Grand Space Opera 3D Entry: Theo Lübbe

#11

Woooow great job so far! Keep it up and good luck!

#12

looks good so far, I like the snowfighters with the background powerlines/fence/whatever thing!
The idea of the pilot eyes is cool too.
and thanks for sharing the engine effects!

keep it up!

#13

Thanx for the tip about the effect. But yours looks kinda cartoonish I think. The engine blow should be straight and not so red but bluish-transparent. Red color gives impression of a fire-place and such burn can’t give much energy. Take a look on modern rockets when they lunch. The main engine almost doesn’t give any flame.
That was just an opinion. Dunno if you want that style.
Also about the effect as such. Maybe textured particles with opacity map sprayed conically would be enough? Or even planes instead of particles if the ship is far.

#14

Thanks for the comments and all. :slight_smile:

About the colour of the flames. Fusion systems tend to (supposedly) provide a more redish, sometimes bordering on purple energy - as opposed to an actual flame. Hence why the particles work so well, as they give a good feathered look.

About using planes rather than the tetras - I would also think facing planes will work well for far away ships. However, all the fighters in view will be of the distance to notice the fins on the air intakes. But even so, I advise you guys try out the particle system if you have the time and you will notice it has surprisingly low render times :slight_smile:

Each emmiter sofar is emmiting at a rate of 175, (rate important due to movement changing curve and so on) and a life of 9. The life allows for a shorter trail, which I might be extending to emphasise the speed of these little ships several hundred km at 7 feet above the snowy surface! with a grow time of 1 and a fade time of 9. By the time the particles get to the bow in the energy flame, they are at max size, which after the glow is applied looks like the more dense part of the flame.

My current render time is about 8 secs a frame without advanced lighting. There is a small light in each jet (3) which only illuminates the ship. There is a single omni with trans. Adv. Shadows and a rectangle spot with trans. Adv. Shadows in the light ontop of the ship (light on wall to the right of the pic). The light in the top will be converted to a projector map without any shadows at the final render to allow for low processing values.

The large building in the background has been moved further, with the things holding the cables upright brought down to scale. The buidling has been extended to a grand 7000ft (I think) and the cable holding things will be converted into the small cities soon.

I’m now thinking of different designs for the fusion cannons - which I decided will be in a small base away from the large building - and some smaller AA fusion guns and some old fashioned ballistics weapons around. All with proper textures of course to emphasise the age of them all :slight_smile:

I’m estimating at the time of the final render, it’ll take about 48 hours - and I will need to do only a slight bit of touching up on the final image before submission.

#15

The jets at the bottom look too ‘emtpy’ at the moment. That’s just cuz I accidentaly left the values too low.

The radiosity has been tweak, with standard regathering and clamping enabled - the rays per sample was pushed to 256, with a filter radius of 3. The total render time including radiosity was about 4 minutes - which is pretty reasonable considering that the lighting is almost all from the particles - with the exception of the skylight and the small lights in the jets. The lighting is overdone atm, which will be remedied with the tweaking of the bottom jets.

other notes:
The motion blur frame length may be increased to allow for a more fuzzy look on the energy flames - and to lessen the amount of ‘feathers’ being emmited. Particle spawn on death can be used for an energy falloff look, but it pushes the render times a lot and the computer hates calculating all the newly generated particles

#16

Since the final result will be a still image and realism a high priority, I think you may be a little better off using stock flame’s for your engines. It might not be so “pure” as doing then natively in 3d, but the final realism is hard to beat.

As for the lighting, In the real world engine exhaust would not light up a scene as much as you have set up, unless it is using some new kind of techonlogy.

On the ship itself, it is nice, though it has a noticable influance from Wing Commander/Star Wars series. And of course I was thinking to myself, why would a “hyper” speed spacecraft need to be “bullet proof”? This bad boy looks more like it would be a “terrestrial” fighter that hovers at low altitudes then a high speed spacecraft. Also I would really like to see some guns on this meany. Lots and lots of guns. Can never go wrong with that one.

Either way, great start on the challenge.

#17

[color=white]just fiddled a bit with the jets again and noticed when making a mock animation to test the curve - vortex doesn’t work :confused:

With frustration to drive me to get it working properly, I remembered you can bind particles to follow a spline - so I took a simple line one, split it into about 20 segments, then used it for a follow path constraint for the particles (not constraint, but in the forces section).

Still the particles would flow in a straight line since obviously the line isn’t being animated - I then linked it to the ship body, so as to follow it’s animation curves - and then I put a flex modifier on it which I had to mess around with to get it working. Must say it works a damned side better than vortex in any case - since you get to apply a taper curve with the path follow thingy anyway.

/me runs off to apply the same effect to the other jets.

ok that’s relatively not cool! I just picked up a spider >_<

SQUISH

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#18

Thanks WazaR for the comments. I was only able now to review them and reply. Again the effect is from a fusion engine, which creates a somewhat visible energy rather than flames.

Anyway. Although I don’t want to sound too cold or emotionless, which his pretty much the way I am anyway. My dad passed away last night. As a result, I will be unable to upload anything or participate in the challenge for a while as there are a lot of things need sorting out on this side. I also have my mom to support who still hasn’t quite caught onto the reality of things - and whatever.

I don’t need any support (not that I expect any as most people here regard me as a stranger) and so I don’t want any posts wasted on it. I’m an emotionless git and wotnot :expressionless:

I’ve added a gun onto the ship now, which I’ve tested out on animations and it has nice values :slight_smile: It can rotate 45 degrees in either direction, and does about 35 down, with about 30 up I should think. Makes for some good animation purposes.
I still haven’t decided on a cockpit design, and I was planning to check a local airforce’s “Puma” out to check how the gun systems work and such, but with my dad gone I don’t know how I’m supposed to do that.

I’ve made a base model for the dropship now, and still have to decide on the guns placements. Since it will be a ship which blasts its way to the planet, and then activates some jets to slow it down before final impact I figured the guns should be almost ‘foldout’ in design, so as not to take any damage upon entry. I have some rough ideas for the alien fighters, which will also be hovercraft, but most of them I feel I’ve seen somewhere before - which takes a chunk out of my originality trek.

Well, anyway. Be back later guys. And have fun :slight_smile:

#19

Well, looks like I’m back in and ready to bash a few more bolts onto my shippy :slight_smile:

My mom seems to have recovered a great deal, which I’m partly grateful for, as I didn’t want my family to crash like a train…

I’ve now done a good bit to the ship, and started a reference seat with a biped in it to check for scale - and then when I tried adding it to the actual scene - BEEEP BEEEP BEEEP
computer overheated >_<
When I sorted out the overheating, and tried again, I noticed it is extremely slow right now. So now I need sum help. How do I do compositing? :stuck_out_tongue:
I need to know how to render seperate scene elements and then superimpose or something them over eachother without it looking like some badly done Britney Spears picture :wink:

If anyone can give me some good links to tutorials when using Photoshop 6/7 and/or some free software or plugins I could use it would be greatly appreciated.
Also, if anyone could mail me a Boxx with dual FX53’s, 4gb of DDR2 ram and a X800 XT I would really really appreciate it :wink: (hard drives not an issue :smiley: )

#20

The model on the left is what eventually came of my Machineflesh challenge’s model - for the head at least.
The one on the right however is my new one for this challenge. I won’t be making any ears this time, or a mouth - as there is going to be a pilot’s mask covering the face, and a helmet over the head.

Now while I can expect people will think it cheating that I’m using my previous head as reference - the photos I had to work from did not help me at all. I built the mesh from a plane, starting at the eyes - and kept extruding the border from there. So the mesh is completely original - although it came out pretty damned close to the other one.

#21

Here’s my ship so far - with a new seat inside and the all new Scorpion Fusion Gun!!!
Gasp!

Well anyway I managed a good working model on the gun for a change :stuck_out_tongue: and everything else is fitting in nicely so far. Now I’m onto making the pilot’s seat - which already has two of the strap ports on it. Then I’ll be moving on to the helmet for the pilot, which is to be placed on his head via a robotic arm. The helmet will have cords. Many, many cords hanging from the back. You guessed it - brain control :slight_smile:

There is going to be a mask over which the helmet fits and clamps onto - and there aren’t going to be any controls in the cockpit for the pilot. At most there’s going to be panels to show the pilot the status of this and that, since the control system is one way.

Vroooom!

#22

This seems like a very interesting project. Good luck with it! :thumbsup:

#23

Here’s what I’ve got so far of the pilot for the snowblaster. While looking at it again and again I’m beginning to feel myself it’s looking more like something from Star Wars. Heh. Guess I watched it too many times when I was a bebeh :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway. The blue square shows a mistake I made with the lining on the neckguard - which I’ll be fixing now. The red square however shows part of the helmet section which I’m not sure if I should tuck in or not. The helmet itself looks pretty damned stupid unless the mask is there, and there’s a part which goes up over the ears which is where the mask hooks onto the helmet which makes it look a bit stupid on its own :stuck_out_tongue:

All in all the only problem I have now is designing - trying to draw and then modelling the actual suit. I’m busy shifting my concept more and more away from an actual battle to something more placid, and at the same time more hectic. An example would be the pilots standing in a hangar ready to board their blasters, whilst one of the neighbouring buildings is being bombarded. The Dropship will still be visible, wether on monitors within the hangar, trough a window or whatever. And I’ll be building some tank class ships as well now.

#24

Dammit again I hafto retype >_<

This picture shows my pilot as he is so far. I spent last night making a vest, with a shirt of sorts underneath it. I’ll be adding the arms today/tonight which will have folds in them once I’ve got the final poses set up for the pilots. After that I’ll be adding some legs, with boots.

I hope I can animate this stuff later to make a nifty little video :slight_smile:

btw, Watch the World of Warcraft behind the scenes videos. They show some pretty cool tricks, if you know what to look for, when it comes to modelling. One of which I’ve noticed is not always creating complete models, but rather, say, if you had an orc. If that orc is going to wear boots in a still image, or thru an entire animation, don’t worry about modelling and texturing the feet. Worry about modelling the boots that would actually go on the feet.

Banzai!

#25

hey great going man… ur ship design is awesome… i like those head modelign, and that ninja looking guy rocks… and i also like ur approach of face modeling… rock on dude… best of luck :thumbsup: :scream: :bounce: :eek: :applause: :smiley:

#26

This is the cannon as I have it so far. Unfortunately the bits and pieces aren’t too visible in this picture, and are not anywhere near the amount I’ll be adding.
In any event, hope you like it :slight_smile:

#27

hey great looking guns man… as long we got different designs i’m good… btw where are you gonna mount this gun?.. on some ship or on the ground?.. and hey i like the gun u made for the flyer… looks cool… great work man, keep up the good works… i’ll b back for more updates… so work work work :thumbsup:

#28

In those pictures you can’t really see it but there’s a cockpit on the very top front corner of the gun.

The gun is to be mounted in the ground, out in the snow plains. There’s a heck of a lot of fins at the back which act as heatsinks, and I’ve now added an air intake which is supposed to force air over the fins.
There’s a few bibbits a bobbits add to the gun now, and I’ve started on a smaller (very very much smaller) turret which is going to be used to defend this behemoth.
As for a name for the Fusion Cannon. “Phoenix SMOIC” ‘Surface Mounted Orbital Interception Cannon’
Phoenix because of the blasts being red, and because of an effect I’ve not yet added, which is the fins glowing from the heat when each shot is fired.

My concept might take on the Comic book approach that everyone else is doing, as I also want to be able to capture the entire scene as everything happens. I’ll try and compose a few sketches with the basic layouts sometime but I’m off to visit a friend for the next week so it’ll take a while to get this updated.

#29

Great modelling

cool gun you have here

the ship is great i like it a lot cant wait for your composition this looks great.

keep it up:thumbsup:

#30

Well, looks like I’ve gotten some time to myself to work on my entry again.

When I upload the final image, the entry is going to be incomplete, although I’ll be trying my best to make it interesting enough. The problem with my installation of max has still not been remedied, and as a result I can barely create textures for my models. It looks like I’m going to have to use planar mapping on just about anything I can this time ‘round -_-

Anyway. I’ll have some new images uploaded sometime soon.