***Official Weather Thread***

2 hours ago, Lorewarn said:





I'm armchairing this a little bit, but I think it's a combo of some factors:

#1 I think it's just such a surreal display and vantage point we aren't used to, and is lacking any kind of foreground element to orient us to scale or to a normal vantage point we would usually expect to see a tornado from (nearby houses, inside a car interior, etc.)

#2 I think there's some very subtle framerate 'trickery' going on. Hard to know without having the original file but if I had to guess it looks like the footage has been undercranked very slightly (playing back slower than 'real time'), and it also looks like the final video is at 30 or 48fps which feels uncanny when you're expecting 24. Similar phenomenon as the 'soap opera effect' on modern TVs.

#3 The lighting in the environment is almost too good, and exactly how you would/do try and light something like this if you were creating it with vfx. There's a ton of atmosphere and Incredibly soft diffusion from the cloud cover makes everything look a little dreamy and surreal and cinematic with no harsh highlights or shadows; this is a common compositing technique to try and blend different elements of renders together harmoniously. You can see this to some extent in this vfx breakdown from Arrival with shots that don't look all that dissimilar - 

Click to expand...


Obviously there was a real tornado doing real tornado things. I don't think Reed fudged the multiple vortices or the basic footage.

As a casual observer, I don't know what you mean by expecting 24 but getting 30 or 48. My initial thought was that it seemed surreal, and @Mavric apparently also thought so, which is why I tagged you.

Is there any reason to believe this isn't real? Just manipulated a bit in post?

 
Unrelated to weather, but while we're on this topic, this is a really fantastic four part video series on CGI in movies (as well as the plague of production companies lying through their teeth about their use of it) for those that find this stuff interesting.



 
7 hours ago, Lorewarn said:





I'm armchairing this a little bit, but I think it's a combo of some factors:

#1 I think it's just such a surreal display and vantage point we aren't used to, and is lacking any kind of foreground element to orient us to scale or to a normal vantage point we would usually expect to see a tornado from (nearby houses, inside a car interior, etc.)

#2 I think there's some very subtle framerate 'trickery' going on. Hard to know without having the original file but if I had to guess it looks like the footage has been undercranked very slightly (playing back slower than 'real time'), and it also looks like the final video is at 30 or 48fps which feels uncanny when you're expecting 24. Similar phenomenon as the 'soap opera effect' on modern TVs.

#3 The lighting in the environment is almost too good, and exactly how you would/do try and light something like this if you were creating it with vfx. There's a ton of atmosphere and Incredibly soft diffusion from the cloud cover makes everything look a little dreamy and surreal and cinematic with no harsh highlights or shadows; this is a common compositing technique to try and blend different elements of renders together harmoniously. You can see this to some extent in this vfx breakdown from Arrival with shots that don't look all that dissimilar - 

Click to expand...


Yeah, maybe it's slowed down slightly and that's what makes it look off to me.  The blinking red lights on the towers don't match the pace that I've often seen on towers, but slowing the frame rate down would do that.  Also the way the towers fall doesn't seem right, but again, slowing the footage down would do that as well.

I didn't see until know that it's from Reed Timmer.  I think he's pretty legit.  So it's probably a combination of the frame rate and all the debris in the air that makes it look odd to me.

 
13 hours ago, Lorewarn said:





I'm armchairing this a little bit, but I think it's a combo of some factors:

#1 I think it's just such a surreal display and vantage point we aren't used to, and is lacking any kind of foreground element to orient us to scale or to a normal vantage point we would usually expect to see a tornado from (nearby houses, inside a car interior, etc.)

#2 I think there's some very subtle framerate 'trickery' going on. Hard to know without having the original file but if I had to guess it looks like the footage has been undercranked very slightly (playing back slower than 'real time'), and it also looks like the final video is at 30 or 48fps which feels uncanny when you're expecting 24. Similar phenomenon as the 'soap opera effect' on modern TVs.

#3 The lighting in the environment is almost too good, and exactly how you would/do try and light something like this if you were creating it with vfx. There's a ton of atmosphere and Incredibly soft diffusion from the cloud cover makes everything look a little dreamy and surreal and cinematic with no harsh highlights or shadows; this is a common compositing technique to try and blend different elements of renders together harmoniously. You can see this to some extent in this vfx breakdown from Arrival with shots that don't look all that dissimilar - 

Click to expand...
I agree the video looks surreal and dramatic.  But, I've been around major storms and tornadoes before and it can truly look and feel that way.  I was standing in my front yard one time watching at tornado come straight towards us and it was so calm and the lighting through the clouds made everything look "fake", similar to this video.  I remember standing there thinking that, if this were in a movie, people would think...yeah, that's not how it really looks.

 
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8 hours ago, Lorewarn said:

Unrelated to weather, but while we're on this topic, this is a really fantastic four part video series on CGI in movies (as well as the plague of production companies lying through their teeth about their use of it) for those that find this stuff interesting.

Click to expand...
Yes, this series is great. I'm not a VFX guy at all, but I still really enjoyed this.

 
Mavric said:
Yeah, maybe it's slowed down slightly and that's what makes it look off to me.  The blinking red lights on the towers don't match the pace that I've often seen on towers, but slowing the frame rate down would do that.  Also the way the towers fall doesn't seem right, but again, slowing the footage down would do that as well.

I didn't see until know that it's from Reed Timmer.  I think he's pretty legit.  So it's probably a combination of the frame rate and all the debris in the air that makes it look odd to me.
Click to expand...
I doubt Reed would mess with the video other than minor touch ups. I actually don't think it's even slowed down. Like Lorewarn said, I think it's just an unexpected angle of a rarely seen event. Like how the moon looks big on the horizon, but it's really still the same size visually.

Anyways, doing the nerdy math... The Internets tell me that most turbine hubs in Iowa are about 300 feet tall. Assuming wind resistant of a falling object that size is mostly negligible it should take about 3 seconds for it to hit the ground. 300ft=91.44 meters t=√(91.44/9.81)=3.05 seconds. The shaft buckles at 1:11 and the hub appears to land at about 1:14.

 
ZRod said:
I doubt Reed would mess with the video other than minor touch ups. I actually don't think it's even slowed down. Like Lorewarn said, I think it's just an unexpected angle of a rarely seen event. Like how the moon looks big on the horizon, but it's really still the same size visually.

Anyways, doing the nerdy math... The Internets tell me that most turbine hubs in Iowa are about 300 feet tall. Assuming wind resistant of a falling object that size is mostly negligible it should take about 3 seconds for it to hit the ground. 300ft=91.44 meters t=√(91.44/9.81)=3.05 seconds. The shaft buckles at 1:11 and the hub appears to land at about 1:14.
Click to expand...
Physics for the win!

 
ZRod said:
I doubt Reed would mess with the video other than minor touch ups. I actually don't think it's even slowed down. Like Lorewarn said, I think it's just an unexpected angle of a rarely seen event. Like how the moon looks big on the horizon, but it's really still the same size visually.

Anyways, doing the nerdy math... The Internets tell me that most turbine hubs in Iowa are about 300 feet tall. Assuming wind resistant of a falling object that size is mostly negligible it should take about 3 seconds for it to hit the ground. 300ft=91.44 meters t=√(91.44/9.81)=3.05 seconds. The shaft buckles at 1:11 and the hub appears to land at about 1:14.
Click to expand...


Apparently Reed wasn't actually the one filming it.  But he also probably knows what he's looking at.

 
GO1FrLgW8AA8MWJ


 
FWIW - Ground to Cloud lightening is common among skyscrapers and tall buildings.  It starts from the ground (or skyscraper) from a positive charge and travels upward into the cloud.  As seen in pictures above.  The opposite is when more natural lightening travels from bottom of cloud to ground.  It is a flow of negative charges from the cloud to the ground.   :)

 
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