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Topic: animating a car chase

hello all i have a question, how do you usually animate a car chase (if you have ever done one) i need to do a big one for an upcoming film and im not sure how to do it because it happens in a city i need buildings and if i would animate the buildings moving i would run out of buildings fast even if i looped the buildings around but i want to give the impression that the scene is constantly changing i cant just build a huge set and animate a chase through that i could build parts at a time but im afraid that would take waaaayyyyy too long considering how fast they are moving
any help/advice is appreciated thank you.

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masterlego's Website

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Re: animating a car chase

I have never done one of these, but I am thinking of doing a car chase too. Maybe using green screen?

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Re: animating a car chase

All you have to do is build the front of the buildings, or whatever will be seen. Then you just have to create new buildings every time you flash through a scene, it doesn't take that long since they don't need to be detailed at all. That is what I do sometimes, but if you plan on doing an extended scene, moving the buildings and placing new buildings in on the end is about the only thing to do. Just make sure that you have the camera close enough to the set so that you don't have to many buildings in-screen at once.
Using green screen works only if you are really good at it, otherwise it looks completely junky.
Hope this helps you out. mini/wink

Last edited by GEF (July 19, 2013 (07:00pm))

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Re: animating a car chase

i would but the camera will be moving a lot and keying out the windows is something i dont really want to do

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masterlego's Website

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Re: animating a car chase

Try to incorporate some birds eye view shots where you only see the cars and the road.  That way you don't have to build as many buildings.  Doing this too much though will look lame because it will be obvious that you just didn't want to build many set pieces.

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Re: animating a car chase

GEF wrote:

All you have to do is build the front of the buildings, or whatever will be seen. Then you just have to create new buildings every time you flash through a scene, it doesn't take that long since they don't need to be detailed at all. That is what I do sometimes, but if you plan on doing an extended scene, moving the buildings and placing new buildings in on the end is about the only thing to do. Just make sure that you have the camera close enough to the set so that you don't have to many buildings in-screen at once.
Using green screen works only if you are really good at it, otherwise it looks completely junky.
Hope this helps you out. mini/wink

this will work for some scenes but i am planning some very complex stuff and that wont be a good idea like when the camera is behind the cars and you should be able to see a long strip of buildings and road mini/frustrated

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masterlego's Website

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Re: animating a car chase

0DonkeyKong wrote:

Try to incorporate some birds eye view shots where you only see the cars and the road.  That way you don't have to build as many buildings.  Doing this too much though will look lame because it will be obvious that you just didn't want to build many set pieces.

i will do this once or twice but since this is the first scene the main character is in i really want to show more of whats going on to sorta introduce him a second time

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masterlego's Website

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Re: animating a car chase

If you have behind the car shots, combine forced perspective and parallax scrolling.  Then the buildings far away wouldn't require many bricks or much time.  You would only have to have a couple building fronts that are in scale with the cars to build at a time.

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Re: animating a car chase

0DonkeyKong wrote:

If you have behind the car shots, combine forced perspective and parallax scrolling.  Then the buildings far away wouldn't require many bricks or much time.  You would only have to have a couple building fronts that are in scale with the cars to build at a time.

i dont understand what you mean so make the buildings smaller the farther away they are? that wouldnt work because they would keep getting closer

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masterlego's Website

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Re: animating a car chase

As the buildings get closer, make them bigger.

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Re: animating a car chase

0DonkeyKong wrote:

As the buildings get closer, make them bigger.

Ok well that seems very complicated because i would have to build the same building in a whole bunch of sizes mini/eek and i doubt it will turn out smooth being shot at 18fps

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masterlego's Website

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Re: animating a car chase

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIpCX8a … Tw-qUad8Qo
here's one i did. I only had 4 buildings.
what to do when you want a long strip, dont have the camera right behind the car, have it off to the side, then you can just build one side of the street.

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Re: animating a car chase

I've been planning a city car case for a few years which I'm not even going to animate for a while.

My plan is the deconstruct buildings as they exit the shot then rebuild them differently ahead of the car while animating.
This will make it looks like I have a far larger collection than I actually posses.
Though, it will be extremely time consuming.

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