Behind every movie there is a story which is often even more incredible than the film itself. "Nightfall" is no exception in this case. This page provides an small insight how the film was made, and what kind of challanges emerged during the production. It is not a complete "Making Of", but it shows in a few sections the immense effort that lies behind it.

At first a little summary about the special features of this movie:

  • "Nightfall" is a private film production without any commercial benefits. You can download and watch this movie for free. The copyright remains the property of the copyright owner. The material may not be reproduced in any other form whatever without the owner’s consent.
  • Thanks for very important support go to Reinhold Fragner, Katrin Jeriga, Simon Richter and to our parents.
  • The soundtrack has been recorded with the help of the professors, assistents and tutors of Stuttgart Media University (HdM Stuttgart). Thanks go to: Beate Schlitter, Heiko Schulz, Lars Kiefer, Felipe Sanchez, Prof. Dr. Curdt and Prof. Dr. Hahn.
  • This movie has been created using only five PCs:
    • Workstation / Core 2 Duo 3,2 Ghz,
    • Supporting render machine / Pentium IV 3 GHz
    • "Antique" render machine / Dual Pentium III 1 GHz
    • Additional Workstation / Centrino Notebook
    • Sound computer at the HdM / Pentium IV 2,7 GHz
  • Following software was used: Autodesk 3ds max 7-9 & combustion 4, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Illustrator CS2 & Premiere Pro CS2 and cakewalk Sonar 6 on Windows XP (32 and 64-bit)
  • The piano recordings are played on a tuned up "Kawai"
  • The film was rendered in HD 720p with 25 fps. Its running time is 11:30 min and has about 17.000 frames.

It is recommended to watch the film first before you read the following articles (some texts maybe contain spoilers).

 

Although the story is fictitious and its setting is in the outer space, the original idea to "Nightfall" is based on a true story. The screenplay of "Nightfall" was initially developed in the spring of 2005 during Vali’s internship in Austria.In the first draft of the story the Dark Lord did not appear as a character on screen. The aggressor should remain unknown, while the Queen should be placed in the foreground. In the course of time, however, the story grew to finally become a space opera of epic extent: the Dark Lord tries to win the Queen´s heart – for this aim he is willing to use force.

The pre-visualization of the movie was animated very early. Although it was very simple, the screenplay was a useful template for the first animatics and the first cut. In the course of time several battle scenes and long shots were added. Six months before the end of the production, the actual ending was still not determined. There were, however, three alternative ideas for the finale.

 

 

The ambience of “Nightfall” is inspired by science-fiction and fantasy films, cg artworks and historical buildings. Vali incorporated design elements of those inspirational sources in his piece of work in such a way that the movie is reminiscent of them. For example, the palace of the Queen is architecturally based on the beautiful Château de Chambord in France. For the light towers (which create the artificial sun of the ring world) Katrin "kat" Jeriga (a German architect) drew some concepts for the movie. The best of her concepts became a pattern and template for many other things of the ring world designs (such as the interior or the exterior of the palace and the bridge).

Again Vali´s time in Austria should turn out to be very productive. Many models were created during his stay there. More than 30 different spacecraft, the ring world, the trench-city, the palace with its bridge, the interiors and the landscapes, and last but not least the characters not only had to be modeled. The mapping, texturing and shading was an additional task. Every mesh got his own textures, mapping coordinates and shaders. For many meshes like the palace or the surface of the landscape Vali used photographs as textures. Objects like the spacecraft and the ring world got painted textures without any real references. A very complex surface is the skin of the Queen, which had to be rendered separately. It was shaded using the fast sub-surface-scattering skin shader of mental ray, combined with an additional shadow-layer of the vray renderer.


For the backgrounds and reflections three environment maps were needed. Due to the size and enormous scales of the scenes no more 3D objects could be used but had to be realized with the aid of matte paintings. Rendered 3D panoramas were the templates for these huge paintings which were oversubscribed and painted in high resolutions (8000x4000) with Photoshop, so that they also seemed detailed and natural in extreme close-ups.

The poster was already created one and a half years before the film was completed. But the date of the completion was delayed several times. The motive of the poster shows the Queen, a frame of the space battle and the edge of the ringworld, as well as the Dark Lord in the background

 

 

 


The greatest challenge in the animation of the movie was the space battle with its innumerable spaceships, explosions and camera movements. A combination of crowd, particle and keyframe animations was used in 3ds max for this enormous number of ships, lasers and explosions. For the animation of the nova of the artificial sun and the waterfalls of the ring world Vali used a fluid simulation.

The cloth simulation modifier in 3ds max and some batch scripts, which automatically calculate the different animations, were used for the permanently moving clothes and capes of the two characters. However the biggest problem was the animation of the Queen’s hair. It was realized by the by the mental ray renderer and was of course rendered in a separate layer.


 

Every scene in "Nightfall" was re-rendered countless times and matched in its colors. The color grading in the compositing software combustion is one of the most sophisticated devices applied in the making of "Nightfall".

The colors not only underline the emotions and actions of the movie, but also give possibility to stylize and to understand that photo realism does not always have to be the aim of a computer animation. The post production therefore represented an essential part of the work on "Nightfall" and had to be considered already during the production of every scene. It was important to make each scene fit the ambience of the movie.

After rendering of all scenes the film was subjected to a complete color grading procedure. It was the aim that the colors substantially have a relevant influence on "Nightfall" and give the movie a unique and characteristic look.


 

The production of the film began breaking off almost a year before the completion because Vali didn't find suitable music for it. One day he listened to the piano playing of Ivelina who was playing at the Stuttgart Media University. He was fascinated so much that he convinced her to produce the soundtrack for "Nightfall". Every weekend they discussed and developed the music scene by scene in common work. They developed a soundtrack which follows the plot of the movie to finally end with its main theme. The viewer should get the feeling that this story seems familiar to him. Parallel to the sound recordings Ivelina & Vali were engaged as Amateur-Foley-Artists for the sound effects in the film. For example, cracking packets of gingerbread and fingernails on the piano strings were used for the icing-up scene at the end of the film.

 

 

At first, the rough cut of the movie was done on the basis of the pre-visualization and the script. It was changed later on, and adapted mainly to the soundtrack. Big problems were the timings of the music and sounds as well as changes of the movements of the characters and objects. The film without any cuts grew to almost 30 minutes. Of course it was shortened to 11 minutes and 30 seconds, so that it remains a simple filmlet.