Eric2575

Here is the same scene without the camera rotoscope.

Wireframe to show active environment sphere, reflective sphere, slab, and ground plane.

Here is one more pic with a simple slab model set at 35% reflectivity. The slab shows the same characteristics as the sphere, so the problem does not lie with the models in the scene.

For some reason I can't seem to use the edit function on the board anymore. The pictures posted reversed - the first picture does not have the camera rotoscope, while the second one does. There are no other differences and both have an active projection mapped environment sphere surrounding the scene.

The environment model is active and mapped correctly - as far as I can tell. When I do the final render, the E-sphere is active, the reflective sphere is active and the ground is active. Lighting is IBL with one sun light for shadows. The ground is set to Front projection "on". The rotoscope and projection map are lit so they appear uniform upon render. I will post two pics, one with the camera roto, the other without. That should help explain the problem a bit better. Stian, Cast Reflections on or off on the ground plane does not make a difference. Ok, so here are the pics - all settings are the same except the first pic has the camera rotoscope and the second one does not. Note that the environment sphere is active and mapped correctly as can be seen by the reflections in the red sphere. So how do I get the projection on the ground as in the first pic with the proper reflection on the sphere as in the second pic?

Here's a better pic. The sphere looks transparent, but it isn't. That's the Camera rotoscope acting on the sphere.

I'm playing with IBL and placing an object in a scene with reflection ala Stian's tutorial. First I render out the background image which I then use as a camera rotoscope. Next the ground is set to Front Projection "on" in order to receive shadows, then I import a sphere with reflectivity set to about 35%. That's when I run into problems. The sphere, although it is not set to Font Projection "on", has a transparent image of the rotoscope on it. It's supposed to have the reflection of the environment sphere on it, not the rotoscope. What am I missing here? When I remove the rotoscope from the camera, the sphere has the correct reflections, but off course the ground is blank without the projected rotoscope. In the pic you can see that the camera rotoscope is covering the ball, although very transparently. Since the sphere's Front Projections is set to "off", the camera's rotoscope should not interact with the sphere at all, right? I hope someone has a simple explanation for me. Thanks -E

I really dig the mostly white render, it's a chilling, spooky render. Something John Carpenter might use in one of his movies.

If I know John3d at all, you'll have a sample project from him in no time

Nancy: I just tried front projection - worked great, thank you! Eric

IBL=Image based Lighting, a setting in the chor. IBL and/or AO will no take the color from you model, you have to do that. An easy way to do this just for experimenting with AO and a model that has color is to select the complete model in the modeling window and name the resulting group to something like "white" - easy to remember. Now set the diffuse color of that group to white. Since this is the last group in the model, it will override all other colors in the model and now you have a white model to play with. To get all you colors back, either delete the white group, or drag it to the top of the list in the chor. Note, this will not do anything with any decal you may have applied to the model, they will render as usual. In order for the decals to disappear, you can set the decals' properties to "other" and then reset when you are finished with the AO render.

For more variation in the grass, do a search in the forum on using grass with decals. In my July '08' contest entry I used that technique pretty effectively, although mine was easier to do since it was set in the desert. I used a tga with a transparent background to do grasses and dried up bushes. I attached one of the grasses for you to examine and or use if you would like to experiment with it. Grass_test.zip

Worked a bit more on this. Shaping the lower hull and playing around with a generic hull decal - which I don't particularly care for - see the right nacelle.

Nice work Stian. What's the cp count right now? Are you modeling parts and using an action to put them together as usual? Sorry, I just realized that you may have answered that already in your post. Me just lookie at the pretty pictures :-) -E

Thank you Steve.

Haven't had much time to work on this, but managed to add a few details and changed the sky to match the lighting. I'm gonna add quite a bit more details and start work on the hull maps. Yes, I did play around with modeling stars and planets, but had some problems with the size of the maps required to get the detail I was after.

Very nice work and project. Doing something like this really helps hone your skills and imagination. Try giving a taper to the grass and using some other vegetation like random bushes or tumbleweeds to break up the scenery a bit. It might also help if you did not do the grass so uniformly all over the landscape. Have some barren areas with gravel or rocks - pretty easy to simulate using decals. Looks great, keep it up. -E

Changed the clouds and started adding back some of the details. Not much time to work on hobbies these days.

Al: Please don't ever apologize for giving me your valued input. That line could very well have been a crease that needed attention. You have an excellent eye for detail, and when you give input, I listen Eric p.s. Who is Mark? Ha, ha

I should have know not to throw out a quickie without taking into consideration the keen eyes of this discerning audience. I will fix the clouds/lighting issue, but that crease in the hull is not a crease, it's a reflection from somewhere. The hull is smooth as glass. I'll double check though.

Al: Secondary hull? You mean the wrinkles in the nacelle casing, right? Sometimes I get those when I do a copy/flip - for some reason the bias values don't translate the +- values correctly. Will get to that right away. I was going to smooth that out, but was too tired lasty night. Ok, back to the shipyard;-) -E

Did a lot of tweaking to the main hull and rear shuttle bay. Here's a desktop with a NASA background. Enjoy.

Thank you for all your support and encouragement. bighoop: The lights are just one simple decal applied in a pose and set to ambiance intensity. This was just a test and will look much better once I tweak it and make different decals. Largento: I have a sneaky suspicion that my laptop drive is about to bite the dust too. Praises about eliminating paper clutter are one thing, but it sure is harder to lose a file cabinet full of paper vs a hard drive with three or four years of data gone in one second. Eric

Since the new Trek movie is coming out soon, I started to work on my Enterprise again. I lost all model parts except the saucer section and the engines due to a drive malfunction. Just as well since I did not like the way the body section was evolving. Here is a sample of the revisited WIP.

Ever since I saw Lee's awesome Ironman, and then the movie, I've been wanting to model the hero. Here is my start. I don't have much time these days for modeling (heck, I'm a slow modeler anyways) so this will take a bit of time to flesh out. Happy New Year and enjoy.