look. The shot takes place at the innermost 'D' ring of Saturn, which is the least dense ring.

So, this shot was to set the scene of Saturn, the next shot was fairly static so some movement here was necessary, so the rings felt like a good way to achieve this. The rings were made of many standard geometric shapes (cubes, spheres, pyramids) which were randomised in scale and vertex position, and then displaced via a displacement texture. These objects were then cloned, randomised, and had dynamics applied to them. This cause a lot of playback issues, but by separating each set of rocks (of which there were 10) into separate scene-files, I was able to work efficiently and get near real-time playback. I also rendered them seperately with depth passes as this left me more flexibility in post. Here is the C4D scene with all the ring ice (yes, they're made of ice, not rocks!) merged into one file.

The below image shows the ring texture (which was an alpha material) being used to create the shadow on Saturn's surface and atmpsphere.

In post I had to do a little masking and re-positioning of layers, and then added in a light near the top to highlight Pioneer's location. Click the image above for a more detailed view!

And there you have it! The full sequence will be available for viewing once the film is release. Thanks for reading!

The Making of 'The Interstellar Medium' #4 - Nebulae

April 27, 2017

Nebulae. Great word. This was by far the most challenging shot as fluid dynamics were something I was not that experienced with - specifically Turbulence FD (I had some previous experience with Maya's Fluid Effects). This shot was originally intended to be a matte painting, however I wanted to create something new instead of an already existing nebula, so instead opted for fluid effects. Not only was generating the Nebula a challenge, but compositing the shot was too difficult.

Now, before we get started, I am fully aware that if you were this close/inside a nebula you would not be able to see that you were inside one - but that's no fun, and I can change that with a computer! Alright, lets have a look at how this was done.

Above are the Cinema 4D scene files - in the top one you can see some of the settings I used. One of the most important settings for generating a nebula like simulation was the density dissipation. This meant the fluid would stay in dense clumps throughout the sim in certain areas based on a noise map that the fluid was emitted from. By using one light with soft shadows to save on render times, i was able to set it up in such a location that dark shadows would appear in the densest areas, emulating the effects seen in many emission nebulae, but more commonly in dark nebulae.

After colouring the nebula with a gradient in the density render settings, I was able to pick out dense areas and colour them differently, specifically darker alluding to their density. These image sequences were then sent into After Effects for post.

Both compositions had many adjustment layers and effects applied to them to tie the whole image together (The 'shy' button is your best friend in compositions like this!). For both compositions I rendered out a noise layer which was applied to a plane positioned within the nebula in 3D space. This plane was then screened onto the composition below and had its opacity reduced. This created the wispy plumes of dust/smoke seen around nebula - they rarely suddenly fall off straight into space - nor is the space directly behind them always pure black. To create a contrast from the rest of the film which features quite a similar colour palette, I wanted the film to go out with a super colourful image to surprise the audience. I was aiming for a similar effect with the close ups of the stars seen previously in the film a this point. (Remember to click the images above for a more detailed view!).

Above are two screenshots from the finished shot, and as usual, the final version will be available for viewing once the film is finished, and these images are subject to change!

The Making of 'The Interstellar Medium' #3 - Aldebaran

April 23, 2017

Aldebaran is a giant orange star in the constellation of Taurus. Pioneer 10 is on a trajectory in the general direction of this star, so it earned a place in my film. I already had one shot of a star in the film, so I needed to make this one particularly stand out.

I decided to create another close up shot, however this time using a particle system to generate huge solar flares across the surface, with Pioneer racing around the star (at a not so safe distance). Despite the clear scientific inaccuracies, I wanted something dramatic, and nothing is quite as dramatic as fireballs exploding from a gigantic orange star.

The particle simulations were done with X-Particles, you can see my set up below:

I set up multiple emissions, one major flare arcing away from the surface, and a few other more subtle ones inside the Star. Using particle groups, I was able to separate each flare and create varied dynamics for each one.

Below, you can see the procedural shader I set up - this consisted of various noise shaders animated in varied ways to get an interesting pattern across the Star's surface. I rendered this as a greyscale image and colourised it in After Effects. Each noise layer from the shader was rendered out individually, as well as a layer which was painted in bodypaint to mask areas where the particle flow was emitted from the Star.

The Pioneer model was also rendered out, and then composited in After Effects. You can see my After Effects scene file below:

Quite a difference right? As you can see I used many adjustment layers, which I can cover more extensively if there is any interest, but they mostly consist of various glow effects, lots of masking, blurs, lots of colour correction and finally distortions.

And, as always, the animated version will be available for viewing once the film is released, for now, here is a screenshot of the composited shot!

Heres what we’ll be making…