Rollercoaster Sneak Peak - Underwater City

Finally found further concepts in my mind. This is the entrance to the underwater city, from which the ride through the sunken town will begin. I'll create the motion-path in the next days to finish the most of pre-viz work. Afterwards I'll begin to refine, detail and fill the scenery.

Motionpath Test / wip

I just tried out several techniques to animate the camera for my rollercoaster. I ended up with a combination of 2 motionpaths. One path is for the actual camera, the other path is for the orientation of the camera.

Work in progress screens.

Rollercoaster - Key Elements: Launch

After deciding for the Underwater Theme I started thinking about the key elements of the ultimate rollercoaster ride. I watched some (rollercoaster-) videos for track-reference and googled a lot of images for underwater-reference. I came up with those elements that should be in the shot:

• High-Speed Launch
• Massive "Airtime" Jump
• Speed Verts
• Loops
• Corkscrews
• "Hills"

• Underwater/Above water (jump)
• Different sea levels
• Tunnels
• Underwater town

1. Dry Room 2. Visor closes 3. Room being flooded

Rollercoaster - 1st thoughts

After playing Theme Park and Rollercoaster Tycoon years ago it's time to craft the ultimate roller-coaster by my own in 3D.
Task: Design and model the ultimate roller-coaster. Set in either outer-space or underwater or in-between...

First decision to make is if I use the outer-space or the underwater theme. Therefore i made a comparison-table where I wrote down some important key elements (and more) and filled it with my first thoughts regarding to the certain topic.

• Space
• Key Elements: stars, planets, spaceships, asteroids, nebula clouds, explosions
• Mood: dark, black, space, forsakenness, partially funky
• Famous role-models: nearly every science-fiction stuff
• Architecture: angular

• Underwater
• Key Elements: floating particles, fish, bubbles, swarms, seaweed, refractions on ground, waves, corals, anchors, rusty waste, scuba stuff, boats, submarines
• Mood: dark, blue/green, forsakenness
• Famous role-models: atlantis, rapture (bioshock), finding nemo
• Architecture: organic and partially angular

My conclusion is that I'll use the underwater theme, because I think that there are more possibilities and i can get used to the Maya Fluid System.

Recommendations:

Maya Dynamics: Underwater Environments

Maya Fluid Effects: Particle Integration

Loco

Basic model of a toy-train. I smoothed the corners to mimic the wooden material. I used "discrete move" within the move-tool, to model "exact". I don't know if this is the best method. Maybe something similar to "Set Point Value" in C4D. I'll figure out.