Grand Space Opera 3D Entry: Michael Crawford

#81

XSI eh? You make it look like one incredible app. The detailling of your models is blowing my mind. I wish you were using max though because I could stand to take a few lessons from you.

#82

I’ve read your postings like they were tutorials, so thanks a lot! And, now that I think of it… they are tuts! Too cool! :buttrock:

I tried incandescence mapping with other apps, and obtained very good results. I just can’t wait to receive the package of XSI Foundation.

Thanx again for all the inspirational and detailed info. :applause:

Stefano

#83

You seem like having a lot of fun building each of your great components! I wish I can utilize all those useful staff you keep mentioning in here!
Keep it up mate!:slight_smile:

#84

Excellent modeling man!!! Keep going!

Update! :bounce: Update! :bounce: Update! :bounce:

#85

Excellent work and informative posts too. I really like the “motherboard” look the textures have, Nicely detailed. Displacement could be the way to go for a lot of the geometry you’re needing to create.

If I think of anything that could help you out on the xsi front I’ll post it up.

Best of luck from a fellow xsi’er!

#86

Thanks, Chris! Much appreciated. :slight_smile:

#87

This thread continues to give so clever ideas for use of textures! Your last solution for the details inside the cone is really good - makes me get a lot of ideas on how to enrich my own projects - thank you. As a Max user I suppose I can just translate the option for incandescence node to self-illumination slot, right? What I don’t quite get is how you can get so good looking results from displacement - or is the surface pattern modeled?

#88

those are some amazing details ure working

u ve been so inspirational and really great for sharing info in so much detail:applause:

#89

I don’t want to repeat the others, but it’s really all looking extremely well. :thumbsup: And your efforts will certainly make me update my entry … soon.

What is missing is … a predator! You know that there’s a big predator near every waterhole. :scream: :smiley:

Only I don’t know how would you incllude something like that in your composition. :slight_smile:

#90

hi Michael…
your making really great stuff here… :thumbsup: i have to say i’m glad to see your using DarkTree here… i myself am a big fan and inveterate user of this app… :slight_smile: may i ask you why don’t you use DarkTree shaders directly but preffer printed out bitmaps? doesn’t it better for such high resolution images use procedural shaders instead of bitmap maps? all the more you have to create shaders anyway…

well… great job in any case… your models look very impressive…:thumbsup:

all the best and cheers…

#91

Hi, Paul,

Thanks for the thumbs up! I can certainly explain the DarkTree issue, since it’s an app-specific problem:

Unilke the other simbiots, the simbiot for XSI was a one-man labor of love … and apparently (as noted on xsibase) that man died of a heart attack this past summer – before he could iron out some problems with the mental ray integration. As a result, you can use the procedurals for color and displacement, but last I’d heard there was no way to generate a bump map with the DarkTrees unless you render out a map and simply apply it as a regular texture. Now, this may be really frustrating, but there’s one advantage: complex procedurals tend to produce an annoying and problematic flicker in mental ray sequences, so you’re probably going to get a better result by not doing a DarkTree as a procedural. The other advantage of rendering out a texture before applying it is that there are some PS filters that aren’t of a helluva lot of use for most things … but do happen to work some pretty neat magic for textures (plastic wrap, glowing edges, and so forth). I’ve found it very helpful to be able to massage the DarkTree bitmaps in Photoshop and then bounce the results back and forth between the shader networks and Photoshop to fine-tune the map. With the render region in XSI, I can test an inch or two of “final” output and tweak to my heart’s content … or until my eyes implode, whichever comes first. :slight_smile:

One other thing about the bitmaps: for high-res images, you can simply render out an absolutely HUGE bitmap (I’ve gone as high as 8K x 8K, or approximately 256 Mb, and have no doubt you can go even higher) and apply it as a “memory-mapped” texture.

To quote the manual (p. 208 of the Shaders .pdf, for those who want to read up on the subject):

"When a texture is memory-mapped, it means that the texture is never loaded into memory. Instead, it is accessed directly from disk whenever a shader uses it. When used properly, memory mapped textures can speed up rendering considerably.

"For example, if a scene and its textures are large enough that they don’t fit into physical memory (RAM), loading a non-memory-mapped texture means loading the file into memory, decompressing it, and copying it out to swap (the disk partition that acts as a low-speed extension of the system’s RAM). From then on, the texture is accessed from the swap.

“If you use memory-mapped textures in the same situation, the ‘read-decompress-write’ step is eliminated and the textures are accessed from the file system instead of from the swap; therefore, less space is needed. In other words, instead of accessing the entire texture, mental ray only accesses the parts that it needs to access to render a given tile.”

There’s a handy little PS script that enables one to convert a .bmp or .psd to a .map file and then export directly to the folder you’ve got your textures in, so the whole process can be made pretty simple.

Anyway, Paul, those are the reasons for the convoluted workflow. It’s really not as bad as it sounds. :slight_smile:

#92

Whoa, nice detail with your models. I’m no XSI user, but I sure can appreciate good work when I see it! Cheers

:buttrock:

#93

Erlik: Wrong type of “waterhole,” I’m afraid. :slight_smile: Actually, I’m playing off of the notion in SETI that the best place to search for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations is in the fequency band between 1420 (the emission frequency of hydrogen) and 1662 MHz (the emission frequency of the hydroxyl – or OH – molecule) – which roughly corresponds to the quietest part of the electromagnetic spectrum. I chose this as the name for the Trade Alliance’s big exploratory outpost to imply that the twelve species which comprised the Alliance had discovered each other via a search for tell-tale “signals from space.” For more on the subject – Frank Drake’s “Water Hole” hypothesis – see the following site:

http://www.planetary.org/html/UPDATES/seti/HIW1.htm

As for putting aliens in the scene, well … still some time to go in the contest. :slight_smile:

#94

thanks for explanation Michael… i really didn’t know that simbiont doesn’t support bump mapping in the XSI… i personally don’t use Mental Ray… i preffer default scanline renderer in the max… it’s fastest renderer and still can give good output with proper setup… also i don’t use advanced lightings and preffer to “paint” with lights and shadows… but complex procedurals produce flickering in any renderer because of antialiansing… to solve this problem i use Surface Distance external component… and sure you can use bitmaps very successfully but many great features like 3D mapping are missing in this case… i think DarkTree is very flexible tool and allows to produce any kind of shaders of any complexity…

ok… i won’t discourage you anymore… all the more you can’t use bumps… :scream:
one more time i want tell you that your work is outstanding and wish you good luck!

cheers mate… :beer:

#95

Keetmun: Thanks! I’m slow getting some new stuff posted as I’m currently trying out some techniques for doing the edge of Waterhole Alpha’s main platform and haven’t been satisfied with the results thus far. Hopefully by Thursday …

Pinnamraj: While the CG Challenge is, indeed, a contest (with some really fabulous prizes), I think the main point for most of us is simply to share what we’ve been trying, get help, support and inspiration where we can find it, and come away feeling like we’ve improved our skills, made new friends, and added something worthwhile to our portfolios. I’ve benefited sooooo much from others in XSI community – and here – taking the time to share their professional expertise and tips that adding a few explanatory notes here and there seems like the least I can do. And if it has helped you shave a few minutes off a project, or add an extra tool to your arsenal, or get that “second-wind” in the middle of the night … hey, that’s what it’s all about. :slight_smile: I’m sure I’m going to learn a great deal about working with SSS when you get going on those creatures of yours!

Gunilla: You’re quite welcome! It’s been awhile since I’ve dipped into Max – I’ve got 4.2 on my old NT workstation – but I think almost everything I’ve done is easily repeatable in Max. As for displacement … no, the texturing is a combination of bump mapping and actual geometry. The base layer of the component is a NURBS-to-mesh conversion that’s been divided into clusters – particularly near the base – to allow a relatively even texture projection without the need for unwrapping the mesh. Next, I selected a batch of polygons on the surface – about a quarter of the total surface at a time – and used the “extract polygons (keep)” command, which basically cloned that portion of the surface, allowing me to subvide the extracted polys so I could “paint” a texture by selecting a pattern of them that roughly approximates a circuit board. Next, I used the “solidify” script to extrude the selected patterns a very small amount, and then applied enough levels of subdivision in the geometry approximation panel that the extruded blocks became this smooth “displacement-like” effect rising from the underlying geometry. Let me tell you: it renders MUCH faster than any highly-detailed displacement map would, and I can fine-tune the shader (in this case, a Phong shader, while the bump-mapped cone beneath is a Blinn) or even add selective textures.

Hope that explains things better!

#96

Man I really appreciate all the effort you’re giving in this contest and it’s always a pleasant surprise visiting your thread one time for eye-candy and the other on technical information!:thumbsup: Appreciation and respect man!
I’ll try getting and testing as much as I can, improving and sharing. :slight_smile:

(Sorry if it’s kind of off topic post)

#97

That’s it! Same feeling here, but being a newbie in XSI, on the “other side” (the ones that take advantage instead of sharing because at the moment they have nothing to share, ehm)…

Michael, I sent you a private message to continue the discussion you started on my thread yesterday.

Thanx a bunch.

Stefano

#98

Thanks for clearifying - and thanks for not doing that with displacement - I was almost on the edge of tossing my Max license through the window there for a while… Kidding aside, I really think I’ll have to check out XSI later on - your work makes me tempted in trying new tricks, not that I’ve in no ways reached the limits of Max trying a new app can sometimes be stimulating, and oh, so frustrating!
Just keep on posting :slight_smile:

#99

Starting to examine ways of unleashing the power of procedurals, thanks to the inspiration of Paul Gulianelli’s wonderful DarkTree work. (If you haven’t seen Greentek’s planet procedurals, you owe it to yourself to check out his Space Opera thread – it’s just outstanding use of the technology, and better than any of the examples you’ll find on Darkling Simulations’ own web site.) Anyway, I’m still slogging away on the details of Waterhole Alpha and the jump gate, but will post my implementations of recent texture work as they become available.

#100

hi Michael… i’m very grateful for such great compliments! although i’m really a bit afraid if i’m able to justify all your praises…:buttrock: thanks my friend… in fact it’s just a few months that i got access to the DarkTree… i still can’t use a quite amount of features this great app has… so i’m still digging it :slight_smile:

well… what a cool thing your making… with some scarry level of details… despite the fact that i have no idea how you are going to use it :smiley: it looks really very impressive… very complex and artificial look… and i personally watching it can’t understand what is modeled and what textured… it looks very real… and at the same time very futuristic… it’s simply cutches an eye and attention somehow magically… outstanding texturing my friend… :thumbsup: is there any lights inside it? or it’s just additive transparency? anyway you achieved a great result…:thumbsup:

i’m very curious what kind of texture you’ll do next… !!!
cheers my fiend and keep this great stuff up! :beer: