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How would I recreate this shield effect. (video reference included)
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Wow. Sounds like ill be able to do this in C4D afterall, which is the way I wanted to do it.
I am using version 9.1.
The only thing I might have trouble with, is the wiping upward effect of the shield rising upward. Im guessing that will have to be done using the alpha channel with a gradient. Correct?
Im also assuming I could export just the shield (multipass) into AE to use certain glow and shine plugins to get the effect im after.
This is all new to me, so this will probably take some time to get it to look as good as the video does.
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yeah. amongst other ways. But these are good paths to try first.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Chris,
I tried the suggestions you made, and I noticed that the noise in the transparency channel isnt providing the “liquidy” distortion that im looking for. The noise is only turning the sphere black and white.
Should I be using AE to generate a displacement map? I just used the basic noise that comes with C4D.
Another thing I was thinking about…. what if I just create a water/liquid shader, and then apply that to the sphere. Then add some luminance, and glow? Just an idea.
I havent had much experience playing around with C4D shaders, so you’ll have to excuse my lack of understanding.
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Okay, now i’m in front of C4D:
On your Sphere texture, turn on the transparency channel and set the ‘Refraction’ setting higher than 1. 1 does no distortion but higher numbers give a different index.
Now, the texture here is how much transparency is on any given part of the model. You may want to stick an animated gradient or fresnel effect on it.
BUT for the actual ripples, turn on the bump map. In that, select the noise shader.
Now render. You should see a ripple surface that distorts the interior like water does. This is the primary key here. From here on, it’s what effects you want to add and how you want to mask it and animate it using the shaders.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Also, there is a ‘fresnel’ button in the transparency channel next to the ‘refraction’. I’d turn that on, it looks better and more realistic. Since your shield is “Glowy”, I’d also turn on ‘additive’ there in the same window.
Then turn on the glow channel and set the threshold and color right. You’ll see the shield effect starting to take shape. Once again, it’s how you animate the parts to give a good result.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Thanks! I’ll play around with it some and see what I can come up with. One thing I noticed when I first started, was that everything was very big. (as in scaled to high) The lines going upward that has most of the glow was huge.
Basically, I just added a 3 color gradient in the alpha channel. I think I was just on the wrong track. These shaders can be tricky to a begginner.
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On the gradient, make it so the change from black to white is tiny. So most of the graph is black, then a tiny change to full white, then the rest white.
Crank up the turbulence on the grad too so it’s a cloudy looking edge.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Ok, I was able to create a transparent “liquidy” shield with some noise in the bump channel, and it looks really nice. I had to play around with the refractive alittle, in order for it to look right. (It was distorting my background way too much. But now ive got another problem.
I have some lights in the scene that are acting as a fake GI, and now, the textures on the city have a noisey dirty look to them. Im assuming the light passing thru the distorted shield is producing these marks on the objects inside the shield.
How can I fix this?
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Make sure in your render globals for anti-aliasing to be set to Best and not ‘geometry’. The refraction is low res and nasty when not in ‘Best’ mode. Try a quick render with the Best settings and see if that fixes it.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
I set the AA to best, but the noise on the textures is still there. I tried setting the refractive value back to 1, but that didnt help either. If I set the refractive value any higher than 1.10, it distorts my background (sky) and doesnt look right.
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