Trackmania - River

Here we go...the beginning of the end.
River is only the 1st episode of the trilogy. Here is the sequel:    • Trackmania - Limbo  

This is, by far, at the time of uploading, the Trackmania video which required the most amount of work on this channel. :)
There are hardly any shots that came out from the game like they are in the video. (not counting the LUT and grain effects which were applied to all of it).
Most of the shots required compositing of tire smoke (which was impossible to render correctly when using car reflections of any kind),
2D or 3D tracking for lens flares (thanks to Video Copilot's Optical Flares plugin for AE), particle effects (thanks to Red Giant's Trapcode Particular plugin for AE), clipping sprites correction, masks etc.

The green screen mod I made for Canyon in combination with some matte red or blue car skins helped a lot in some shots where I needed to mask the car for motion tracking or change something in the environment without touching the car.
And in comparison with the Stadium green screen mod I had made for the 20k - 42k project, I now fixed the specular and normal maps errors so you get a much more pure, matte green.

Also, in order to render tire smoke separately and add it later you can use the fog effect and set it to complete black. The fog will affect everything except the smoke, essentially separating it for you. You can then add it in "screen" blending mode later on top of the original render. The fog effect is very useful and could be also used to create a Z-Depth pass. Can't wait to play with it xd

Then of course the original resolution of the video is 1920 x 816 but I upscaled it to 3840 x 1632 just to maintain a decent bitrate on YouTube. :p

But after all, as you probably noticed, this video is not only about compositing tricks etc...this video has a story.
And even If it sounds convenient for me, I would like each one of you to interpretate it as you feel.

Not adding dialogues or subtitles of any kind was completely intentional as all I wanted was to give 2 souls to 2 dead cars and see what happens.

And it is funny how I started making Ghost more than a year ago and now River and Limbo appeared to introduce it. All because of one video...a Trackmania video.

Is it worth it?
Am I wasting my time or investing it?
Are you wasting your time reading this?
xD

Anyway, I hope you like it. :)

Thank you :D

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Music:
Oh Be Clever - River
Bishop - River

TM-Tube link: http://www.tm-tube.com/video/30061/Tr...

Mods:

"Glacier" Mod by Meuh:
http://www.maniapark.com/ressource.ph...

"Tundra Texture Pack" Mod by Macgta:
http://www.maniapark.com/ressource.ph...

Oh Be Clever's links:
Facebook:   / ohbeclever  
Twitter:   / ohbeclever  
YouTube:    / ohbeclever  
Soundcloud:   / ohbeclever  

Bishop's links:
Twitter:   / thatgirlbishop  
Soundcloud:   / thatgirlbishop  


My facebook page:   / danixks-634764303223321  

Cya :D