Your textures are absolutely wonderful (sorry for repeating myself) ;-), do you do a lot of micro/ medical work? They’d be perfect for that kind of stuff.
Grand Space Opera 3D Entry: Michael Crawford
Peter_C
#62
I have to chime in here to say how impressive your design is. Textures have a wonderful organic quality. :applause:
nuclearman
#64
Okay, now the fun starts. Had some problems with assembling some NURBS meshes yesterday, but I finally saw where the problem was and now I’m off and running. Also learned a thing or two about the Voronoi noise shader, and see great things for it in generating bump maps for the exterior of the space station. Anyway, I feel like I’m back on track, and look forward to posting better things later this week.
nuclearman
#65
Adr: I could post the explanation about what I did wrong yesterday, but I’m currently recovering from post-NURBS traumatic stress syndrome (PNURBSTSS, but don’t try to pronounce that).
Mad-mick: Thanks! Good luck to you, too!
Doublecrash: Glad to hear the additional info is proving beneficial! If you have any app-specific questions, I’d be happy to share whatever I know. XSI has a really, really steep learning curve because the program is tremendously complex and powerful (heck, the manuals run to 4500 pages, yet barely scratch the surface!). Moreover, until recently the user base has been small enough that there really hasn’t been enough of a market to generate a lot of books and learning tools for the program – but that’s gradually changing. Anyway, I can probably steer you clear of a lot of mistakes, if nothing else. 
Terraarc: I’ll do my best! The biggest problem is there are just so many different parameters of the scene to experiment with that I’m torn between the need for linear progress and the joy of just taking time to try things out.
Borro: “Crazy shit” indeed! Yep, but I guess that tends to happen when you keeping asking yourself, “I wonder what would happen if I try this …”
Gunilla: Concerning the textures: yes, incidence nodes are used a LOT in medical illustration (there’s a well-known mental ray shader called “molecola,” which is great for blood cells), but the closest I’ve come to that was using MAX for a DNA logo. BTW, if you’re interested in expanding your texture library, contact me after the contest and I’ll burn you a couple of CD-ROMs from my own hand-built collection.
Peter: It seems that the best work coming out of Hollywood makes use of multiple layers so that the light bounces around, passes through and diffracts more like in the real world. I’d really like to strive for achieving similar results, though it probably takes a LOT more technical expertise to do it properly.
Kaajey: Yeah, I was going to experiment with similar effects for the MachineFlesh contest, only there was some major remodel work at the house slated for right in the middle of the contest, so I reluctantly decided to pull out after a week or so. (This time, I’ve pretty much got until mid-December, when I leave for Seattle for a month and won’t be able to access the workstation. Yoikes!)
Fahrija
#66
Hi Michael,
your objects are looking really great. But I think I mentioned this allready. I´m really looking forward to see what kind of story your image will tell and how your objects will be arranged to show all the details you are working on. Is there a early rough sketch or line drawing that shows a bit of your composition?
You´ll mentioned afterburner for creating atmosphere effects > do you intend to use this or similar software for your image also?
Greetings and good luck for this challenge
Fahrija
nuclearman
#67
Hi Fahrija,
I did some untextured, rough-block 3D “studies” over the weekend, trying to get a feeling for the final composition … but basically came away from it with two thoughts:
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Perhaps the only way to get the “iconic” part is to do it ala a postage stamp: foreground focus on two hands – one humanoid, the other clearly alien – shaking in a gesture of good will as Waterhole Alpha is dedicated. In the background, the jump gate (centered, visually rising above the hands) with a ship ready to depart through it. Small details of other ships and the station itself visible to either side of the gate (above and below the forearms of the hands). Inscription at bottom of the image – something to this effect: “Waterhole Alpha: Opening a doorway to a shared and common future.”
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Other than Option 1, I will arrive at the best possible image simply by building my environment and then – like any good photographer – investigating the best camera angles. (This may NOT result in a strictly “iconic” work, but will probably net me something useful for my portfolio.)
That’s how things stand at the moment.
As for Afterburn, it’s a plugin for Studio MAX, not XSI. It’s been used for a LOT of Hollywood films involving rockets blasting off (the 1998 film ARMAGEDDON springs to mind), but I’m afraid I’ll have to settle for either XSI’s particle shaders or – more likely – do it as post in Combustion, using their particle system, which renders extremely fast and has great flexibililty. It’s 2D, but can do a more than adequate job.
Gunilla
#68
More than generous of you, thank you. In the meantime I’ll hang around, cheer you on and pick your brain as much as possible. I find your thread one of the most inspiring so far, so just keep going!
terraarc
#69
Pretty nice design on the waterhole! :bounce:, I’ve got this feeling that you’ll make it with the textures (thanks again for the tip 
).
I had an idea on the final composition and the “iconic” problem you seem to be concidering, just a thought for further brainstorming though:
Maybe you could put two set of ships putting some final parts on the Waterhole Alpha pretty close to each other: One set with human spaceships and the other with alien ones. Also various race ships entering or leaving the gate (maybe on human grand ship entering and one grand alien ship arriving or the other way around). Again, just one opinion.
nuclearman
#70
Mike, many thanks for your excellent suggestion on the composition! I will indeed consider that!
When I first started developing the idea for the Waterhole I considered doing a piece similar to the old pictures of the completion of the first U.S. transcontinental railroad, with two teams of workers or engineers meeting at the top of a completed loop (instead of a slightly open loop), but I abandoned the idea because it implied a static moment – one before the power is actually turned on and the Waterhole becomes a fully functional gateway.
Seems, though, that I may have been premature in tossing it off, as you’ve reminded me that it could be operational even as the final pieces are being put into place – and the vantage point could be quite spectacular: looking down from a construction platform above the edge of the Waterhole jump gate, with the loop of glowing energy almost directly below, the ships moving into position, and the orbital space port stretching off to one side. Hmmm … I will have to try some test renders from that vantage.
Thanks, again, for the suggestion, Mike. It really does sound MUCH more promising than the “postage stamp” idea!
DimitrisLiatsos
#71
Me thinks this Design and Shaders (XSI right?) can kick a$$ in final…very nice work keep going friend :bounce:
Doublecrash
#72
Nuclear, really thanks. Not only your work is fantastic on the aesthethic side, but it’s also so incredibly useful to whom, like me, is striving to learn XSI. In fact, I decided to participate in this challenge to get my feet very wet with the program, and I soon fell in love with it. I’m using Foundation trial, but I’ve just ordered my copy of Foundation at my local reseller! :bounce:
Your kindness is really fantastic, and I’ll take advantage of that for sure in the future. In fact, I would have at least 200 questions for you right now, LOL… but (and I bet you know what I’m talking about) I’m more a stubborn type of guy, so until I’ve read the manuals and watched all the DVDs that come with the app, I likely won’t ask nothing, contenting me of just watching more experienced and talented people working.
What I really want to ask you, is to just keep posting your work and the “inner workings” like you did so far: they’re unvaluable for someone who’s trying to learn.
Thanks a whole lot again.
Stefano
SuperXCM
#73
Amazing modeling!! I very very like the Waterhole Alpha!!! :eek:
Specially the details texture… very very cool!!!
nuclearman
#75
Currently working on the base of the jump gate, trying to piece together some fairly detailed components that will work together to help provide a sense of scale.
nuclearman
#77
Dimitris: Thanks! Your Grand Space Opera entry has been inspirational, as has your portfolio. And yes, this is all XSI work.
Stefano: I will, indeed, keep posting. Enjoy the DVDs; they really make a difference in getting a handle on the program!
SuperXCM: Hope to catch up on your entry this weekend. I trust all is going well.
Climax: Thanks! Amazing the things that end up working when you’re experimenting, isn’t it?
nuclearman
#80
Minor update, but potentially major breakthrough. I’d been struggling with the question of how much of Waterhole Alpha I’d really need to model, particularly since I want to test out all sorts of camera angles. Obviously, the foreground requires the most attention, but I’d like to make the background seem like it’s just as detailed without getting into the law of diminishing returns. Well, I rented a DVD of Attack of the Clones last night, and was going through it shot by shot, examining the LOD on the models … and then it struck me: a lot of the best visuals in the film don’t take place in full daylight, but at dusk or night, and rely on the building lights – not the modeling – to convey the complexity!
All this came to a head this morning, as I was trying to figure out how to handle a couple of problematic details on the jump gate components. I had tried adding a bit of geometry to the interior of the wiring hole – just something to make it look like it wasn’t just an empty shell – but it still lacked the kind of complexity one needs to convey electronics … so I resorted to a chip-design texture like I’d used for the bump map on the component, and connected the image to the incandescence node as well as the diffuse node. Bingo! With the settings turned up high (I keyed in 3 – much higher than the normal 0-1 range – before settling on 2.5 as a good value), the effect worked better than anticipated, and now has me thinking that a series of really good “incandescence maps” may be the answer to conveying complexity on those parts of Waterhole Alpha that are far enough away from the camera that “hinting” is more important than actually building. We’ll see how that goes.