• READ BEFORE POSTING!
    • If posting a video, please post HERE, unless it is a video as part of an advertisement and then post it in this section.
    • If replying to threads please remember this is the Promotion area and the person posting may not be open to feedback.

watch Russia Attacks the United States!

Ladd

Ladd

I made this 3D animated video a few months ago for the U.S. Army. It's a tradeshow video for an Army organization that buys foreign weapons. They wanted eye candy to get people to walk up to their tradeshow booth. Typically these things are filled with stock footage from CNN and a narrator droning on and on.

I came up with the idea instead of showing their stuff in action, attacking Small Town, U.S.A. And beating the crap out of the good guys! Probably the only military video that ever did that.

I apologize for the size of the file; (65 meg). It's about as small as I could get without compromising too much quality.

Download first and then play...

Download Video: TSMO_0900kpbs.wmv


P.S. It looks fantastic on a high-def plasma screen!
 
Last edited:
mdifilm said:
this is really good! what animation software did you use? (if you don't mind me asking)

Johnny
Click to expand...

Thanks!

I use Lightwave, AE, Premiere, Sound Forge, Visual Basic, Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel, Deep Paint, and a whole heck of a lot of computers, a render farm, sweat, and a lot of interns too.

I also used Photomodeler, which is a program that helps you make 3D models from photographs. I had the opportunity to go visit each of those weapon systems and photograph them with visual markers so that the first run of the model could be done in PM. From there the rough models were pulled into Lightwave and cleaned up, detailed, rigged, etc. I used the same techniques for the city that gets attacked. We hired some cops and went out photographing the bridge and other places at 2:00 am, dropping giant coded targets in key areas.
 
Last edited:
knightly said:
well done...I wanna play that game ;)
Click to expand...

Ha! Funny you should mention that. They wanted to transfer all the models that were made for the video into real-time models to put into their visualisation sims, but when I told them we'd have to reduce their resolution and do some work on them they backed off.

I'd also come up with a method of having that quality of visualization within a game / war sim / trainer, but no one in the gubberment would fund it.

Thanks for the comments!
 
Someone just sent an email asking if the 3D models in the video are for sale. They are. Contact me if you're interested.
 
My Goodness. Thats alot of work. reminded me of a War Simulation game. My problem when I try and model, is I end up with a very high polycount and the mapping I use, usually eats up to much memory. There is no way I could create a scene like that on how much computer power I have. I always do things in layers and use the same camera rotation to give it the illusion that its all one set.

You clearly are good at modeling things (Im still learning low polygon characters in max), I just wanted to point out that in the begining, one of the planes casted shadow on the sky (The night sky). But i wanted to say that the car getting hit by the tank or other military vehical was pretty realistic. Does Lightwave use reactor? Thats the plugin that comes with Max to get that realistic collision effect.

anyways, Nice job. You obviouslly have a future in animation.
 
Thanks king!

Yeah, it was a lot of work. The shadow is actully cast on to the clouds above the airplane. The client wanted to show that the plane was flying below cloudcover (believe it or not, planes like that are in use by many militaries because they have almost zero radar signature, being built out of wood and cloth). So I was forced into making a shadow on the clouds. Bizzare, eh?

For that particular job, I was very, very careful with what I put into the model and what I put into texture. If there was any doubt, the detail went into the texture, not the geometry. Even then, it got to be too much sometimes, so I made a little program that would split up a scene file into multiple scene files. So each scene would have one object only. I'd render the scenes all separately, and then put them back together again in After Effects.

Thanks for the comments!
 
No problem. I dont know why a plane would cast shadow on a cloud like that. unless a spotlight was hitting the plane from below.

pl1.jpg


i saved this frame in jpg, if you want me to remove it from my website I will. I just put it there to illustrate my point.

I know that must be some atmosphere, but the eyes see it as a shadow being cast against the starry sky.

note: go to timeline 1:18



Also, I was curious as to how you made the car jump like it did when the Humvie like vehical slammed into it on the bridge. I dont know lightwave but in Max, its a pain in the butt to set up a scene like that. I think the plugin is called "Reactor". Im not that advanced yet.

also, Maybe im twisted, But i laughed at the scene just after this plane, where the car is flying past the tank trying to avoid it and the tank has its guns positioned behind it. somewhat comical and yet, if this "Red Dawn" like scenerio were to have truely happen, it wouldnt have been very funny.

Shows why we need to beef up border patrol in this country. Amazes me how laxed security is in this country.
 
Last edited:
I want to ask another thing, Im not in the Military and never have been. If the Russians were to attack us during the cold war (or even now), and came across the Mexican border, Would they actually be able to get across flying low enough? I know thats how drug smugglers get in without being picked up on RADAR. but could helicopters and tanks sneak in? How would have the russians been able to get their equipment in? Would they perhaps just slowly sneak in parts into mexico and assemble them in mexico before invading us?

Perhaps the end of the coldwar is just a ploy to lull us into a false sense of security. :(
 
You're right, it does end up looking like a shadow up against a fake sky. But the idea was that there were searchlights below casting light up on the plane, but we had to cut a scene showing the search lights, and their getting nocked out by the soldier in the church. The soldier guy is supposed to shot them out with a handgun. Ran out of time.

No problem posting the image, you and I paid for the video through tax dollars :)

And no, you're not twisted, it was supposed to be funny in a sense. I can't help laughing whenever I show it to new potential clients. It's so different from anything else the military makes. Usually it's a ten minute souped-up power point with a boring narrator: "The Blah Blah Office offers many services for the Army and can blah blah."
 
King Goldfish said:
I want to ask another thing, Im not in the Military and never have been. If the Russians were to attack us during the cold war (or even now), and came across the Mexican border, Would they actually be able to get across flying low enough? I know thats how drug smugglers get in without being picked up on RADAR. but could helicopters and tanks sneak in? How would have the russians been able to get their equipment in? Would they perhaps just slowly sneak in parts into mexico and assemble them in mexico before invading us?

Perhaps the end of the coldwar is just a ploy to lull us into a false sense of security. :(
Click to expand...

Actually, that's a good question, and the answer is yes, flying low enough in little biplanes and cesnas, they could avoid radar contact. The thing to understand is that we don't really have serious air defense posted along our border or shores.

The really big threat at the moment is from cruise missiles and UAV's. For about $500 you can build yourself a UAV that can hit any target in the U.S, and there's precious little anyone can do about it right now. The big thing in the industry that's going to start stirring things up in the congressional financing side of things will be CMD - cruise missile defense. CMD also counts UAV's and Drones in that.

A terrorist or terrorist nation could build hundreds of UAV's and cause something to rival 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, for not much money. And given Mexico's track record on internal security, my bet is a launch or multiple launches would come from their side of the border, deep inside their border.

You can also launch these things from boats, but I think that would be too risky considering our Coast Guard is doing a pretty good job of patroling.
 
Along the border...

King Goldfish said:
I want to ask another thing, Im not in the Military and never have been. If the Russians were to attack us during the cold war (or even now), and came across the Mexican border, Would they actually be able to get across flying low enough? I know thats how drug smugglers get in without being picked up on RADAR. but could helicopters and tanks sneak in? How would have the russians been able to get their equipment in? Would they perhaps just slowly sneak in parts into mexico and assemble them in mexico before invading us?

Perhaps the end of the coldwar is just a ploy to lull us into a false sense of security. :(
Click to expand...
While I'm sure that any major movement along the border is monitored, I've lived in both San Diego and now New Mexico and have been along the borders of both as well as Texas and Arizona... There is a hell of a lot of fence line with absolutely nothing there but fence.

It would seem to me that a major invasion could indeed happen with a little extensive planning and cloaking... Then, thousands of tanks and equipment could take a run at the border.

A little scary when you think about it... If you combined the above with a few ICBMs, you could try to make a go of it but I have enough faith in the government, the military, and the average citizen to think this would end up as an exercise in futility...

Still a scary thought though and if it did happen, a lot of lives could be lost in a matter of hours... And, if you combined a southern run with a northern run from Canada where there's not even any fences along a lot of that border, you could indeed have a scary situation...

filmy
 
FilmJumper said:
Still a scary thought though and if it did happen, a lot of lives could be lost in a matter of hours... And, if you combined a southern run with a northern run from Canada where there's not even any fences along a lot of that border, you could indeed have a scary situation...
Click to expand...

Not just scary, but criminal after 9/11. Practically every other country on the planet secures its own borders. China has military all over its borders. And who the heck wants to break into China? Only the severely mentally challenged.

Our politicians and bureaucrats on both sides of the aisle still can't get it through their thick fat skulls that there really ARE people out there who would love to destroy the U.S. and kill every last one of its citizens. 10-15 years ago, it wasn't a big deal that those people were out there - it was just too expensive to launch an attack against us. Not now!

You could wipe out most of the major metropolitan centers for the cost of a medium-sized indie motion picture.

(Note how I'm trying to bring all this back to indie filmmaking).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top