Solving Horizon in Aerial Animation.

[gnuhong]

Guys, mind sharing tips and tricks on how to solve horizon (boundary) line in aerial animation? Are you normally only create few surrounding buildings and use bitmaps for the distance ones? Any website show how to do this?

Many Thanks.

[hyperfocaldesign]

Hi Gnuhong,

I think it depends how aerial you are going. If you check out good old google images you can see some good reference from that. If you are literally aerial, like plane altitude and the surrounding terrain is fairly flat you could get away with an atmospheric haze/fog effect. This could be Photoshopped in after the render if it was a still but since you say animation, you'd want to do it in your 3d package. If you're closer to the ground as you say you'd want to use horizon alpha textures, photo backgrounds or 3d models. What combination and how you put it together will be unique to your image.

 

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Jay

[mwhite]

You asked about filling the horizon with buildings, however got3d.com has some alpha masked treelines that you could perhaps use to fill in between any buildings.

 

There is also a program called 'Citygen' which randomly generates grids of 'block' buildings that could be used if they are in the distance.

 

I have the program 'somewhere' and I would have to search for it if you are interested. You may also be able to find it here by doing a search.

 

Attached is a sample output. I believe it has probably been updated since I created this graphic and hopefully the buildings are orientated better.

 

Finally, there are models of manhatten and detroit which could perhaps be used again, depending on your elevation and viewing distance.

 

Not seeing a sample graphic of your project makes it difficult to propose specific solutions.