Animator Michael Habjan has finally released Part 3 of his ongoing short-film battle between Hulk Vs Superman.

A few words from Michael: This is the third part of my animated Superman and Hulk fight. This project is something I work on from home as an independent project and is not affiliated with any company. It took about nineteen months to finish, starting in May 2012. Other than a few weeks I took off for traveling followed by a couple weeks of technical problems (computer died) I worked on this pretty much full time. About five months in to this I had a hard drive malfunction almost losing months of work, but luckily salvaged a lot of the work from crash files saved on my other hard drive.

Even without the delays, this project took way longer than the others and way longer than I ever thought it would. Partially due to the added complexity of higher detail models and environment interaction, as well as the longer running time, way more action to animate, way more scene interactivity, and 1080 HD resolution, which of course renders slower than the 720 HD I had been doing till now. The higher resolution also means mistakes and shoddy work are more visible, so more time is needed to pay attention to details and massage out the render glitches till it's right.

Typically, I work out the models and rigs first, then get to animating a shot. For this project I spent the first few months on enhancements and changes to the character models, as well as the desert environment. Also switched renderers, from mental ray to V-Ray, so had to take time learning how to use that. Once models are at a state where the character proportions are set, I block out a the bulk of the action. It's rough and changes drastically as work progresses. I don't have storyboards ore even a clear choreography set out..but rough ideas evolve, things get added and get refined and improve. When animation on a shot is good enough, I do cloth sim on the characters (hulk pants and superman cape, which can take a while to a good simulation. On this project I also did a massive amount of frame by frame model corrections, to get the muscle and anatomy deforming somewhat realistically, which is a lot of work on bloated muscle bound character like the Hulk. Once it's good I render that, which takes approximately one hour per frame, so about one day per second of animation usually. While it's rendering I work on animating another shot, and try to have it ready for render when the previous shot is finished. I took more time into polishing the animation doing several passes or more till it was 'good enough'. Reference footage is usually used when possible to. Then I bring into compositing and try to make it all look as good as I can. Looking at it now it's both better than I had thought it would turn out a year and a half ago and worse than I would like it to be. Still trying to work out how to get better quality renders and environments, but that leaves me with lots to improve on for the next one. Plus I'm sick of working on it and wanted it to be done last year. Anyway this was a lot of work so please don't copy and re-upload to your channel passing it off to be yours.

Project specs: Two computers, started with same I used for part 2, then the older one crapped out half way through, so got a new better one, an i7-393 3.2 ghz 64 GB RAM. Was needed anyway to render 1080 hd.. had a hard time rendering some shots even with it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part 1 & 2

That's pretty cool.

Btw there's also this http://youtu.be/L6dj7YCEKhw

That was total BS in the first part where Superman couldn't get free of the Hulk's grip quickly enough. He's strong and fast enough to escape from Hulk's grip without heat vision. But maybe that's the battle forum debater in me thinking too much about it.

@sog7dc@toptom@wishiwassuperman@sand_man@theacidskull@ghostravage@raynorj Thought you fellow Superman and Hulk fans would be interested in this thread given what it involves.

That was amazing!

Animation part – awesome. Plus it’s nice to see Reeve’s Superman once again.

Battle itself – not so impressive.

@lvenger: I remember that the creator himself said that he doesn't care about who is stronger or who did what in the comics he just wanted to make an independent fan made project in which these 2 characters are about the same in terms of power. I know at the beginning his videos where flooded with raging fanboys(and still are) and i felt sorry for the guy because you can see that it's a project of love but people where to preoccupied with who should win and why rather than enjoy this amazing fan made non-canon video. And thanks for the list you gave me btw.

Anyway the video itself is amazing. I mean one guy sitting on his computer at home did this... one guy... The fight was enjoyable(especially considering ONE GUY DID THIS) and there is still more to come and with each video he leaves with a cliffhanger and Superman and Hulk both get more powerful and he ups the scale(if i remember correctly he once said there will be 6-7 of these videos so i am looking forward to something pretty epic.

That was dope!

@lvenger: Ah... I remember this... Those videos were the first thing i debated in Youtube, i got so trolled i decided to come here :P

I agree, Superman shouldn't need HV to break Hulk's grip... But he isn't freeing himself easy either though :P That being said, Superman actually speedblitzed Hulk there. SPEEDBLITZ!

@lvenger:

It was good for what it was. An attempt to please both sets of fans. I have issues with it from a battle stand point but I understand he's just trying to give us an animated fight we would otherwise never get

@raynorj: The quality of animation in that video was most impressive. Even though they take a long time to make, they're well worth the wait. And there's going to be 7 of these?

@ghostravage Not gonna lie, I don't see Youtube as the font of pleasant debating :P Yeah speedblitz FTW though Superman would use it more often.

@sog7dc The animator did say he doesn't care much about who wins so it makes sense that it doesn't pander to one set of fans.

Been waiting for part 3. Awesome, this guy is talented.

@saren: There's a common myth on comic book forum boards that Superman doesn't usually kick in fights. Which is kind of strange because most people can kick harder than they can punch.

Looked really good. I thought the scene were Hulk was beating Supes to the ground took way to much time, Supes is fast enough to break free.

@lvenger: Yes i have seen it and the first 2 minutes were...painful to watch. Of course he could have set himself free in hundreds of different ways, but this is not the important part what is important is how cool is seeing Christopher Reeve fighting the hulk! (...and lets hope Superman wins in the end).

edit: have you already seen the preview of Superman unchained?

@toptom: Well the animator wasn't concerned with the serious debate over who wins between those two characters so that makes sense unfortunately.

Also no I haven't but there must have been something to pique your interest to ask me about it hmm? :P

Awesome video, these really are quite amazing. I always find these battles hard to watch as Superman and Hulk have been my favourite powerhouses for 30 odd years due to being exposed to both characters via TV and film as a youngster and in a sense I don't really want to see one do a number on the other! However, I did find myself in the first minute wondering "what is going on, why doesn't he use his heat vision or something instead of just lying there getting pummelled". The latter part of the fight is more how I would expect it to go, with Superman finally using his superior speed and mobility and of course the attempted BFR. Whether it has been successful or not I guess we will have to wait for part 4 to find out! Anyway well done to the creator of this video, the closest yet we have got to a proper Superman v Hulk battle on screen!

Bump lmao

Pretty high tier animation in the later parts