My version of the Videocopilot Earth Zoom

[mrcooban]

Yeah I wish there were more VFX opportunities in Northern Ireland

[planetmirth2001]

@mrcooban Maybe one day :-)

[planetmirth2001]

@LiinxFTW Thank you so much for rating and commenting. There's no denying Adobe After Effects is a wonderful application :-)

[cocobirdcoco]

had to watch this again, its the best version i've seen!

Faves!

[planetmirth2001]

Thanks cocobirdcoco, much appreciated. There were a few things that I wasn't happy with about this version - so I uploaded a"Planetmirth Earth Zoom - version 2" which is slightly better. I did do a version 3 which corrects the "sidewinder ducks" - but I think two versions of the same effect is enough, so I don't think I'll upload it ;-)

Thanks again.

[Rulitop]

awesome!!!...I'll try to do somethign like this...maybe in the next weeks...looks really god!

[planetmirth2001]

Thanks Rulitop. The video reply above fixed a couple of things that didn't quite work in this version. Apart from the ducks, which still fly sideways - I have fixed them, but didn't want to post 3 versions of the same effect :-)

[planetmirth2001]

Hi All,

Finally created and uploaded a new, and hopefully improved version, it's called Planetmirth Earth Zoom - Version 2.

I added a few cars that no-one - except possibly GmuesFilm will see ;-)

I've substituted a helicopter for the glider & replaced the Jet with a better perspective one. I've also tried to improve the timings so that they appear at better intervals.

The only other change was to remove the motion blur - not sure if that was a good idea or not. Let me know what you think.

[VFXTests]

good job!

there are so many people who just take a tutorial from videocopilot and make something bad out of it but this was even better than the original! (apart from the perspective of the jet ;-) )

[planetmirth2001]

Many thanks VFXTests. I always try to add something new to the basic tuts - great as they are. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

The differences I think that worked best were my use of CCSphere on an unwrapped Earth texture and two cloud layers - instead of one still Earth with the clouds combined.

The changes that may or may now be better were that I made mine a lot slower, with less motion blur & obviously all different images.

And I think we all know the differences that didn't work ;-)

[GmuesFilm]

Really nice ! With a little help from andrew ? :-)

The birds and the Jet are flying sideways, maybe you want to fix that ...

greetz

[planetmirth2001]

With a lot of help from Andrew :o)

You're absolutely right. The Jet's perspective's completely wrong - as is a hangglider & ordinary glider that are almost invisible. I'll definitely try to find better perspective images for these.

The birds should be OK though - these were done in Poser Pro and rendered out from the Top camera, so in theory the perspective should be alright. I'll have a closer look & see if I can work out why they look though they're flying sideways.

Thanks for the feedback.

[planetmirth2001]

I think it could be the camera's rotating motion that is giving the impression that the birds are flying sideways.

As for the Jet - it's even worse than I remembered it. It's gotta go! :o)

I think I've some 3D planes somewhere, so I'll render out a still from the top and upload an amended version of the zoom.

I may give it a while though - in case anyone can find some other things that need changing.

Thanks again for the constructive criticism.

[GmuesFilm]

in case you need a boeing or some other planes in 3d - write a pn. I have some aircraft 3dsmax models, if lightwave supports importing .3ds

greetz

[planetmirth2001]

Thanks for the offer GmuesFilm.

I've managed to find a decent one.

I think I'll also replace the glider with a helicopter - it'll give a bit more motion and I've got a couple of good helicopter models.

Originally I was going to put some cars driving along the street. But they would go out of vision so quickly I'm not sure if anyone would see them, so I'm not sure it'll be worth the effort.