Tiago, I fully agree about the tentacles; they’re just extrusions based on the same curve, and a bit thin to actually make much visual impact. I’ll probably try out some alternate approaches to see if I can come up with something more compelling, though I’ll think I’ll try to make a little progress on Waterhole Alpha and the other ships before doing more fine-tuning on the Kahir vessel. Anyway, many thanks for the input – it always helps!
Grand Space Opera 3D Entry: Michael Crawford
Fahrija
#22
Nice Look. The translucent part is very nice. I agree to the other regarding the tentacles.
Here are some suggestions if you don´t mind:
Maybe it could look great if you integrate some more different hulls into the ship with different translucent scales and glowing values. This increases the depth and complexity of your ship. (See left picture I attached just to show).
nuclearman
#23
Still in the rough stages, but at least I’m starting to get the hang of what shader settings / combinations come close to the intended effect. I’ll experiment some with building up some more translucent layers and see what that nets, though I worry about the render times. (Even with a dual 2.66-GHz Xeon system, the HDRI render took about three hours, and that was with the raytracing set fairly low.)
nuclearman
#24
Fahrija, many thanks for the feedback and posting those reference shots! I will definitely experiment with additional layers and greater modeling complexity, particularly if this ship ends up in the foreground. The main problems I’ve found thus far have to do with rendering time and the loss of details on interior layers when the ship is viewed from a distance. Ideally, this ship would be just one of several docked at Waterhole Alpha, with other ships lined up for the jump gate. I’m guessing that I’m going to have reposition the jump gate at a perpendicular to the rest of the space port, otherwise the angle of view is going to be so acute that the effect gets wasted. I like the angle of the ship in the “HDRI Render Test” picture, so I’m thinking I’ll compose the actual scene as a wide-screen shot with the Kahir ship (as well as some other ships) docked on the left, an equivalent set-up on the right, and all the perspective lines running towards the jump gate, which will be perpendicular to the spaceport. I’ll post a sketch of this later, but I think this “you are on Waterhole Alpha, down among the docked ships and spaceport workers, looking towards the jump gate” is more promising than the “distant overview” perspective in my original sketches.
Anyway, many thanks for your input and good luck on your 2D project!
Fahrija
#25
I forgot the render time > this must be the hardest challenge of all 3D challengers. The wireframe view at this early stage shows a complexity I didn´t recognize first. Is it worth it to build up everything in low poly and increase the mesh in the final rendering or do want to prevent getting the bill of incomputable render-time in the end? I hope you get the right render values to haver fairly rendertime.
taavi
#26
I like your conception and the design of the ships 
But the textures are outstanding! :bounce: :bounce:
nuclearman
#27
Trying out a different approach that should provide more flexibility than the scattershot “two overlapping layers” thing I was doing with the tentacles.
Gendou
#28
I like the detail in your scout ship and the tentacles! It reminds me of Geof Darrow’s drwaing madness… filling up every single space on the paper with details!
Definitely make the gate somehow the focus, bring it closer to the camera and possibly have the city in a back corner or the background. I’m interested to see where your idea develops!
-Aaron
Velk
#29
Hey, great idea! I really like the gate idea and the sketch looks very cool, though I agree with Gendou that it should be more the focus of the image with the city looming in the background.
funkymunkey90
#30
wow wonderful textures and lighting i’m going to fallow this thread to see the out come
WazaR
#31
Great work so far!
I really appreciate the great amount of minute detail!
The mixture of organic patterns using mechanical structures is a intersting twist.
I would suggest that maybe you should make more a play with translucency and incandesance like real life jelly fish do.
Just wondering how the final composition will look and how this scout will play a part.
Borro
#35
WOOOOOW You’re great man! Wish i could do things like that, but computer is too slow and i have to think 10 times before I add something new… Well keep it up!
terraarc
#36
Very good texturing there! And the concept is very not-warish (like most of us here do). I really like the combination of organic translucent skin to mechanical inside organs, I have some doubts on the color scheme though. Very good 
Gunilla
#37
Oh my! You’re going fast. Love those textures - very inspiring. Thanks for sharing your work methods, always fun to find out the facts behind the magic.
nuclearman
#38
Cripes, I’m soooo far behind on responding. 
Been really busy working on some other spaceship designs – a lot of failed experiments at the moment, littering up my hard drive.
Fahrija: If I end up with several elements in the same render pass, then it’s definitely best to keep the meshes light and use the geometry approximation tools in XSI to treat those meshes as though they were much denser at render time. (The geo. approximation tools will even do the subdivisions in OGL if you set it that way – though it can really slow down camera movements in the viewport.) By force of habit, though, I tend to do smoothing through actual subdivisions, just so I can go in and make really fine adjustments.
Taavi: Thanks! I’ve been putting together a pretty good texture library since the Alienware contest – a combination of high-res outputs from some Darktree experiments, a lot of custom work in Photoshop, and some additional texture shots taken with my D70 (roughly 3000 x 2000 dpi). Most of the textures I use are 2000 x 2000, which allows for a decent level of detail, but I’ve also got 4000 x 4000 and even a few immense 8000 x 8000 in .map format, so it doesn’t crash mental ray.
Gendou: I’d forgotten that Darrow did the conceptual art for THE MATRIX, but I looked up some of his work online and I see what you mean. Actually, I think my biggest inspirations at the moment are The Larouse Encyclopedia of Animal Life, which is a great resource for “thinking alien,” and circuit boards and other computer parts, which tend to have incredible visual complexity. Mind you, I love a lot of the simpler, more streamlined ships I’ve seen in the contest – they’re actually harder to do well than this kind of thing – but I know to really get 'em looking photorealistic you pretty well HAVE to use an HDRI pass, and doing that for a space scene is just asking for trouble. (The render time with just one element was several hours!)
Velk: I promise, the jump gate will be the visual centerpiece in the final work.
Funkmonkey90: I give full props to the genius who came up with the “gas fire” shader network – what a brilliant use of the incidence node!
WazaR: I will continue to experiment with translucency and incandescence, and have big plans for Daniel Rind’s outstanding “diffusion” shader. Will post the results as they become available. As for the composition … I’m going to handle the perspective lines ala DaVinci’s The Last Supper, with the jump gate looming over everything in the center, and the docking bays for the various ships running on either side. I’ll do a general layout later this week and post it.
Marcomaxbonaria: Clean and detailed – yeah, that’s the real challenge, isn’t it? I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that I can give the scene “real world” visual complexity without it seeming like a mess!
aiTOR, Carl: Thanks, guys!
Borro: Man, I know how tough it is without a dual-processor system; believe me, I’ve been there. I finally invested in the workstation in April of 2003, after spending 2 1/2 years avoiding global illumination on my 733 MHz Micron system. Did a thorough cost-analysis of workstations and components and discovered that HP was making most of their profit by overcharging on the RAM, so I was able to shave something like $1500 off the cost of the system by just installing a few things myself. Anyway, it’s made life MUCH better, and has encouraged me to really learn what the program can do.
Terraarc: I decided to avoid explosions (and anything warlike) after I tried to use the smoke and flame shaders for the XSI particle system earlier this year. Once you have the computer running the calculations for reflections of the smoke and flames … geesh! Absolutely hopeless. You can get nice smoke and flames from Combustion’s particle tools, but the drawback is that you’ll have to find a way to fake the reflections. As for the color scheme: yeah, I have my doubts, too. Tried a reddish/amber test render, but I don’t think it’ll work with the metalic surfaces of the space station itself. If you have any suggestions, please, let me know!
Gunilla: Fast? Only because the modeling on the ship was so basic – it gave me more time to play with shader/texture/lighting combinations. The hard part comes now: trying to develop the other eleven types of ships – gulp!
Thanks, folks, for the feedback and encouragement. I hope to have the next ship undergoing test renders tomorrow, which will free up some time to catch up on the progress the rest of you are making!
RKurczewski
#39
I love Your idea of ship- it’s really inovative and gives precious occasion of using unusual shaders. Only thing that I might consider possible upgrade is a little bit of irregularity in shape and lenght of tentacles which would differ ships between each other (as real life forms) thus making them even more “biological”.
nuclearman
#40
The modeling wasn’t going to smoothly this afternoon, so I whipped up a quick logo for Waterhole Alpha. By the time I really need to use this as a texture map in the station, I’m sure I’ll have refined it more – and probably jetisoned the stuff rising from the water droplet, as I ended up using the same structures in the Kahir deep space drone. Anyway, every little bit of progress counts.