Well the guys who did that model have stopped working on Snowblind due to conflict with paid jobs, but I can try and ask them... And yes, snowflakes are always welcome here ;P

Congratulations from Bastian and me, this really looks quite sweet :D
The only thing that should be changed is the fact it would probably look much better to froget about the zoom and instead move the camera towards the bike! Because now, it looks like the trees would stop moving. This is optically correct of course but it looks weird and also, a "dolly movement" looks more expensive than a zoom ;P

And a liiiiiittle detail is that I think at one point it's pretty obvious that the same tree appears on both sides of the road, only flipped. Maybe you have an extra tree or just exchange that with the other one you used? Or maybe better yet, slap them both on top of each other and you have a third one ^_^

So but overall I must say that this really is much better than I expected! It may not be up to Michael Bay standards yet, but it definitively has very solid production quality, and that on such short notice... really impressive my friend :D

Hannu, the zoom was done "in camera" with a zoom remote... So the only thing we could do is add a second digital zoom in post on top of that... which would be a vote for the option that we do all the zooming here, later...
And yeah about the speed; of course I didn't think of the fact that then the landscape has to be double the size ;P Well I dunno, maybe 150% speed will also suffice? Or we speed the whole thing up in editing...?

Hi Sami, yes of course you are right in all points! In Snowblind we do this stuff all the time to give a campy "Grindhouse" feeling. So everybody is driving around in the snow with bare arms, people don't reload their guns (do they ever?), shot wounds to the chest aren't anywhere near lethal and so on and so on... oh yeah, and of course riding a motorcycle in the snow without spikes or anything. This is just our idea of creating "seventies bad" with contemporary means ^_^

The only "explanation" that is given for this is a corny intro speech that states that this is a parallel universe where people's bodies have "adapted" to the cold... hehhe... this will probably put some people off but if you accept this "comic book reality" it should be fun =)

Especially considering you having never done anything like this before, this result is pretty marvellous! I think the "floating" feeling is mainly caused by the shadow - it goes down WAY too much and is so diffuse, that it creates that land speeder feeling ;P If you move the shadow up so its level with the wheel or turn it off altogether, it should look better. I can also provide you with a side shot of the bike - oh no wait, you already have that! So use that, then it doesn't have to be so blurry.

The next step to make it all work better would be to introduce really thick ground fog, like the dry ice stuff used in 80s rock shows... make the bike sink in almost to the headlight and we have one less problem :D

The landscape is so detailed now it allows me to nit-pick... hehhe... I'd try making it all a little flatter, but with more random bumpyness. So the hills are maybe only half that high, but have many little dents (if this isn't totally hard to do)...?

Oh yes and one major point is: make her go faster, I think it can be twice as fast to give more excitement to the viewer :D

And lastly, and this is a factor that also plays into the "floating feeling", is that the zoom doesn't really match. But I'd suggest that you render the whole thing a bit bigger without zoom and then we track it on... Or I can try and export some tracking data, maybe this can be made to work...?

Thanks,
KMH =)

NICE! Okay that one is done I'd say :D And you're right, the job of president doesn't sound as desirable as it once did... Assassinations, sex scandals, plane crashes... better to remain an unpaid slave so things like that can't happen ;P
Oh and I almost forgot: Thanks for another outstanding shot!!!

WEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeee..... AWESOME! Hannu for president!!!
For me, this is another instant strike. I mean you *could* try to make the avalanche cloud like a third less high so it doesn't cover them up entirely (I'm thinking of the cut to the next shot) and also the shadow of that snowcloud could be 20-30% more transparent.
Okay now excuse me, I have to look at that shot like 50 times more until i get bored 8D

Hehhe I just reused the wheel box splashes as "front wheel splashes" in an unscheduled Biker Girl shot that just came up... Looks pretty nice! So it's another Hannu-Style instaclassic in the hall of fame... without you even doing a single click. Now that's work efficiency ;P

Cool, got it! "Can't wait for another one", eh? Thats the spirit!!! :D
Guess I'd better cook something up then...

Yeah I know how it is, sometimes you tweak and tweak and nothing seems to go forward. In most cases though, you're just so deep in the shot you don't see your hand before your eyes ;P And this also applies to this shot I think, as the result is totally BRILLIANT! The hood popcorn is great, just gives the whole thing a good healthy touch of realism. And the splashes from the wheel case are almost photo-realistic, they really look very, very good. So congratulations on another great example of Hannu-Style (TM) :D

If you don't mind you can put the files into the shared folder right away, then I'll wrap the shot up tonight or first thing tomorrow =)

Overall: Another nice job! I'm not so sure about the "hood popcorn" though... maybe it would work with some motion blur. But I think one really wonders where it's supposed to be coming from and for a 1.5 second shot, there's maybe too much going on. I'd leave it in the setup though, just reduce the size of the crumbs to maybe one third. Also, you could leave away the "splash" and just have the crumbs jumping around on the hood already, being pushed to the sides by the headwind. So basically make them smaller and get rid off the stuff flying up in front of the grill /hood ^_^

Apart from that, splashes, snow and the "micro dust" going over the windshield are all great.

As an exra wish, maybe you could make some splashes constantly pouring out of the wheel housing... as if the road were a bit wet? Because I think this area looks especially fake ;P

Hmm but again, the shot is 90% there in record time! You're just too fast, now I really have to find some more stuff for you to do before your addiction wears off ;P

YEAH NICE! Much better! Another one down :D

Yeah mee too... of course the foley guys were like: WTF is going on there?!? When they saw the sequence without effects ;D

So in the latest version, I think those blobs of dense fog rushing to the right look strange. I think they should me more diffused and move towards the camera. But I think you can leave those out and we adjust the fog amount in comp to match it to the shot before.

So the last thing that could be done would be more motion blur to the falling crumbs... everything else is great, again I especially like the "dust whirl" and the snow around the boot is genius anyway :D

Yeah I don't know, some things feel weird these days... YouTube has also been changed so the balance of the world seems off somehow ;P

Anyways, I'm, looking forward to the new version, but the old one is quite good already. We threw all the shots into the sequence yesterday and it's really quite impressive :D

Nice, I had written a comment but it seems it didn't work somehow...? Anyway, I had written that I don't think the snow piles look too bad, but I agree the new ones are way better :D Then I also mentioned the clipping error at the tip of the shoe but that seems gone now too. So the only question is, don't you think there'd have to be even more dust on the first couple frames to match the shot before it?

It's pretty cool as is, I don't think it needs much more except that the dust cloud from shot c still has to be in the front, diffusing slowly. If you absolutely want to push the thing to 2012 level, the snow around his foot could "cave in" after a few frames... you could displace the edge down by 1-2 pixels for example.

In the manner of a nit-picky art director, I'd say the piles of snow could be a bit higher. I think the one at the back wheel could go two thirds up to the muffler, and the one in the front could be just like the back one is now. Of course we'd have to do an extra matte for the foot in comp then - but from the looks of it, we need to do that anyways ^_^

While this shot isn't as spectacular as the others, it looks very nice nonetheless :D

just WOW once more - I just love the wind simulation effects. I think I'll have to rewrite the whole script for Snowblind 2 to get much more of these effects in ;P So this one was an INSTAKILL I'd say ^_^

Nice, have a fun time :D

LOOOOOOOL this is sooo awesome! Hannu, you are the absolute techno-overlord :D Could you please give me a sample of your DNA? Then I'll take that to the clone lab and as soon as 10 clones are ready, we can start work on Avatar 3 ^_^

Great - Another shot down! On our side there wasn't any slouching either, we wrapped up the principal keying work today! So now there's only those "special shots" to do as well as some cleanups and improvements... and after that, we go right on with the 3D version ;D

Hehhe actually I think this is pretty ingenious... Suddenly "Snowblind - The Theme Park Ride" doesn't seem far-fetched at all :D
Don't worry about colour and weather style, "ve kan fix dat" as the austrian engineer said in the T3 bonus clip ^_^

I think a little detail to make it even more awesome would be if some of the crumbs would bounce off them and work their way upwards, until they reach lap-level and then fall off to the background. Kind of like the "hood popcorn" from the truck shot, but instead of the hood it would be the bike's body and the actor's legs.

Well I dunno if this is possible if you had so much trouble with this... I'd thought the shot before this was much harder, but then again what do I know about particles ;P

So crumbs or not, I think this once again friggin' rocks :D

Perfect! This is just plain beautiful! Totally beats me how you did it but you really turned the crap we gave you into solid gold ;P

So THAT'S A WRAP! :D

(and on to the next shot, hehhe)

Yes Seppo you are right, that is the bike stand that is only used when you get off. We had it out for safety reasons, but as you guessed, it will be removed digitally =)

This is madness! No! This is Sparta!!!
Awyawyawesome. The snow crumbs are basically photo-realistic, nothing more to be said there. The dust flying up is also pretty good and the little spash-streams at the edges of the wheels work nicely - even though there is some little clipping issue with some bright triangle being formed... well minor cleanup stuff I'd say. So, to top the whole thing off, I think what it really needs is a (very soft) shadow for the bike so you can judge the angle to the slope... but we can do that in comp I guess... Another great element would be if the bike leaves a really strong trail, or rather two, for each wheel. We'll definitely need that for the wide shot(s) that are coming up for this sequence... I think you can reuse your other trails for that though.

All in all: EXCELLENT!!!

Well thanks... surprising how much you can do with a couple of wooden boxes and green paint ;P And those two guys make a great team throughout the film ^_^

Hi Hannu, I've put up another shot for you. Not the totally horrible ones I mentioned, but a challenge nonetheless ;P At least it's some kind of a change - as this time, they're driving a truck ^_^

This shot gets a lot of cam shake later, which helps to make it look half bad. But of course, it still needs the fantastic Hannu-Style (TM) snow splashes and exhaust smoke. Also - to make things more interesting hehhe - it would be totally great if you could create some environmental fog and snow that engulfs the whole vehicle :D

Think you can come up with something?

Nice! I'd say that does the trick. In the final shot, we will fake the wheel spinning by using animated radial motion blur... I think ; )

So another one down... seems that wasn't really a challenge for you Hannu ^_^

I promise for next weekend, I'll give something REALLY hard ;D

I'm holding my breath ;P

Hi Hannu, the splash wave is very good again, but it seems that wasn't the hard part from what you're saying ; )

I guess the problem with the wheels is that the texture on them is too coarse/soft so together with the motio blur, it lust looks like one giant soft brush stroke. So I guess you'd have to paint a texture first that has much more detail. You see this little indents in the tyre? I think probably there should be snow sticking in those, so its mostly really bits that are like 2 by 4 pixels at max. And in some spaces there could also be larger chunks... that could be flying off as the wheel is spinning, in case you're going for the VFX oscar or a PHD in major pixelwizardry ;P So the result should look more like fine streaks and not like one giant blob covering the whole wheel ; )

When in doubt, I'd try just making much smaller patches of snow spread across the wheels very sparingly and turn down the motion blur a notch...

Don't worry, there's more where that came from ;P

Now THIS is even better than awesome! I'm running out of superlatives here ;P

These little chunks of ice really top the whole thing of. I think it's perfect now! Another happy customer :D

...or should that be: another one down, and on to the next ;P

Either way; next time I see Roland Emmerich, I'll give him your number 8D

Nice, the blocks are definetly gone :D The chunks at the bottom right seem to just "pop away" and disappear instead of landing on the ground and staying there... but I think they're not that important, as the center of attention naturally is with Biker Girl ;D

WOW awesome stuff! This shot is going to be totally intense with all the other stuff (cam movement etc) added! One really has to watch it several times to get all the little things going on 8D

Well I think it's almost perfect. The only real "mistake" I can see are some lo-res blocks near her foot... but probably this is just some rendering issue?

One thing that could be changed is this: There's a great effect of little snow-pixels being spread out over the bottom right of the frame. Only I think you cannot really see these little bits in flight... Or are they just disappearing in motion blur? Anyways, making those more visible "in-flight" would be the only thing I can think of in ways of improvement.

Really, totally awesome work! The tracks are brilliant! And the little chunks flying out back! nicenicenice :D

Thanks again Hannu. These bike shots were always the only thing where I thought: This looks cheap! (sorry guys haha) but now the problem is fixed because of your work! We watched it some days ago and the people thought these shots were TOTALLY new designed! I think nobody thought anymore it looks bad. I give you three thumbs up! oh no i have only two! haha ;-P

Sure, that would be great :D it's not that urgent though ^_^

Erm no actually we have no footage and that's exactly the problem ;P Just imagine a battery of invisible fog machines puffing clouds of fog directly onto the camera... Basically like the effect you already did, but over and over again... Y'know? Or imagine a car driving through fog banks at night or something... We want to use it as a backdrop for introductory titles and text charts, giving a quick explanaition on the world the film is set in. (like in 80s Sc-Fi hehhe) The text will be black on that light grey cloudy background, and after it's faded out it becomes clear that the camera is flying through the clouds over mountains, only to dive down towards the Governor's fortress where the first scene begins :D

Great! I don't mind the drifting, it's all going so fast noone will notice ^_^ Cool so that's another finished bike shot :D

BTW this dustcloud that is blown over the camera has given me another idea... For the intro of the film we need an effect that looks as if the camera would be going through clouds over the mountains. Hannu could you make a clip that is about 30 seconds long where fog keeps coming at the camera over and over again? We've thought about using stock footage, but I really love your effect, especially the end bit where you see grains of snow flying very closely over the lens :-)

I totally agree that it would be nicer if the bike could start slower - the problem is that we had to film the bike completely static. In reality, if the bike accelerates, the suspension would move, it would go down a bit in the back, the riders would be pushed back a little and so on and so on. In our shot, NOTHING happens. And to hide this fact, we need a super sleek kickstart and lots of motion blur - otherwise it totally looks like a cardboard animation... believe my I've tried it. So I guess what we've got now is quite good :-)

Still I wonder Hannu... couldn't there be a *little* snow sticking to the rear wheel? If it's not a helluva lot of work I'd really like to see this ^_^

Hannu you are on the way to the top of Snowblind members with most karma :-D good work!!

Wow great! The lens splashes and displacement are truly an ingenious way to make the shot more lively and also cover up its shortcomings ;-) Still since Jani mentioned the alignment of the front wheel I cant help but stare at this ;-) So we'll definitely fix that in comp.

The displacement also is a definite must, it just looks so cool! Unfortunately I think we have to do it here because we'll probably change stuff around in the background. But if you give us an alpha layer that controls the depth&position of the displacement, we can use Saphire Distort (it was called "Lens" before version 4) or flame's displacement map. Either way we can recreate the look you designed. Really nice!

Oh BTW I found one minor thing that you could change though; don't you think the bike's "old" track should look a little more rugged from the beginning, in the vein it does in the end?