Disaster on Technocron One

[JoelS]

Some of you may remember the image I did for the April image contest, which you can see here:

 

http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.php?album=30&pos=41

 

I was asked if I would donate this scene for inclusion on the AM CD, and I agreed to do so. However, the CD is intended for new users to be able to load up the scene, click 'render' and have the nifty scene produce a cool result. My scene there relies on Darktrees for about 90% of the texturing, and since the Simbiont is a 3rd party utility (and a little confusing to get running for someone who's never even used AM), I agreed to do a remake of the scene using only textures/materials that can run in vanilla, out-of-the-box AM.

 

This leaves me with a dilemma which I will pose to you all. How should I retexture the scene to make it as helpful and cool as possible while sticking to only AM-native tools?

 

There is no suitable proceedural plugin in the native AM toolbox to reproduce the borg-ish building texture that I used, at least not that I know of. My initial thought was to recreate much of the lost detail through adding in a boatload of geometry. You can see the initial results of that approach on one of the middle buildings (the one that doesn't look like a plain box) on the render below. Clearly this will also require additional texturing to look cool.

 

This kind of scene really begs for proceedurals, but I could texture all the little buildings by hand with decals. I kind of want to avoid this, as it seems like it'd be a whole lot of work. But if thats the best way to do it, I will.

 

I was able to create a reasonable facimile of the moon texture with native AM combiners, at least.

 

Any thoughts or ideas on what you, as someone who conceivably would be loading up this scene to render it, would like to see?

[entity]

You could-- if you have time-- render some of the parts up close and laying flat to the camera (without perspective) arranging the lights so that you can render them with the DT textures to make a bump map of the individual sides. Then just Decal those maps onto the bare shapes. Even using displacement a little might help re-create what you did for the original MASTER-piece.

I think someone posted about this before... as a way to cut down the render time by rendering a flattened view of your object with the material applied and then applying that render as a decal. I think.

[Rodney]

My take on this...

I understand the need to keep it in A:M for new users but I think you may actually do this process a disservice if you spend a lot of time reworking it.

 

Recreating the look of a spectacular scene in many steps that only took you a few with the help of a third party plugin is knoble and inspirational but I have to look at it and say... Why lie when the truth will do?

 

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't remake the scene in A:M alone but there has to be a better way.

 

Perhaps a texture guru in the Materials Laboritory can assist.

Perhaps you can substitute a basic material for the Darktree Simbiont.

 

One of the goals here is to show that we only need A:M to build all these great scenes but if we really didn't... that kind of defeats the purpose. It'll be more frustrating for the user in the end if they get the wrong information.

 

Example:

I'll be quite impressed to see how Jim Talbot reworks his Leopard Queen image to exclude Photoshop. That aughta be good.

 

Since Simbiot is a free extension perhaps you (or others) could put together a small writeup on how you can extend a scene with available 3rd Party products.

The emphasis being that you can create such things in A:M alone... but other tools work with A:M too.

 

By all means, rework the scene.

But I doubt very much that Martin and crew mean for you to cripple your project and misinform their customers.

 

That is a fine image by the way.

 

My few thoughts on the matter.

-Rodney

[entity]

Rodney, I agree with not confusing the customer/user. I'd ask Yves about what materials could recreate a similar "greebly" surface. In fact, the materials plugs he created in the past should make it feasable.

 

His work is at www.ypoart.com.

 

*EDIT:

Look in the downloads section... not sure if these all work in 11.1 but it's worth a try.

Edited May 5, 2005 by entity

[JoelS]

One of the goals here is to show that we only need A:M to build all these great scenes but if we really didn't... that kind of defeats the purpose.  It'll be more frustrating for the user in the end if they get the wrong information.

 

...

 

Since Simbiot is a free extension perhaps you (or others) could put together a small writeup on how you can extend a scene with available 3rd Party products.

The emphasis being that you can create such things in A:M alone... but other tools work with A:M too.

Creating a simple tutorial on using 3rd party texture tools isn't a bad idea, really. Is that something that would be desirable to include on the CD (along with the original scene, of course)?

 

 

@ entity:

 

Wouldn't Yves's materials create basically the same problem, though, in that they would require that extra step of having the user get the .atx or .trb files and place them in the correct folders? It's admittedly not too daunting a task, but adds another layer between 'load project' and 'click render'. His CellFX turbulence could be useful in recreating some of the detail the darktree provides, though I remember in the past that it was kind of slow to render.

 

But there would seem to be little difference between having people install the Simbiont or having them install new .trb files (aside from the Simbiont being slightly more complex to get in and running), at least in terms of what seems to be wanted for the content CD.

[Rodney]

Creating a simple tutorial on using 3rd party texture tools isn't a bad idea, really. Is that something that would be desirable to include on the CD (along with the original scene, of course)?

 

I'd say "Yes" if we are talking the Extra CD.

 

If your target is the next A:M CD (probably to go to press October 2005) the goal is to keep it A:M only.

 

I'm not privy to your discussions with Martin and their word is final.

Paul Daley

would be a 'reality check' to sound off against as he is the lead on the Extra CD Project.

[pdaley]

At Hash Bash there was some dicussion about contact Darkling and seeking permission to distribute the Simbion plugin on the Hash CD. This image was one of the reasons why we would want to do that. Joel, thanks for reminding me. I will touch base with Steve and Martin and see how this will proceed. I'll get back to you as soon as I know what the next step will be.