MSFlynn

Yet another prodigal son. Like many, my AM journey began with Playmation. It was late in 1992 and like many aspiring 3Ders, I could not afford software like 3D Studio, SoftUmage, Lightwave, etc. I had Autodesk's Animator which was 2D and POV Raytracer which was free. I used to render out sequences from POV and animate them in Animator. I also did 3D simulations with Animator. I had picked up VistaPro and was creating landscape stills and some flythroughs. I had just gotten into computers and DTP/Graphic design in 1991 and was always reading PC World and PC Computing. One day in late 1992 I was flipping through one of those and in the back, amoungst pages of ads, something caught my eye. It was a small ad, maybe 3" tall by 2" wide featuring a guitar with a face. The ad was for Will Vinton's Playmation. 3D modeling and animation software that ran in Windows and not DOS like everything else? And only $349? I decieded that since it was so inexpensive that it had to be pretty crappy but at least I might be able to learn something until I could afford "real" software. (Don't judge me - I know I'm not the only who ever thought that!) I ended up being hooked and never really had any interest in other software except to want some of their features in AM. My passion then, and now, is creating landscapes and sci/fi imagery. When Animation: Master v2 was released in 1993? (there was no AM v1 if I recall correctly) I was still bummed that there was no support for DXF import. I wanted to get my VistaPro landscape meshes into AM. On a different timeline of my life, I was also an aspiring guitarist. (Isn't everyone?) I had gotten serious about it at age 23 in 1984. From '87-89 I was in hard rock/heavy metal band that never played a paying gig and never really got out of the basement. When I got into computers in '91, I started playing guitar less and less. In '99 I heard about Line 6's GuitarPort and subscription service to custom backing tracks to play to and started playing again. I was still spending a lot more time with AM than guitar though. I had written a small, extremely slow program called GridWizard to create AM model files from VistaPro ASCII Z data. I knew nothing of programming and had to learn Visual Basic to do it. A couple of years later I re-wrote it in C++ and it was much faster. In 2006 I used VB .NET to re-write it again and added a lot of features/options. Also in 2006 Line 6 came out with their POD XT Live floorboard and that's when I started to gravitate more towards playing guitar than using AM (I upgraded to the HD500 last year). In 2008 I moved from SE PDX, where I was born and raised, to SW PDX in Beaverton because gas was closing in on $4/gallon and I was driving 25 miles each way to and from work. Right around the corner from my new apartment was a little cafe and bar that I started to frequent with a friend from work. He found out that they had Karaoke Fri-Mon from 9pm-1:30am so one Monday night we went over so he could sing. We got to talking with the KJ who also happened to be the owner of the entertainment company. I had had an idea for awhile and this was an opportunity for it so I pitched him the idea of "Guitaraoke". I would supply the backing tracks and play all the main rhythm and lead guitar parts and people could come and sing as if it were a regular Karaoke track. I had to learn to create the .CDG files for the backing tracks to make them work like Karaoke files and to do a good job, they usually took me 6-8 hours. It was at this point where I had to decide where my time would be spent because I could no longer concentrate on both hobbies and be happy. I realized that I was far more anxious and depressed if I wasn't learning new songs to play than if I wasn't working on some AM project so I left AM behind. Not that the urges weren't there - I gave in over 2 years ago and did this image: Dogstar with v13. I did the guitaraoke thing 2-3 days/week for 4 years until late last summer the economic vicissitude's of the times put an end to Karaoke at Malone's. It was within walking distance if I wanted to walk (I never did since I always brought my board, a rack and 7 guitars) but I could drive there in a couple of minutes. None of KAZ's other Karaoke venues were close enough to be considered convenient and I didn't really want to try and find any place close enough to try and convince them to let me try Guitaraoke so I've been sitting at the home studio stagnating on Guitaraoke because I don't know if I'll ever do it again, and wondering if I should put out singles on iTunes for wait until I have enough finished material for a whole CD. (I have enough material to create 3 instrumental CDs if I were to finish everything). Currently, I've got a bug up my butt to do my own take on the first movement of Beethoven's 5th symphony so I've been working on that for the last 6 weeks. I have two songs ready to record that you can listen to here if you're interested: Soundclick. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I can close on my first house (if BofA will get off their lazy sitting parts and finish the repairs!) and get moved to Lafayette. Once I'm settled in, my fiancee and I will decide if I'm going to try and find someplace(s) in Newberg and/or McMinnville to do Guitaraoke. In the meantime, the AM itch is setting in (not that it ever really left - I'm still always checking out my surroundings and asking myself how I would model this or that). Anything I do with AM will in all likelihood be sporadic but I think, at age 50, that I'm ready to divide my time between AM and guitar again, even if it's 80/20. Here's hoping that it all doesn't end 12/21/12!

My computer is on it's last legs so updates will be kind of slow for awhile until I can get around to building a new one. I'm happy with the sand texture, working on a a basic rock texture. Unfortunately, in this rendering, rocks are coming up right where the skull is resting - that will get fixed in a later render.

Working on textures & lights. Blocking in the wrecked escape craft.

The wrecked spacer in the background is named Edmund Fitzgerald. Seriously, do you think once we develop interstellar travel that there won't be a ship with that name?

If you're talking about the material, it's just a simple surface attribute so far. If you're talking about the model itself, I created it with my AM TerraForm utility.

Almost three years ago there was a little contest called Lost Worlds. I started an entry but didn't have time to finish. Today I started reworking the old project with a different color scheme and different materials although the premise is still the same.

I just used the shadows as rendered in AM. In the final image below, I took those same shadows and dropped them onto a couple of more layers to create a more defined terminator as per your suggestion. Final Image:

City lights on the planet are complete.

Here's a first stab at adding city lights to the planet:

I'm happy enough with the ship coloring/detail and the lighting. The only other changes will be adding lights to the ship and city lights to the shadowed area of the planet.

More detail work and some more lighting adjustments.

Thanks! And no, there is no story. I saw some game advertisement on the web and liked the way they had their space scenes - where space wasn't black and on a whim opened Photoshop and messed around for about 20 minutes and decided that I needed to just go ahead and create a complete scene.

It may not look like much has changed but a lot of time has been spent on the color and diffusion maps.

If you look at the earlier renders in the engines, you can see some angular shadows which I found to be rather strange. During my experimenting with the lighting I cranked up the global ambiance and it turned out that parts of the engines were rendering peaked instead of curved; apparently the choreography was somehow corrupted. So I rebuilt it using the project I had been using to test the lighting. Now I have the shadows I was looking for and am back on track with the image.

I haven't had much time the last couple of days to do much but I think I've solved the shadow casting issue. Here is a render of just the ship with the shadows:

I've messed around quite a bit and have come to the conclusion that for whatever reason, the shadows are not rendering (or at least not showing up if they are rendering) because the light is pointing right at the camera. I'll post some pics tomorrow.

Yes. It's not that - I have no global ambiance set. I've narrowed the problem down to the Rim light - it's set to cast shadows but it's not casting any at all.

I've been working with the lighting and I cannot for the life of me get the ship to cast shadows on itself. The lights are just the default lights for a new choreography with the colors and intensities changed. The Rim is set to cast shadows, the Fill and Key are not. The ship is set to cast and receive shadows. But you can see that there are no shadows at all being cast by the ship onto itself. For instance, the tower should be casting a shadow on the upper dorsal, and the thrusters on the lower fin aren't casting any shadows either.

My guess is the Millennium Falcon.

Added more detail that still needs some refining. Added some more color, a lot more color to come. Added a dark gray light to illuminate the underside of the spacecraft which won't be adjusted until the detailing and coloring are done. I was heavily influenced early on in my artistic endeavors back in '79 by Chris Foss.

Changed the lighting some, added light lists, set the base color of the spacecraft and created the engine glow.

Updated image: Just some blocking in of the rest of the ship before I start detailing it. Why? Martin did a great job a few years ago when he implemented the new displacement; it completely changed the way I model things like space craft. I can't make any promises... I'm pretty well versed in using AM's lens flares. Knoll Light Factory was just a simpler. faster implementation for this image. I'll be using AM's flare options for the engine glow. As for lights in the shadow of the planet. you're assuming that it's an inhabited, industrialized world. But that's just an excuse. I actually am planning on adding city lights later, after I finish the ship. The rays seem to fade in the shadow for some reason making it look like there are rays in front of and behind the planet; I'll probably end up shortening them. The lighting is from the default set up of Rim, Key and Fill with their positions, colors and intensities adjusted.

It's been awhile - I couldn't even tell you how long; maybe as much as two years. Lack of funds, lack of processing power, lack of that extra computer or two, lack of time, etc. I had to make a choice between AM and guitar and I chose guitar. Things have not gone quite as planned, but how often in life do they? There hasn't been a day that I haven't missed playing in the realms of 3D modeling and rendering and I finally decided that it's become enough of a distraction that I need to scratch the itch. Guitar is still my overwhelming priority but I'm going to start spending a little time each day working with AM again. I can't say how much time that will be but it'll almost certainly be an hour or less so I won't be turning out any copious amount of work, but then I never did back in the day either, being more content to just experiment. This image is pretty simple. Background created in Photoshop with Flaming Pear's Glitterato, the stars with Diard's Universe software, the planet map in PS with Flaming Pear's Lunar Cell then mapped and rendered in AM, the ship detail created and rendered with DarkTree edited in PS then mapped as displacement in AM, the flares in PS with Knoll Light factory.

I've spent a considerable amount of time creating a material for black components that, combined with displacement mapping, gives the impression of detail by the specular highlights.

I'm currently adding & refining detail to rear section.