Grand Space Opera 3D Entry: Theo Lübbe

#3

I hate it when this thing times out and removes my text.
Here’s the concept for my second version of a small one manned hovercraft I started making a day 'fore the challenge started.
I never had a sketch for the last one, so here’s the one I’m using now - and I’ll have the base model finished soon for a quick render.
The sketch shows the outline, with a messed up front view (can’t get it right) and a proper side and top view. Seems a ruler has become my best friend…

Sketching up the fighter for the invading race now - should be finished with both by next week.

Ja ne

#4

Hey man sounds very cool, lots of action and some great possibilities for visual fx stuff with the torpedos and explosions and all that sort of thing.

Are you planning to do all that in max or use some 2d software and composite? If you can afford it Afterburn is a really good way to go, you can get some really awesome FX with it.

Anyway good luck with it, can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Dave.

#5

Bah… I hate lighting solutions when they go wrong.

The pic shown is my scene as it is so far - with the snowblaster as it is atm.
I’ll put up some pics of the blaster and mebbe a small animation (I can get them below 100kb yeah!) later. Construction of virtually all my models ever have started from a box, with some surface devision and then added vertices/edges as required. I tend to extrude faces and then shift and shape the form until it looks right to me at least and then I weld and vertices that need it and remove any uneeded edges/vertices.

There is a basic marble texture being used atm to emulate the effect of camouflage - and there’s a small spotlight at the top, which won’t really have much use in the scene later, but you gotta build for all occasions right?

The building shown in the back is going to be the human citadel, with the big wire type thingies coming off it being supports to keep the 7000ft building from toppling. The things at the end are obviously there to keep the cables in place, with the idea coming from the construction methods used on that bridge in Japan - the really really beeg one.

I’ll be turning the things holding the cables into mini-cities later on, and there will be a transportation tube running from each just under the lowest cable. One of the cities will have been destroyed by a just-hit bomb, and the cables will as a result be flinging thru the air in the fasion they should. damn, coffee just ran out again

The snow plain doesn’t look right in renders at the moment, the result being what looks like black lines running accross any surfaces in line with the camera. Dunno how I’m going to remedy that but I will eventually. I’ll be using particle systems to emulate the kickup from the jets on the snowblasters, and the good old fire effect to make the explosions - which I tested out a few weeks back so I’ve now got ideas for how to do it well enough.
The dropship will be placed somewhere between the cables running towards the camera, on the left of the screen - and there will be part of a gigantic orbital cruiser visible. (when I say gigantic I mean kilometers in length) with some fusion beams launching off to hit the damned thing.

There will also be a lot of smaller fusion turrets mounted around the place, with a nice amount of old fasioned projectile based turrets to shoot at the fighters. The tech used by both races is reasonably on par, although the aliens had much more time to build fighting class ships than the humans, and as a result have all their nasty dropships and the like. Neither have any space fighters tho as engines are simply to big to fit into such tiny vehicles.

Man I can type a lot :eek:

On with the show
one last thing Radiosity solutions don’t work since I added the huge building - any ideas for how to simulate the lighting now? Light painting maybe? Ideas, crits and bashing welcome

#6

Name at last. Damned stickykeys crap coming on and slowing me down.

The name is from japanese ‘yuki’ for snow and ‘da’ an informal way of saying ‘is’ pretty much. Which could be translated into saying “It’s snow”

This is merely a shot of the layout sofar and the polycount - with my newly added snowblaster design B

#7

cool concept of the ship but i think you can use another concept to have more ideas about the action in the scene, when you start drawing im sure you will have more and more ideas i think.
never make a final concept for the action becuse maybe you will have another ideas later.
and put all that togeter and win jeje thats it, (sounds easy)

i will like to have the talent fo some people here. keep going man.

good luck and have fun.

#8

A test of the jets (not to be confused with planes) on the blaster. Post to follow explaining the process.

#9

Thanks Genesisa for your comments

None of these are really concept sketches, merely a substitute for the lack of an attachments feature on the thread. I have almost got a complete composition in my head now - but until I’m satisfied with it I won’t be making a reference scene to draw from just yet.
I was thinking of putting the viewpoint inside the blaster which is swerving, with the pilot’s eyes visible, helmet on and a breathing/comms mask covering his mouth and nose. The pilot would have a look of pain/disgust/sadness/hatred in his eyes at the sight of one of the cities he is trying to protect having been destroyed and burning in the distance.

The problem with this scene is it would need to be either landscape or square in shape to capture everything, with the exclusion to a degree of the gigantic orbital cruiser from the scene. That ship would have been there to help capture the feeling of scale in the scene - while the other scene gives more emotional value and meaning to the picture. Dunno how or even which of the two concepts I’ll be building on right now…

Anyway - onto the picture. The pic shows my first test of the jets on the Snowblaster - which are powered by a fusion engine. The thing I only really realised after settling on the powersource, was that fusion tech is basically a method of creating energy. Not actually creating jets of flames and stuff. So now the usage shifts to a small, but super powerful jet generator which works on burning the somewhat pure oxygen in the air, together with a very potent but small catalyst to create the explosion. Anyway. How I made the effect:

I took a super spray particle generator, linked it to a vortex which is placed relatively close to the stream. Then, I set the taper length and curve to such that it allows for the bow effect of the flame. I adjusted the off plane rotation values to create an even distribution in a radial pattern from the emitter. Then I adjusted the speed and grow times of the particles - after which I was given the nice body effect of the bow in the flame.
The particles are set to follow the direction of the motion/mblur - which is combined with a 10% variation on about 20 spin time. This allows for the feathered effect of the flames. A simple motion blur is then applied to the particle system. Then, in effects - I add a glow parameter, with a size scaled to the scene, intensity also, and assign it to the object channel of the particle systems (all three on 15). To give the renders a bit more realism, I also add a blur filter in effects, which is set to only affect luminance. Feather radius 5/10% - min bright 60%, max 100%, add light 10% and blur percentage usually around 15%.
There is a gradient ramp texture with three noise textures on the gradients applied. These are adjusted to give the right effect for the jets. There’s more I did to this stuff but I can’t remember it right now :confused: Oh yeah - the same texture used for the jets is applied to the self illumation channel - and the texture base is a Raytrace Blinn one.

Hope this helps other people who also don’t have things like afterburner to add realism to the flames in their scenes. Stay tuned - I’m gonna be making it loow even better! The noise from the light, which is created from a radiosity solution, is because the rays per sample is still very low. The Light from the jets is created due to the indirect light regathering (very useful) while all the noise everywhere is due to the unclamped values and lack of extra rays.

Teehee I’m enjoying this one loads more than the others :slight_smile: I got my ram back in and it seems radiosity works like a charm with particles now that I know howto configure them.

/me runs off to fix up the jets even more and make some better fire.

Btw - the particles method used here could also be used to add to the effect of an explosion. If you create a few gravity spheres where the explosive balls are, couple those balls with some hot debri, add a fireball using a atmosphere gizmo with the environment fire effect and tune the settings just right - you can make a pretty damned realist looking explosion just like that. This method doesn’t work well for animations however, as the particles hafto be tuned into working per still image. And the animation of the fire downright sucks ;/

SibSpi Out

edit ok screw working models for this scene. I’m just going to create things as they look in my head, not how they work. Too many times my models don’t work or the hafto look crap since I strain myself to make them work :banghead:

#10

the universial musuem of broken things has a nice place for all failed ships and messed up engines (open from 8 to 9, in weekends from 11 to 16)
:slight_smile:

-Freerk

#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

[/color]

#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: