Need opinions! Maybe, possibly, a Super Mario startup video.

[TheClassicalGod]

Deleted previous posting in another section of the forum when I realized it was in the wrong place and reposting here. Sorry for the mixup. lol

So, on and off, I've been messing with 3D animations for a long time now. I mess with Cinema 4D a few things for a couple of hours maybe a few times in a week and then I stop for like a year or two then find myself interested again and start messing with it again and stop and start and stop and start and.. well.. you get the point. I'm back at it again. I'm not amazing at it, but in my hunt for learning new things, I find its best to practice with things you love. That usually leads me to something music or gaming related. Since i've been using Launchbox non-stop and with the boom of updates that are constantly happening, I figured it would be cool to make some stuff people may or may not use and be Launchbox/Bigbox related rather than just be some one off render that will sit on my storage drive to maybe be seen again in another two years.

I started off with learning to create instances of objects on a spline, then adding dynamics to it, then having them render with random colors and that ended up being what I used to throw together the BigBox Particles startup video a few weeks ago. Mainly did it for myself, but threw that up on here in case other people might like it.

So... I thought it'd be interested to do a few more with different game themes to them. I spent the last few weeks messing around here and there with a Mario centered one in mind and I keep putting things together that i'm not entirely happy with. Honestly, i'm just not skilled enough to do everything I want. lol But I can do SOMETHING. I got the main parts set up and kept changing everything else. Different stuff in the background. Outside. Inside. Tried putting it in different rooms. Different lighting. This. That. UGH.. Ultimately I just don't have the skill to do what I want. I don't know how to rig models yet, so it'll likely end up being outdoors and the only real thing I'm good enough to do is keyframe some rotating coins. lol Here's what I am thinking of settling on, but I don't want to commit to a full render until i'm really sure since even a 3 second animation can take hours upon hours. I single frame test render last weekend and it took 25 minutes for just one frame. One frame... lol There's 30 frames for 1 second of video. lol

Not that i've sufficiently babbled on about nothing...Sorry about that.. lol Here's a single frame of what i've got right now. Like I said, I've already keyframed the coins to rotate in place, but it feels a little bland to me still. If anyone has any input or ideas, i'm more than willing to change this or even do multiple variations from suggestions. Every little thing ends up being a learning experience and can only ever be a good thing. =)

[shadowdragon]

I love the Idea of a Mario start-up video.   I'd start by having a little more contrast between the coins and the background.  For some reason, I find that the B in particular doesn't really stand out much.   I know the feeling of not having the skills to make it look like what you want.  I'm in the same boat too.    What are your plans for the animation of Mario, Luigi and the blue shell (if any)?

[TheClassicalGod]

That image is a little darker than it actually ended up being. Here's an updated one. They may not look contrasted enough at first but like you can already see with the upper right corner of the O, in motion, each coin catches brighter spots of light depending on its angle and placement of light sources. I started render last night. 3 seconds at 480p. Took about an hour and 23 minutes. I'd imagine 1080p at least triple that. Uploading to youtube right now to give you an idea of how it'd look. I forgot to put an effector on the grass,  so it doesn't move the way I wanted it to. lol Oh well.

As far as movement of the characters, not much I can do with my current skill. I guess the next thing i'll be looking into would be rigging character models so I can change their poses and whatnot. If anyone has the skill to do more, i'll gladly share the scene file.

I'm actually thinking I might bring all of this into Unreal Engine instead of C4D. That way I can just do a screen recording of something realtime at 60fps that can easily look just as good as this current 30fps render rather than waiting hours upon hours for 3 seconds of animation. Shouldn't take long to migrate it over. I'd just have to reinstall UE4 and redo texturing. Then check into UE4 character rigging. I might even be able to just scale down the default bi ped rig and not have to worry about keyframing movement poses. Hmm... 

Again, any ideas are definitely welcome. Nothing about this is solidified at the moment.

480p test render on YouTube

Edited April 10, 2017 by TheClassicalGod

[Massatomic]

Thats looking pretty sweet, it is amazing skills to be able to make each and every one of the videos for lb.

looking at your video i feel that mario and luigi should be headbutting the coins out of the box to write big box. Then Lakitu comes across the sreen dropping his spinies every where forcing the heros to run off the screen

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakitu

 

[TheClassicalGod]

On 4/11/2017 at 8:56 AM, massatomic said:

Thats looking pretty sweet, it is amazing skills to be able to make each and every one of the videos for lb.

looking at your video i feel that mario and luigi should be headbutting the coins out of the box to write big box. Then Lakitu comes across the sreen dropping his spinies every where forcing the heros to run off the screen

 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakitu

 

That.... actually sounds pretty awesome. Definitely a great idea. I just started a new job yesterday, so i've got less time to work on this, but i'll definitely be working on it and seeing if i'm able to do something like that. I was always more of a fan of the side scroller Mario games over the 3D ones, so even though they're 3D models, I think the way i'm trying to do this is the best of both worlds.

As with the last one I did, I'll probably do two versions; one short and one longer. There aren't many start up videos outside of my first one that were short and got to BigBox faster. Most seem to like the longer videos, but there are a few that just want something cool to happen as a quick splash screen and get right to the games. I can definitely appreciate both mindsets. Unless I can do something that happens quickly to spice it up, the shorter one will probably be the current one with some music. The longer might end up being your idea.

I had this whole big scene in my head where everything was all light and happy, Mario and Luigi were doing their thing and out of focus in the background, you see Bowser in this HUGE scale.. like.. Galactus, devourer of worlds scale, stomping toward the them and the main screen. Then they're basically(but not actually of course) crap their pants, Bowser would laugh all maniacally, his shadow would darken the scene to black then the Launchbox/BigBox logo at the end. lol That would take forever for me to learn everything to make that happen..that and I don't think everyone is as evil as me. lol So, your idea seems better. lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactus

[Massatomic]

Nothing wrong with a bit of evil, a dark start up vid could be cool! Glad you like the suggestion, its just how i felt that scene would play out. 

I like the side scroller to, you could even skip the coin big box and have the heros run up a hill and grab the flag, and the fireworks from the castle spelling big box. Or have a heap of blocks and mario jump on a "p" reveling big box turned to coins in the middle.

never heard of galactus but from the wiki he sounds proper evil!

[BlackSol]

Very nice I would use it.

My only negative is the letters in "big" are too far apart. Especially when the letters "box" are closer together.