USS Evenstar

[PurpleDingo]

It's been a very long time since I've posted....well anything (2007?). I've been logging onto the forums pretty regularly for inspiration and have been working on this for couple months. I present to you, the USS Evenstar.....a work-in-progress.

 

[largento]

*VERY* Nice!

[TheSpleen]

very nice model!

[Darkwing]

very very, beautiful, it just embodies the whole style of TOS, it's very nice

*wipes away a tear*

[HomeSlice]

Great looking model. Nice to see you posting again!

[robcat2075]

Welcome back!

 

Good looking Ship!

[jason1025]

Thats very cool. I like how you added the deflectors. It always annoyed me that the USS Reliant aka Miranda class starships did not have deflectors.

[itsjustme]

Looks good!

[PurpleDingo]

Hey, thanks everybody for the kind words. I'll be posting more....maybe an evolution of where it started from.

 

Jason, I agree! The ship just HAD to have deflector dishes. I'd like to give a special shout out to Tralfaz. Al's Greebles are used to connect the supprt pylons to the upper nacelle (solid u-bend), and also what the dishes connect to (couplers).

 

Just for giggles, here's another shot...

 

 

And please, comments are very welcome. Plenty more to come!

[Rodney]

Very nice!

 

I'm sure Al is always happy when he sees his greebles being used.

Especially when its used to create starships like this.

 

Keep on posting!

[brainmuffin]

Ooh, a greeble kit? I musta missed that...

 

Cool ship, too!

[MJL]

Al's Greebles Here

 

Thanks Again, Al

[PurpleDingo]

And now.....for those who care, a brief history of the Evenstar:

 

This ship started from me playing around with Nick Porcino's Enterprise model to come up with something that looked like a TOS version of the NX-01 and called it the Panama after my favorite Van Halen song. (take a moment....that song + ship coming out of warp = )

 

 

Out of respect for the model and its creator, and after pouring over ships designs and studying Nick's mesh and realizing a saucer isn't all that hard of a thing to build, I set out to redesign my ship. Still wanting something small and liking twin nacelles, I ended up with this:

 

 

A friend of mine and I mulled over the engines for awhile and decided from the profile they looked too long without a secondary hull, so we went about looking to shorter, non-canon, pre-TOS nacelle design and also worked out the ship's backstory. I classified it for the time-being as a "heavy scout" meaning it could take care of itself for awhile if it needed to and sported older nacelles which weren't quite end-of-life and worked perfectly for patrol duty along the Neutral Zone and was also assigned to nearby Starbase. The ship does have 2 small hanger areas in the back of the saucer for smaller shuttlecraft, but not near the size of a full Constitution-class hanger. The front caps would be in the style of the The Cage / Where No Man's Gone Before with the coolie golden anttenae (sp?). I was determined to fit on the deflectors and got my inspiration from a design I remembered of a TOS miranda-class. I renamed it to Evenstar as a reference to one of my other favorite things, The Lord of the Rings.

 

The rest, for now, is history. Currently, the ship is under re-construction again. I've been reshaping the back end of the saucer. Here she is and she stands now sans shuttle hangers:

 

 

As always, C&C's welcome.

[PurpleDingo]

And he's back! ....again.

 

With a question!

 

So I'm looking at using a displacement map for the windows on my starship. I'm trying to figure out why I'm seeing 1) the edges of the decal and 2) the grain on the patches the decal is on. The image was rendered with AO on set at 25% and occlusion at 100% in the choreography. Under render options, AO is on at 30%.

 

 

If I turn AO off, graininess goes away. I'm wondering what it is about AO that's causing the rough grain where the decal is.

 

Here is the displacement image:

 

 

I'm using v13.0t.

 

[pengwin]

Not a reply to your question, but just wanted to say what an awesome model you have there.

[PurpleDingo]

Thanks, Pengwin!

[Eric2575]

I looked at your decal in PS and that looks fine. Then I rendered without AO and like you said, that's fine too. Now I'm rendering using 9x AO. I'll post when it's done. I'm using V.13t

 

Edit: first 2 passes show a significant amount of roughness - aborted render and checking some other variables

[NancyGormezano]

If I recall, 13t might have had a problem with decals not covering the entire patch that they were applied - which may explain your edge showing

 

As for graininess & AO - usually the more passes, the less grainy. AO is inherently grainy.

 

I was using 15j plus - only did 2 and 9 pass, both with ai=100, ao=100. What did seem strange to me tho, even tho 9 pass looks less grainy - it actually took the same amount of time to render? Am I imagining things?

 

EDIT: added 16 pass - took only slightly longer than 9 pass - but I changed the decal image to be a bmp (rather than jpg) to see if that made any difference

Edited March 10, 2010 by NancyGormezano

[Eric2575]

I did some further examination of your decal in PS and found that you have different levels in your black windows causing the blurring. I'll make them solid black and that should take care of the problem.

 

Edit: Rendering now with full black and saved as TGA

[PurpleDingo]

Nancy and Eric, thanks so much for looking into this.

 

Nancy, when I applied the decal, I hid everything except the 2 patches the decal covers and it does cover them completely. The edge is where the next patch begins which is undecaled.

 

Eric, thanks for adjusting the image. I was wondering about the blurriness, but was more concerned about the rough surface on the decaled patches.

 

Thanks again!

[NancyGormezano]

Interesting Eric - I took the opposite approach, for this image - and thought that one would need smoother transitioning of gray values (from black to neutral gray) in the displacement image. So I blurred the image used for the decal even more, essentially anti-aliasing it, rather than use an image having sharp, stair stepping edges.

 

I'll be curious as to how it turns out

 

(this is 25 pass - with new image used for decal)

[Eric2575]

I seem to remember that I was also having problems with V.13 and displacement maps. If I recall, on my system it had a bit to do with how much memory AM had when rendering. If I didn't open any other programs, AM did fine, but if I opened memory intensive programs, then I would get weird renders. This is happening again. I am rendering now with Firefox open, as well as Photoshop and I get major artifacts when rendering displacement with AO. I'm also on a pretty weak (1.25GB ram) laptop, which is not helping any. Let me shut everything down except AM and see what goes on.

 

Eric

[PurpleDingo]

In case it helps, here's my system info...

 

Windows 7 64bit

3.4GH AMD Phenom II Quad-core

4GB RAM

[Eric2575]

Nancy, you are right about blurring for smoother transitions, but since Dingo wants to have a sharp drop off for the window edges, it is necessary to get a tight smooth transition which blurring doesn't give you. Dingo never had tight lines in the jpg, so that needed to be cleaned up for a crisp displacement map. Here is the Photoshop image of a selection without anti aliasing. It should have selected just the black, not what you see here.

 

 

Dingo (don't know your real name) I am coming to the conclusion that on my meager Laptop, AM V.13t, AO, and displacement don't like each other. I have created three different displacement maps and created three different modelsto render with AO, and each one comes out with more grain and artifacts than AO usually produces.

 

 

I am going to try another render with the AO in the chor turned up to 45, but I have meager hopes. I am also rendering an AO pass with bump instead of displacement to see if that will work for you in case this is a bug with V.13. Here is the bump version. Depending on how close you get to the model, I think this is your best bet. Any closer and you should build a high detail part of that section anyway

 

 

This render is with an additional ambiance and color map.

 

 

These are the maps I used: Window_Ambiance_Lights_out.zip Windows TGA2 Bump at 300%, Windows Ambiance Lights out at 44%, Windows Blue color 100%

 

Hope this helps

 

Btw, I've been fighting the flu for the last several days, so this is what I can do throughout the day so I don't die of boredom

 

Eric

[PurpleDingo]

Eric, thank you again for all your help. I'll try out the new maps maybe tonight if I get a chance and post some new images.

 

I'm honored my little project was able to keep your boredom in check. I just got over the flu not too long ago, so I feel your pain.

 

Hope you feel better soon!

 

-Dingo.

[PurpleDingo]

Here's an image of the new saucer with Eric's textures. I also added some hull plating.

 

 

C&C's welcome!

[pengwin]

Those new maps certainly did the trick.

 

Just one thing... have you applied displacement maps to the windows on the right of the picture? They seem to look a little flat.

[PurpleDingo]

That's because they're bump maps. With the angle to the camera, the illusion us being lost with the windows on the edge of the saucer. I believe the concensus was that AO and displacement maps didn't play well together, at least not with v13t. Maybe I'll play with it more when I upgrade to 15, but for now I'm happy with Eric's new maps. I have to move on to rebuilding the nacelles. I have nifty plans for them.....nifty, I say!

[Darkwing]

ok good, I only accept nifty or spiffy, anything less is a waste of time

 

Anyways, looking very good, I have for some time been tinkering with the decaling of windows on starship hulls and I'm gonna look at Eric's maps some to see how I can improve on ones I use for my ships. I look forward to seeing the rest of this ship re-done!

[pengwin]

That's because they're bump maps. With the angle to the camera, the illusion us being lost with the windows on the edge of the saucer. I believe the concensus was that AO and displacement maps didn't play well together, at least not with v13t. Maybe I'll play with it more when I upgrade to 15, but for now I'm happy with Eric's new maps. I have to move on to rebuilding the nacelles. I have nifty plans for them.....nifty, I say!

 

Ah right, I see now.

 

I've not used AO yet, but as I am also using 13t, maybe I should wait till I also upgrade.

[Eric2575]

Dingo:

 

I as wondering, are you using your work just for stills or will you be making clips? Reason I'm asking is because of render times with AO. Also, AO is great for simulating an outside lighting environment which you really don't need for outer space and actually don't want since AO lights all around an object. What I'm trying to say is, lighting for outer space is pretty simple to set up since most of the light will come from one major source, such as a sun and then maybe a planet's glow, not really from all around an object. You can get some nice space lighting effects with just a couple of lights and some specular tricks. If you do a search in the AM Stills library (you have to log out from AM forum and log in as a guest) with the search term "Enterprise", you'll find some nice examples of spaceships. Out of these, all of mine were done in V.13t without AO but with displacement maps. Faster render times, looks great, and...you can use displacement maps ♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♫

 

Hope that helps

 

Eric

 

Edit: Could you give us a render with the hull plating turned up a bit, they are so very faint on my monitor.

[PurpleDingo]

Eric,

 

Ultimately, animations. I've done a few short tests looking at specularity playing against hull plating. In my research of AO, I was beginning to wonder if AO in outer space really made any sense.

 

Thanks for the input. I'll take a look at the stills gallery and get some new shots. Thanks!

 

-Bryan.

[Eric2575]

No problem, looking forward to more renders

[PurpleDingo]

Here's a shot underneath the saucer. I turned AO off and made the bump maps displacement, though I'm seeing some distortion with them. Maybe I need to turn down the percentage. I think it was set at 100%.

 

I added the main sensor array and navigation dome and played with the specular settings. I'm not totally digging the hull texture.

 

25 passes, 1920x1080 and took only 5 minutes on the nose

 

[Darkwing]

what are you using for your hull? The typical Star Trek hull texture is called Aztec. Google it and you'll find how to make your own

[PurpleDingo]

Unless I'm mistooken, the Aztec pattern wasn't introduced until Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This is an Original Series era ship.

 

I've got some other textures I'm going to try out though, or, crazy thought....I'll make one. *gasp!*

[Darkwing]

well, with the remastered TOS series they still used the Aztec texture on the ship, they just darkened it and glossed it up some. It's a good base for any hull pattern really

[Eric2575]

Bryan:

 

couple of things. Robert mentioned something about 19 levels of fallof on either side of a displacement map in AM leading to some banding. He said EXR will give smoother fallof. Robert, please put it in your own words when you read this. I'll make another window map and use exr as the output. That should hopefully take care of the last artifacts. Another thing: the saucer shape looks out of proportion from that last shot angle. It looks too thick vs diameter? Maybe the perspective, but maybe that;s the way it;s supposed to be? And yes, the displacement maps are turned up too high, not because of distortion, but they (the windows) just look too inset for the scale.

 

Eric

[Hutch]

I don't know much about star trek but I wonder how big those windows are supposed to be. Unless they are huge bay window sort of things, the plating seems too small. It looks like 4 foot wide windows surrounded by 1 foot square panels. Maybe this is accurate but I would think the panels would be bigger than the windows.

[Eric2575]

Maybe they're tiles like the space shuttle? I don't know enough about it

[PurpleDingo]

The thickness of the saucer is to accomodate for 2 hanger bays that'll be on the back of the saucer on each side of the impulse deck. I also played with the focal length of the camera. The saucer is supposed to be 4 decks high and yeah, the plating is way too small. I've been looking over screenshots of the CG Enterprise from the remastered Original Series, such as this one from the remastered "Doomsday Machine".

 

 

Baby steps

 

Thanks for the support and input, guys!

[Darkwing]

Actually, wasn't the original series ships the one with the horizontal lines on the side of the saucer, and the tiles on the top and bottom?

[PurpleDingo]

You might be thinking the Enterprise refit from the first 6 movies.

[Darkwing]

hmm, yes, I think you're right. It's been such a long time since I've seen an unremastered TOS episode that I kinda forget the details

[robcat2075]

Bryan:

 

couple of things. Robert mentioned something about 19 levels of fallof on either side of a displacement map in AM leading to some banding. He said EXR will give smoother fallof. Robert, please put it in your own words when you read this. I'll make another window map and use exr as the output. That should hopefully take care of the last artifacts.

 

Eric

 

in 8-bit color 128 is neutral grey(which means no displacement in a displacement map)so that leaves only 127 levels of displacement up or down.

 

For small, sharp features like these windows it may not matter since the slope is greater over one pixel than the minimum slope that 1 level represents.

 

Here's comparison of my dragon spike test, The first one uses a targa depth map, the second uses an EXR depth map. They are both the same resolution, but the greater precision of EXR allows every pixel to have an exact gray value rather than being rounded off to one of 256 levels.

 

 

 

You can see the banding most on the body surface, where the neutral gray wasn't all exactly the same identical value. EXR is able to transition those small changes, TGA can't.

 

There are other problems in both renders. In general displacement maps are interesting but not perfected yet.

[PurpleDingo]

ahhhhhhhh sooooooooooooo........... Thank you for the enlightenment, Master Rob.

 

-GrassHoppa.

[PurpleDingo]

Here are a couple of new pics of the Evenstar WIP. C&C's welcome

 

 

[itsjustme]

Here are a couple of new pics of the Evenstar WIP. C&C's welcome

 

 

 

It looks great! The only critique I have is that a few of the edges seem a little too sharp.

[TheSpleen]

very nice!

[PurpleDingo]

Hey everybody. Just to try to keep this alive....can't believe it's been 4 months since I posted anything......I have some new images and video now that I'll try to post soon. I've been collecting everything onto my Windows Live Skydrive. Right now, the ship is over 75 (closer to 90?) percent complete; working on texturing and detail work. I've been playing with lighting and boolean cutters for some of the windows and successfully launched photon torpedoes!