FX WARS: Invasion: Jonas Ussing (Freeform)

#1

Hey all!

My plan is to make a spacebattle between alien mothership/flying saucers and spaceshuttles from earth. Think Independence Day meets Return of the Jedi, with a twist of Moonraker. :slight_smile:

I hope to have time to do a huge Particle Flow based space battle with lasers, missiles and tons of explosions… Buuuuuuut that’s not a very realistic goal to finish in little over a month, from now on.

So I’ll start by focusing on the mothership, and if that’s all I get done, I’ll change my entry to 90’s tribute and do and Independence Day-style arrival shot.

Right now I’m working on the greeblies. I’m completely ripping off the old Death Star technique, where they designed and modelled 8 tiles of greeblie surface, molded them and made dozens of copies. Then they could create large surfaces covered in space greeblies.

Here’s a screenshot of what I have so far. You can see the repeating tiles pretty obviously, so I need to model some more. Also, I plan to mirror and rotate them differently - in this screenshot, they’re all aligned, which makes the duplication more obvious.

Cheers,

  • Jonas
#2

Lighting test. I think the technique is holding up. I wonder how it’s going to look when applied to a mothership shape.

  • Jonas
#3

wellcome jussing! good start! you will use full model os greeblies? or you will use heightmaps of greeblies? keet it!
c ya!

#4

Hey D-3, thank you. :slight_smile: The plan is to use full geometry of greeblies, but let’s wait and see what my CPU says when I fill a whole spaceship with them. :slight_smile:

  • jonas
#5

hehe ok!! wait your CPU kkk i´m a poor guy working on a athlon64 x2 4.400 whit 2 gb of ram kkkk i´m really need a new CPU kkk
c ya!

#6

…what’s with all the k’s? :slight_smile:

#7

sorry!! kkk = lol, some times i´m really forget to whrite lol, kkkk you know!!
up´s?

#8

Hey Jussing its comming along great. Looking forward to some oldschool space ship action =)

#9

Hey Trenox!

Yea, it even looks like plastic right now, doesn’t it… :smiley: I’ve been thinking about not texturing it. What do you think?

MAN, Star Wars is the reason I’m doing 3D in the first place, and I’ve NEVER made a spaceship yet! I’m so looking forward to this.

  • Jonas
#10

Nice :smiley: and oldschool. Looking forward to some mothership designs.
Have you deviced a fancy technique of placing the seperate elements on different surfaces or are you going gung-ho manual style?

#11

I’ll tell you when I know! :smiley:

The examples posted above are made with a simple 10x10 plane, and a particle system that places particles at all vertices. All the geometry tiles are part of a group, and that group is applied as instanced geometry in the particle system.

But… that won’t really work with a curved surface… so in the end, I think I’ll just create a large square pattern with particles (like the above screenshots, but ten times larger), convert it to geometry and then bend and wrap that to fit where I need it.

  • Jonas
#12

Hey all, here’s an animation test of how the greeblies behave when applied to a surface.

This is a “dirty” example where the tiles are slapped carelessly onto each other, with lots of intersection. The final spaceship will be more carefully modelled.

[CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD 1MB QUICKTIME

](http://www.duck.dk/cgi/jussing_invasion_wip_01_web.mov)

  • Jonas
#13

Nice! Good physical feel to it. Will look nifty with small lights lit across the sections - especially in the shadow side.

However, right now it looks a bit like coral reefs. Even though people may move in all 3 dimensions on the spaceship, it may prove prudent to have some rules for what is pointed up, sideways, etc. if you follow me?

But great progress - and still nice real model feel to it. :slight_smile:

#14

Thanks, Henrik!

Haha, I noticed that too, but I was thinking about using it rather than going against it. You know, you race along a “floor”, towards a wall, and then bank up so the wall becomes the new floor…

Anyway, in the shot I have in mind we start from afar with a total view of the mothership and earth, so it should be clear what’s up and down. Then I might go nuts with sense of orientation once we come close to the greeblies. :slight_smile:

And yes, I’ll definitely have tons of little yellow lights, that’s really missing right now. But I’m stalling there, because I’ll have to unwrap the tiles if I want them to be positioned reasonably correct (I hate unwrapping)… But hey, I guess it’s better to unwrap 8 tiles than to unwrap the whole ship! :wink:

  • Jonas
#15

jussing - hi! i think you really need more variations of greeblies! good job man!

#16

Update bump! :slight_smile:

#17

I’ve been busy! I really hope I’ll be able to make deadline…

#18

So do I…

#19

Where’s your thread?

#20

No, I meant that I also hope you make the deadline. It looks promising.

I seriously wanted to participate though. I just don’t have time for it :frowning:
I had it all figured out in my head, but it wasn’t meant to happen I guess :wink: