Eric2575 Posted June 10, 2007 Posted June 10, 2007 Thought I'd post a thread here since the NX-03 is still a work in progress. I tried to use several different techniques in making this model. One of them I used for the first time and now I wonder how many possibilites this opens up - boolean cutters. I used booleans to cut out the shuttle bays on the left and right side of the saucer and again to cut out the sections that have the aft thrusters. The shiny metallic look is accomplished with spec intensity and spec size maps. I was surprised at how much I had to crank up the values to get that effect. There are also several normal maps to get the plate line definitions and of course the model is composed of several parts that are pulled together by action objects. Oh, yes, I tried using light lists, which I did, but found that putting lights in the model and then using light lists was more stable than just lights and light lists in the chor. I had many crashes when I tried just the light lists in the chor. Anyways, I'm still working on the bottom saucer decals and will post as I go. Here is a quick flyby: Challenger Thanks for the votes. Quote
3DArtZ Posted June 10, 2007 Posted June 10, 2007 Hey thanks for posting this. This was my favorite! the flybye was a little too compressy to see the great detail you have in the still, anyway to make it better quality in the video? Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com Quote
ruscular Posted June 10, 2007 Posted June 10, 2007 very sweet and nice lighting! does the bay door actually open? Quote
MattWBradbury Posted June 10, 2007 Posted June 10, 2007 Is the planet real, or is that a background image? Quote
Eric2575 Posted June 10, 2007 Author Posted June 10, 2007 Mike: I got the same impression as you when I viewed the avi, but I didn't expect much with just a quick test. The model really needs at least 5x multipass to really shine. I want to make a flyby with lights blinking and shadows moving, but that needs to cook overnight if I am going to do the multipass avi. Ruscular: The bay doors are inside the saucer just out of sight from these angles. It would be easy enough to make them function, but for now I have no plans to go much further with this project. Matt: The planet is a background image from NASA. I was going to model the planet but didn't have enough time to make it as realistic looking as I wanted to before the deadline came up. A while back I read a post on making planets with a gradient material. The material was mentioned and a pic was shown, but the details were not posted. I had a nice planet going with high def surface maps, but the clouds and the halo atmoshpere were being stubborn. Now that I have time, I am going to follow up on that post and see if I can get details on the gradient for the atmosphere. Quote
AProd Posted June 10, 2007 Posted June 10, 2007 Hey Eric, Great job with this model. It definitely got my vote! I made a stab at this ship a few years ago in an image contest, but yours is way better than mine was. Great detail, texturing, lighting...really top notch. You rock! Quote
Eric2575 Posted June 10, 2007 Author Posted June 10, 2007 Hey fellow Nor-Cal guy: thanks fot the koodos! I'm from Orangevale here in Sacramento. Nice to know there is a fellow Hasher nearby. Quote
Julian Posted June 10, 2007 Posted June 10, 2007 Were the glows on the warp nacelles and the Bussard collectors created by simply turning on the Glow attribute? Quote
Eric2575 Posted June 11, 2007 Author Posted June 11, 2007 Yes, glow is set on, but I also have a dedicated light (light lists) shining directly on the nacelles to keep them bright no matter what other illumination is present. Quote
AProd Posted June 11, 2007 Posted June 11, 2007 Hey fellow Nor-Cal guy: thanks fot the koodos! I'm from Orangevale here in Sacramento. Nice to know there is a fellow Hasher nearby. Hah! You're just up the road a piece. Just a couple of splines away. BTW, I also really dug the Vette. I voted for both of yours, and didn't even know they were from the same person! (I'm wondering...has it ever happened before that one person placed in the top four with two images in the same contest, or is that a Hash first?) My harshest criticism of the Vette image is that it is not very green. I mean, there is an issue of "Popular Mechanics" visible in the trash can. That should go in the recycling with the other colored paper. It is sending the wrong message! Good job again, and congrats! Quote
Darkwing Posted June 11, 2007 Posted June 11, 2007 Hey, what codec did you render it as. I can't view the avi because i don't have the codec and i just want to know which one so i don't have to download all the codecs! Quote
Mohammad Posted June 11, 2007 Posted June 11, 2007 Wow that is really good looking, how long have you been working on it? Quote
Eric2575 Posted July 7, 2007 Author Posted July 7, 2007 I rendered it all default AM AVI. Nothing special. The Ship was actually something I just started a month before the contest. I didn't intend to enter, but since I was pleased with the result, I entered it. Having finished a 14 hour tga sequence for a better flyby, I am somewhat stumped at going any further with it. I have access to After Effects and Premiere, but am unable to get a good looking video out of the sequence. I import the tga's and try to play them back, but the frames seem to skip forward and then back a few frames over and over. The result is less than pleasing. I am not that familiar with both programs, but it seems the approach should work. I wanted DVD quality and size, just to see what it would look like on a HDTV. I did import the frames back into AM and rendered an AVI out, but the size is 143.6 MB. Oh, the AM rendered quicktime movie shows the lensflare at the end, but when I import into After Effects or Premiere, no lens flare. Quote
3DArtZ Posted July 7, 2007 Posted July 7, 2007 Mike: I got the same impression as you when I viewed the avi, but I didn't expect much with just a quick test. The model really needs at least 5x multipass to really shine. I want to make a flyby with lights blinking and shadows moving, but that needs to cook overnight if I am going to do the multipass avi. try rendering it out to a mov file. Animation compression. Or a tga sequence and import the frames into quicktime, assuming you have qtpro on your machine. Mike Fitz www.3dartz.com Quote
draagn Posted July 9, 2007 Posted July 9, 2007 Are your booleans working if you do a toon render? I'm having an issue at the moment and cannot get it to work. Quote
ruscular Posted July 9, 2007 Posted July 9, 2007 Are your booleans working if you do a toon render? I'm having an issue at the moment and cannot get it to work. I think you get a much cleaner result if you render out to TGA sequences and you have the ability to fix it frame by frame. All major movie studio do clean up work, such as the service of Artbeats studio in Myrtle Creek, Oregon. Quote
Eric2575 Posted July 9, 2007 Author Posted July 9, 2007 Mike: I don't have quicktime pro, but I do have access to Adobe Premiere. I just don't have any experience with it. Still experimenting. draagn: Booleons worked fine for me in toon render, see attached. ruscular: I rendered the sequence out to TGA at 1280 x 720. Now I am trying to compress it to either an avi or mov file for viewing. The trouble I'm having is that when I import into Adobe Premiere, the movie skips back and forth upon replay. I'm not sure what's going on. The AM movie rendered fine, but the file is too big. 143 MB for about 9 seconds worth of footage is rather large, isn't it? Does anyone know the steps to converting an AM TGA sequence to a movie file that is playable on a DVD so it can be viewed on a big screen TV? Quote
3DArtZ Posted July 10, 2007 Posted July 10, 2007 how are you naming your files? I think if you go with "1.tga, 2.tga...." you will have a problem when importing. anyone else have info on this.... Quote
Eric2575 Posted July 10, 2007 Author Posted July 10, 2007 Yup, already ran into that problem and corrected it. Premiere wants to have three digit sequential numbers in the tga's. Photoshop's browser has a nifty batch rename feature that took care of this. I haven't played around with the file today because we have too much to do to prepare for a big party this weekend - lotsa friends and relatives coming over prior to a wedding this weekend. Once all the hoopla is over, I want to get this figured out - a 14 hour render to TGAs should not be wasted. Quote
ruscular Posted July 10, 2007 Posted July 10, 2007 Yup, already ran into that problem and corrected it. Premiere wants to have three digit sequential numbers in the tga's. Photoshop's browser has a nifty batch rename feature that took care of this. I haven't played around with the file today because we have too much to do to prepare for a big party this weekend - lotsa friends and relatives coming over prior to a wedding this weekend. Once all the hoopla is over, I want to get this figured out - a 14 hour render to TGAs should not be wasted. I forgot to mention that you can import sequence file back into AM and then render out to video. you really don't need adobe premiere. Quote
Darkwing Posted July 10, 2007 Posted July 10, 2007 Would you just use AM composite? I've been wondering about tga's, all I ever use are either avi or mov, though I find avi has a better render quality. Of course I use Pinnacle to edit all my video stuff. For playback on DVD with pinnacle is SO easy! Just import, set up a dvd menu and chapters right in pinnacle and then export straight to the disc at whatever quality you like. Pinnacle is only about $100. Anyways, I don't know if after effects has something similar of just import and then export straight to disc or not. Why not post a screenshot(s) of what's going on in after effects, maybe it'll give everybody a better idea of what's goin on by seeing what you see. Quote
Eric2575 Posted July 10, 2007 Author Posted July 10, 2007 The jiggle problem had me thinking about this all day, so I examined the tgas' frame by frame, all 280 of them. So what do you know, the jiggles were caused by frames being out of sync. This happened when I tried to import the TGAs back into AM. Selecting all 280 frames was too much for AM, it flat out refused to let me do it and told me so in a short message - too many files at once! So then I grabbed about 50 at a time and this seemd to work. After importing all 280 this way, I thought I was set, only to have the jigglies. Well, after repeating the steps, I found that AM takes the last frame of any given set and jumps it in order to the top. Say you are importing frames 1-37, well in my case, all frames import, but frame #37 gets placed at the top of the heap before frame #1. This happened every time I grabbed a set of 50. So after everything was imported, every 50th frame was pushed to the top of the stack resulting in a missed frame every 50 frames - jiggle. After manually putting them back in order, I had a relatively smooth animation. Now I am working on compositing a scrolling starfield together with Challenger to make it really shine. Glad you like it Mr. C Quote
Darkwing Posted July 11, 2007 Posted July 11, 2007 Can't wait, the model already looks like something from the tv show. Quote
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