That makes such an awesome scene… wow! So many ships… I see a huge battle about to ensue.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!! 
Grand Space Opera 3D Entry: Richard LaBrie
Aethyrprime
#644
Thanks everyone. Today I will be taking a holiday break… but I promise I will be back at it tommorow… I have crashed my machine 2 dozen times trying to render the alien armada… sux too I have two pyramid formations laid out… and winblows takes a nap on me… bah anyway. I hope my christmas presents help out…
Kragh
#645
Hi Richard, DMW
First of all, my settings shows 50 posts per page, still 13 pages… As I read somewhere, that you like when people read the posts, not just watching pictures, I kept going. I have been in here for an hour or so now, and even though I have not read it all(!), I think I know what´s going on in here.
Now, there might be already said stuff, or misunderstandings, or even changed concept plans I didn´t get when viewing your thread, I hope you´ll forgive me for that.
Your concept is great. Very thought thru, and inspirering. I kinda liked your idea of the children from both races in front of the screen(holographic thing), it seems it changed to only one child, which I think is a shame. As for your fleeds, they are just stunning.
I like the terran bomber(Jackal XII) the most, very organic both in texturing and model. I thought of deep ocean livings when I saw it, this transparent, somehow colorless design. But I read there is a reason for the organic feel, the same for me. I do feel a little lowpoly design in all of your models, but I understand this solution, both in terms of distance to objects, the count of different objects, but mostly in spite of rendering time. I think my computer had given totally up by now. And seems your computer does it a little too. Hopefully you´ll not get any hardware problems again, glad you got it to work again.
I also think you are one of the most passioned in this challenge, and I think you are right about the people who´s in here. They seem so helpfull, and kind. Feels like it´s the perfect world in here, just waiting to spread out. I have never seen anyone be rude or similar, but still people manage to come whit crits, and even say they don´t like the work, in a constructive way. Good to be here:)
Don´t put too much work in the uvw problems, I don´t think they´ll show in the final image. I think you should work mainly on finishing in time. Still so much to do…
Btw. thanks for the kind words in my entry, glad you like it:bounce:
Keep working hard…
terraarc
#646
Merry Christmas mate! Best of wishes from here! (kind of late but wishes never are out of date!!)
Aethyrprime
#647
Kragh - It means alot to me that you took your time to read through, look at and examine things closely enough to post such an indepth critique, analysis and outlook. Thank you. Yea, in the final battle sequences I have to reduce the poly count by half basically any of the small ships have to have all smoothing disabled or else it refuses to render… If I went any higher poly modeling on the background I would have to render each one sperately then composite 2000 renderings… eep :eek: So ya I had to keep the work flow light in those areas. The composition itself has changed a few times, but I decided to go with pretty much the first idea, just slightly different. More to come, I am sitting back in the war room ready to rumble.
And happy holidays to all.
DimitrisLiatsos
#648
Hi man…Merry Xmass…Kragh has some good points there…also i 've read in prev post of your that u have some crashes…well try if u want higher poly count…to break the scene in layers…from behind to from…hide the front layers and render first the back away layers …and slowy come front …( rember to hide also the further back layers)…in this way u can render high poly models and also keep the machine from crashing (mainly from memory leak problems) :bounce:
keetmun
#649
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you mate! Glad to hear you’re still rocking in the challenge!
Cheers!
:buttrock:
Virtuoso
#650
Hi Richard…I just read some suggestions…i think Dimi’s will pay off the very best.I quess you will go this route?
Thats the left corner alone?:eek: …You mad man…Thats a good thing…
That alone is the grandest armada yet seen,bar none…
Keep the passion buring,get this done,as you have set out to do.From that great foundation to the Worlds grandest armada…The potential and plan are coming as you had hoped,the details are growing,the whole scene,corner by corner as well… I love the passion and work ethic,this alone is a winner in my book,and in the end,as time passes you will get just where you want to with this…All the best to you,and I’ll be looking for you to get this done as you have planned…Go at it strong Richard…:arteest: :buttrock:
Aethyrprime
#651
DimitrisLiatsos - Thanks and I hope your holidays have been happy. Yeah actually I have been working in layers. The problem is the my big machine just got a new hard drive yesterday… and I have not even begun data-recovery of the old drive…yet… The machine I am using, is about half of what I am used to and handles much less than I expected. The problems really started arising when I began trying to get the renderer to render using mentalray. By using default scanline with custom anti-aliasing algorithms I was capable of getting at least 500 ships to render per cycle. Yeah that number is correct… Thanks for the continued support and suggestions they are most helpful.
keetmun - Ditto my friend, and you betta believe it 
Virtuoso - Yep, that is just the top left corner… there are three parts to the background scene rendered in 40+ layers… what you saw as my last update was only about the left third. The right third is the deployment of 4000 alien craft to the deployment of 1,200 terran. The center piece will be directly engaged crafts from both sides and so far the numbers seem like at least a few hundred hand placed craft in that piece as well… God I need an SGI suite over hear… lol… or maybe one of those Mac rigs… (anyone wanna donate one I will take it gladly ) There are 20 unique craft at use in this piece in 10 classes. I wanted to be sure that in the final render which will need to be at such a high resolution, that anywhere you look you will see some ship you have not seen before or a ship you have seen at a different angle and at least one from every angle. I am busily working on getting my scene items worked out and will post them up here asap as well as starting on my characters, WIP coming very soon. Anyway, thanks for the continued support man. I always appreciate it.
Aethyrprime
#652
I have been working on the terran part of the final composition a bit while ironing out the massive alien part, followed by the middle which is strictly combat.
terraarc
#653
Hello Richard, nice going with the composition so far! 
Only thing I see is that maybe you should tone down a bit the saturation of the background…to help the sship in front…
Keep it up mate!
Aethyrprime
#654
This is still only a WIP background because I need 4 times this size maybe five for the complete area of space. I am working on the first round of full composite mockets with actual parts of the final comp. The thing is due to the limit in size and what not here I will have to post it small… 
so many of the finer details might seem lost. The good news is that I have finally data recovered my old hard-drive… which means I have the original textures which were worked out perfectly for the A-19, Alien craft in general and the final cut of the corret Terran fighter as well. W00t. Got alot of updates going to be posted today!
Virtuoso
#655
Nice to hear you got data recoverd Richard. …
I’ll look for your updates…
As for size and whats visible on screen that issue will be put to rest once the final mega shot is up and ready,so the harder to see elements such as the ones you mentioned will be quite visible come final shot time…
Ok,get to those updates ,all the best to you…
Nekura
#656
Glad to hear you’ve got your data back! That’s really good news :applause:
Keep hard on the project and it will all pay off… Go Go Go!! :bounce: :buttrock:
Versiden
#657
enormouse fleet… whoa… looking good man
I think maybe you could bring in one ship closer to view, so we’re drawn into the action…
Aethyrprime
#658
While I am rendering a composition test, I have been working on completing the endo-skeleton of the Terran Mech ST. About ready to add engine, ammo cache, cable rigging and then its on to the armor plating.
:bounce: