Hi i have created a picture in VUE 5 Infinite of some vipers (battlestar galactica) flying across a desert. However they look stationary at the moment.

1. i need to export the VUE 5 image to PS i then want to blur the desert as if the ships are moving really fast (without blurring the ships).

2. I then want to create some engine burn (afterburn) & smoke for the 3 engines the viper has.

can sombody please help me with this.

Thanks

This would be easier if you had posted an image of what you have so far... A lot depends on the amount of detail and level of antialiasing in your render... I have never worked with vue, so my advice could very well turn out to be totaly useles, but what the hell; you never know... 1) If you only want to blur the background, I suggest you make a seperate render of it, without the vipers. Open this render in ps and apply a motion blur to it (Filter; Blur; Motion Blur...) You could then render the vipers with a complete black background and select them in ps, then copy/paste them on the blurry pic. Selecting the vipers by using the lasso and zoom tool will take a lot of time and effort and may still look crappy after all... 2) There are many ways to create an afterburn and smoke. The best way to do this would be to use a 3d app like lightwave and use particleFX. But I'm asuming you want to use ps for this... One way would be to use a photo of a flame from a candle, apply a subtile gradient in another layer on top of it to ad some color efects and use the erase tool to ad some transparancy at the end of the exhaust. Try the vue forum before giving all this a go, they might be able to provide a much easier solution to your problem. Grtz

In Vue, when you choose Final quality or better, click the bottom left button that immediately becomes available - "G-Buffer / Multi-pass options".

If you decide to click the Generate G-Buffer stuff, you can create a Z-Depth channel that you can use for your blurring to mask your model and just do it to the landscape below.

If you decide to click the Generate Multi-pass Buffer stuff, you can create object masks (as well as everything else listed) and select your model to have a mask created for it.

Or you could do both.

For best results I've had - Mikewave - #1 was exactly right!

You can also use the Magic Wand tool in PS to select the black if you go that route, go to Select>Inverse Selection, and then you'll be able to move the viper by itself or create a mask for it.

As far as the afterburn (guessing you don't have another program with some version of Particla FX - if you do, again, follow Mikewave's advice on that one), what do you specifically want it to look like, and what is your realism preference?

Painting it can look great or a little cartoony if you're not too good at it (I'm not, but I don't mind the non-realistic look for my stuff). Never had much luck with the volumetric materials in Vue, but you can create an Alpha Plane with the smoke/afterburn/engine heat and render it in Vue - works pretty great for clouds and mist! And then at least you'd have a starting point to modify or paint in Photoshop for added realism.

Hope that helps - good luck!
-Lew ;-)