Behind the scenes description of how CWU's "Nick On The Rocks" team communicated with animators Donald and Ray at Newlands & Company in Portland, Oregon. nc3d.com/
This is honestly the best content. I live in London UK and I can't get enough of USA geography. I am so jealous of you guys. You're country is so beautiful it has every type of geography from deserts to glaciers to canyons to plains wow oh wow.
If interested, come visit me, I live in Eastern Washington and we will spend a day touring dry falls and many other areas left from the Missoula Floods.
Nick I have to say, if I would have had you for a geology teacher in high school, I would have enjoyed it more. & like you I grew up just off Hwy 12 in Mn (twin cities) Thank you for all the great shows you have shared on RU-vid with us.
This is not a criticism, but a suggestion. First of all, the animators did a great job and I congratulate them on that. Now all we need are some ice rafted boulders crashing over the falls, and some white frothiness added to the brown water.
One of the reasons I didn't like geology too much in school is the vast time scales and the difficulty imagining the causes, that animation is amazing, brings geology to life, I think this would be great for teaching tools at schools.
I have learned SO MUCH just watching your lectures, I wish you were closer so that I could attend some. Just by watching, I have been able to see different rock formations around Prineville, Oregon, Smith Rock, and Lake Billy Chinook. It's amazing. If I had known Geology was so interesting, I would have gotten involved at a younger age.
Ice age geology is facinating. Enjoyed seeing how Dry Falls may have looked during the Ice age floods. The fast moving RV was a fun addition. 😀 Keep up the good work!
I was just there yesterday and was thinking 'someone needs to do a CGI version...' and here it is. Also, RIP RV guy, he's barreling along the road DOWN into the coulee.
Dude thank you, been fantasizing, trying to fathom or even imagine the size, and depth of the Missoula floods. And as u said very conservative considering the impact(s) theory which would flash melt even more ice, so more water. But wow this is stunning and I’m going to save it to like 3 different playlists 🤙🏼
I just love the history of Eastern WA! Spent my summer months, for years, at Sop Lake and had some old timers tell me about the Columbia River and ice flows and so much more. It gave me a life long interest in soil, rocks, what came before us....this is WONDERFUL to watch!
Absolutely amazing Dr. Zentner! We are fixing up and gearing up for a trip to Dry Falls this coming weekend. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this background information as it makes it so meaningful! We live in an incredible place!
I think Randall stated that the flood water was over 300 ft deep. Animation is great but I think the animators were conservative on the amount of water shown. The falls would have been a minor bump! The shear magnitude of the floods were much larger than animated. Just my thought
Love it! You talked in your lecture how this was made, and it's nice to see some background creation besides just the final cut. I still gasp and laugh at the RV though. Didn't know water was so difficult to animate...maybe explains the lack of ice and boulders in icebergs that would really show the massive and fast excavation of all that basalt.
Holy shite! I remember driving down the road and half way there my eyes popped out of my head, "OMG, will you look at that ?!" LOL! I thought it was going to be a lot smaller than I see this HUGE, gorgeous, beautiful, devastation! I think my mouth was open for a full 30 minutes~Ha! LOVED the animation! My mouth is hanging open again! Betsy and John xx
Bruce (maybe) could have flown that drone up to at least 350 feet AGL, and modelers use a flood depth closer to that. How deep did the modeler's use? Maybe 100 feet? I still love the animation. The 'next version' (The Sequel) could show that the rim recedes under a deep layer of water, making the 'falls' more of a ripple, so I was told. Not an insignificant ripple, but not cascading water at the surface, allegedly. :)
Wonderful stuff but I think maybe this would have been one of the smaller Missoula floods. The animation doesn’t look like the wave is 350 feet high as it breaches the falls.
Love the video, Nick. I wish they could have shown the movement of the erratics that came with the ice. I have a 3 ton erratic near my home in West Linn Or. They say it came from Montana.
I'm still wondering how those cliffs were formed in the first place. Were they there before the floods started happening? Or are those sheer cliffs a product of flood after flood?
Well played. I love this area and the history. I am heading back to Dry Falls tomorrow for the first camping trip since the virus lockdown. How about that for some history also?
The problem with this, is that the animation is taking place over the post-flood landscape - so it's hardly a representation of how it might have been.
Amazing! I agree, the animation looks very conservative, but It looks like both limits of the animators and tools they were using. It just doesn't look 350 feet high at the point just before it spills over. It starts tapering from the start point but really I would think you would need to do a full simulationfrom the dam to that area to get a idea of what it would have looked like. Given the sheer size of that you might have a better chance if you made it much smaller and then rendered out that small section. That said, truly remarkable animation as is! Just from casually studying what it takes to render bodies of water, I can't even imagine how hard this would have been.
I'd love to see what more modern technology such as realtime raytracing and the newer tech that could simulate the actual head of the flood and the debris in it.
Dry falls started out not much different than a creek type of depression just uneven ground is all, and it spread big time really fast getting wider an deeper. Just softer soil.
the floods did carve out the falls but since you had dozens of floods sweeping through the area the position and shape of the falls changed. what we see today is the last "footprint" of the floods. if we had another additional flood sweep through dry falls would not look the same as it does toady.
It's cool and all, maybe could do a better job these days, but you're modeling the water flow off the current geological features which weren't there when these floods came. These floods supposedly carved out these features so I think it should look different, with an element of timelapse added in to show the force of the water and the erosion carving out the landscape until it looks like it does today. Maybe even include the water receding and drying up. No I'm not a programmer or anything but I do know they've come a long way with water simulations. It doesn't have to be as good as say the VFX in some movies that use that program, but it's a lot easier to do overall. It's a bit misleading though because it's based off current geological features.
Ok, the animation is flawed from the beginning. The surface of the ground was relatively flat. The water surging down is what created the landscape. DUH!
Series of floods from the puny lake missoula my rear end. It was a comet impact and it happened in a few short months. Anyone saying otherwise has their head in the sand.
But that's not at all how it happened! The falls were not there until the flood remember? I must say it's a rather useless animation. Also you do not know if it was multiple floods! It may very well have been only one. Nobody knows.