Iron Sky: The Coming Race – Sequel to 2012 Indie VFX Cult Hit

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Iron Sky: Inspiring Indie 3D VFX

As someone who was just starting out with LightWave at the time Iron Sky was going to the cinema, it was quite motivational knowing that the production had relied quite heavily on the software, as have many film and television productions on a huge range of budgets. After watching the hilarious, low budget Star Trek parody, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning (some years after it first appeared), I immediately set to Googling and uncovered the first hints of another project by the same crew underway, Iron Sky. The film was still some way off back at the end of 2008, and even though moon Nazis in clunky retro space craft instantly appealed to me, it fell off my cluttered radar. Perhaps, if it wasn’t for my interest in LW I might have again ended up missing Iron Sky for years after release.

Since its cinema debut the quirky sci-fi comedy has only growing in popularity (and notoriety), as any true cult hit should, with the trailer ticking up over 12.7 million views on YouTube. With this continued interest a sequel, Iron Sky: The Coming Race, is now in preproduction and looking for backers on Indigogo to fund the production of a script and promo reel. Rewards include exclusive shirts, script drafts, script development invites, a speaking part in the promo, and in this day of social media a very enticing opportunity to view and share the promo before it is officially handed over to the media.

So for those who aren’t familiar with Iron Sky, the films basic premise revolves around an American astronaut who is captured by Moon Nazis, who having fled Earth at the end of WWII, have been assembling an armada of massive, clunky era inspired war ships. Ensue hilarity and jaw dropping effects and action scenes.

VFX To The Indie Producers

The film’s spectacular visual effects are a testament to the power of CGI methods to transform vision to reality, and increasingly, on a tight budget. Gone are the days where VFX was the sole domain of the mega financed film, with increasingly small budget productions making heavy use of CGI. Though Iron Sky’s 10 million is not to be sniffed at, its place as a VFX heavy sci-fi still place it very much on the low scale of funding. Much of the movie’s 800 + shots were done against green screen and incorporated elements produced with LightWave, Maya, and Nuke. I won’t delve into how LightWave saved the day for the production, but you can read further details in an article published at LightWave3D.com

Iron Sky: The Coming Race

Details are light at this point, but the campaign introduction at Indiegogo implicates North Korea in the plot, which is stated to be darker and MORE EPIC. All we really know is that the writing team from the first film is back, as are some of the VFX crew and actors. And yeah, Laibach is back to score the movie again. Who’s Laibach? Well, that’s all part of a whole other world that may not be familiar to many Iron Sky fans. That is to say I assume a good number of IS fans have little or no idea about this strange music history footnote thing called industrial music – go check it out. Follow the bread crumbs out from Laibach (I don’t suggest doing it the other way around).

Anyway, we aren’t here to talk about vague and dark places in music (unless you want to?). So we know a pile of people are coming back from IS, both on and off camera – meaning we know it is going to be well scored, and packed with eye-popping levels of visual candy. We know that the producers are looking for 150 000 thousand preproduction dollars. So far the Indigogo campaign has many times eclipsed the previous failed 2011 campaign for Iron Sky, and is on track to smash the current goal.

A final draft of the script is to be completed by the end of 2014, with a first draft ready by the end of this year. The promo reel is targeted for release at Cannes film festival 2014, with shooting to be done in 2015 with an estimated budget of 15 million dollars to realise “the epic scale of the story”.

For me, 2015 still feels so far away for my next fix of comedic totalitarian fuelled space mayhem, but this time around there will be no dropping off the radar. This one is staying locked on. If you haven’t seen the first movie, do yourself a favour and go pick it up right now, and then you too can wait in excited anticipation for the end of 2015, or 16, or whenever it will be released.

And How Can I Forget The Iron Sky CGI Reel?

Not sure, but I almost did. It is amazing how much of the movie is shot against green screen. All-in-all there were 800 VFX shots – which is about half the movie! That’s a lot of CGI for an indie film.

Plant Factory Pre Release To The Sound Of An Angry Mob

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E-on’s Plant Factory Pre Release

After months of mercilessly teasing prospective customers e-on has finally announced pricing and offered up a discounted pre-release version. There is still no sign of a full release date, which is likely causing all sorts of anxiety for hungry users in and of itself. As many expected, e-on have released their much hyped product in various versions ranging in price from the quite affordable to the quite expensive. So, what’s the problem? Many e-on customers are not happy with the restrictions that come with the software such as:

  • Not being able to exchange plants/products between different versions of TPF (you/your business has licenced for all but the $1495 Producer)
  • 1 million polygon limit to the $995 Studio version of the product
  • 100K poly limit for $99 Converter product
  • Not being able to sell/redistribute content outside Cornucopia3D – could preclude game/environment applications
  • No render nodes or compositing information on versions under Producer
  • Artist and For Vue users unable to export trees as mesh – extra features with the freedom to export them revoked!

If you can afford the premium 1495 dollar version, you will have access to a very good program indeed, with the caveat that you can’t redistribute your trees. If you’re an individual or small studio on a tight budget you will be extrememely limited, especially if you don’t own Vue. The inability to export trees over 100K polygons as mesh for under $995, and then limited to 1 million polygons will likely be a deal breaker for non-Vue users, or those that heavily use other programs. The promise of a robust standalone program is looking pretty hollow to all but those with the funds to purchase a piece of software convenience priced as high as a fully featured mid-range 3D modelling/animation/VFX suit.

Do e-on expect the average user to embrace this new product with open arms? Will they? Of course, some will, but with draconian usage and feature restrictions, arbitrary version features, and a minimum buy-in of $995 for something that approaches the promise of the product, there will be a lot of disgruntled, disgusted users looking for alternatives.

One thing that is likely to win some users in the short term is the offer of a heavily discounted pre-release version of the $995 Studio version – 60% off at $395. If I had a lazy few hundred lying about I’d jump on in in an instant, but I don’t… so I won’t. Another question that comes to mind: will e-on relax the restrictions and alter the version features (in favour of something more generous) if the backlash grows, or if people simply and quietly don’t take it up? My guess is no. I think there will be enough takers to carry on as usual, but one can hope. Perhaps future versions will be more friendly to less cashed-up users – better to quietly right past wrongs than to lose face and do it upfront, right?

Alternatives time

For me, I’ll be sticking to something simpler and cheaper/free for the time being. LightWave users looking to add some green to their renders without hurting the bank can check out:

Also worth checking out for users of just about any 3D program is the GNU Arbaro – tree generation for povray (which can export as OBJ). Of course these programs don’t have all the lovely features of TPF Studio or Producer, but they will let you quickly add greenery to your scenes. And then there are the more flexible and feature rich alternatives such as Xfrog (currently 50% off) and SpeedTree too.

So, while the dream of a feature rich and affordable Plant Factory has come crashing down and made a good number of potential buyers angry, a new and exciting program has been added to the 3D-o-sphere (for those that can afford to take full advantage of it). For the rest of us it is business as usual getting by with what we have or picking up the cheaper alternatives.

Update: Since first writing e-on has removed the 1 million polygon limit for TPF Studio. One little victory for users!

Know of a neat and affordable/free plant generator? Add a link in the comments for helping of warm kudos.

e-on Software’s The Plant Factory: Trees Your Way

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The Plant Factory: next gen plant creation technologies goes anywhere

e-on’s new baby, The Plant Factory (TPF) is looking ready to rock the landscape and environment world, and could be up for an imminent release with June (2013) as the nominated release window. Exact date and price have not been publically finalised. TPF is a flexible, standalone go-anywhere application.  e-on states the program incorporates four fundamental design elements (to copy/past verbatim):

1. Multi-Platform/Multi-Discipline – operates across all CG platforms including real-time, streaming, and offline rendering systems and caters to the needs of CG, SFX, Landscaping, GeoDesign, Architecture and Gaming communities

2. Botanical Coherency – allows the creation of more botanically accurate plant appearances and behaviours

3. Precise Control – users can create plants of any desired shape, appearance, and behaviour using simple building blocks

4. Massive Populations – building on e-on’s leadership in EcoSystems™ to create landscapes containing millions of plants

All roads lead to trees

TPF has three distinct but interconnected methods for users to sink their teeth into and flora-craft to their hearts content. Any user should find one of the three methods (or a combination of any) to suits their current skills, needs, or whim.

1. Manually paint the shape of the plant – allows for quick creative flare

2. Assemble ready-made components – easiest of the trio – like connecting Lego

3. Construct everything from scratch, using a graph of nodes – the most flexible but might scare those unused to the increasingly popular node based method of working











The Plant Factory is capable of easily creating a wide variety of plant types from mushrooms to willows and palm trees, and even many things that are not remotely plant related.

TPF automatically rigs, textures (including displacement), uvmaps, and animates plants (swaying in gentle breeze to bending and twisting in storm conditions). TPF creations can be exported, for use in just about any 3D program, in many of the popular mesh formats as mesh or vertices cloud. Vue users will experience tighter integration with TPF than users of other software packages, with features like dynamic LOD for scaling detail to resolution, editing within Vue plant editor, and seamless integration with EcoSystem technology to create landscapes populated by hundreds of thousands of unique plants.

Rendering for compositing

As if all these tools weren’t cool enough, TPF comes loaded with an integrated compositing focused render engine which automatically generates and saves colour, alpha, and depth images. It supports  G-Buffer, and extensive multi-pass rendering down to the per asset and per material levels asset with the convenience of grouping into a multi-layer PSD.

The Plant Factory is exciting!

Personally, I’m excited …but I doubt I will green enough to grab a copy on launch day. With e-on’s penchant for personal learning editions (PLE), I do have hope I will be able to get my hands on a mostly functional version of the program.

TPF Story Developments

Pre-Release
Pre-Release II – e-on relaxes feature restrictions


Bring On Your Undead

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DAZ Monstrosities: Undead Fiend

Zombies For DAZ Studio

What can I say? As a lover of the undead (no, not in the literal sense) DAZ Monstrosities: Undead Fiend is more than tempting. For a long time now I’ve held off on buying undead character/texture sets because, frankly, many of them just didn’t look all that good. This beauty (yes undead hideous beauty – but not literal love) is a show stopper! Personally, I would like to see character textures starting to come out in sizes larger than the current 4096 x 4096, but as someone who rarely does huge renders this is little more than a wishlist upgrade for the market’s consideration.

Of course that would mean more work for the artists, and therefore a probable rise in product price. I only feel compelled to mention this here as the texture details are amazing (beautiful-undead-amazing), and I hate to think of the detail loss/warping on the torso when rendered at large sizes with serious morphing thrown on top. So, that is too say I’m worrying too much about stuff I really don’t need to be worried about.

Undead Fiend MorphsI’m also quite fond of the Wicked Undead Fiend Morphs too with all those gnarled, mutated and wasted details. A huge plus here is that these morphs can be combined with all other Genesis morphs so you can zombify all your custom characters and favourites. The related items like the weapons pack and poses look handy too, but I’m a traditionalist in so far as to say my zombies don’t wield weapons. Of course all zombies are undead, but not all undead are zombies so… extenuating circumstances. Character posing has been something of an undeveloped skill since I started out with DAZ, and a bit of a serial tweaker of stock poses, so I see a lot of value in pose packs.