United3dArtists Archive

So things started out, Dropbox sorted, Skype sorted, and in my very little free time I have been working a bit. Mikom has been working like a champ.

Here is some concepts started.


The crater, a WIP - sculpted in Blender (which I love to sculpt in, as I can use Multires meshes).


Mikom started working on his craft, the XF-40


In a few days he managed to coplete it with the following images:






Currently Mikom is working on the next craft:






I have worked with him on the composition and final Image.. I may go all out with it in a professional software, or work with some tricks in the WS of truespace.




Right now life is getting in the way so I haven't been able to port much, but Mikom has like a champ. I will try get more scenery and get some layout sorted shortly.

Hey Steinie i think we need bigger hoes these guys are flying

Gulp!

Their Ninjas I'm tellin' ya!!!

pugman 1 wrote:Hey Steinie i think we need bigger hoes these guys are flying

Yeah, but you guys have a dragon!

Team Stratos is in hyperdrive! Love those sketches!

Woah

Slow progress, but some.



I am wondering how to texture it, I will see how later I suppose. I guess using the dirt/rock shader or a kind of displacement map, or transparency map, or something.. could work. hmmm..... thinking out loud. I'm really tired now, going to bed.

I love sculpting in Blender, but I sure would like to know how to hide or extract islands or clusters of polygons... I know I can hide chunks of the whole object with some kind of raycast system, but I would rather hide polygons. Does anyone know how to do this?

What I'm currently working on.
The Silver Bullet w.i.p. Model is far from finished and there is not a 100% chance it will be in the final scene.

Some scenery, working on the functions of the loading bay, how it works, etc.. wondering how to modularily build this.

If I understood your question... to Hide a portion of the mesh, select what you want to hide then hit 'H'. To unhide I think its 'H' plus 'SHIFT' or 'CTRL'.

To extract a part of an object, select what you want then SHIFT and D.
To then separate, hit P. A pull down menu gives you choices.

Really nice work guys. So Stratos is working the air, and Doodlesacks is workin on the ground. When this is over... we plan on knocking those craft right out of the sky.
So there.

Thanks for the tips! I will try apply them.

Here is the latest update, as Mikom is working on craft #2.

We have been discussing a lot on the backstory, function and how we are working on this, as this is becoming quite a project. But now that we have the camera and some ideas a little more clear, working on the rest should be a bit easier. Still, everything is open to change.

Ehm... slow progress, but things are starting to take form. Tomorrow I will start doing textures for the crater and see if i can get more modeling done. I am also wondering how to do the lighting and in what engine I will use. I am tempted to play with Arnold (demo) with SI...

Right now i did a lot of blocking to get the layout sorted, and then with Mikom we have been trying to figure out what we would need, what detail and how. We would love to get multiple angles in this, but I guess that will all depend on what point. We do have a center focal point though, which is this bay or even this walkway.



There is still sooo much to do.....

We decided to work the weekend, and we got little progress, but our communication has been good, and we even have spent some time in Minecraft just "hanging out"

I have a server.









I will get more progress shortly. We have been worried with polycount and TS's abilities, but we will see. I may use SI for the final image in the end. I will try use my video card, but it should all be alright, depends if we want reflections and GI.

Did my first texture on my MD or HD crater cave cutout. I will LD the crater but only after I bake and create my textures.

I used Insane Bump for Gimp to get me some cool textures. I then also used the AO from Blender Multi-res sculpting baking system. I find it's baking system quite adequate for multi-res meshes.

Can't wait to show this to Mikom! The texture is pretty funky. Not my best, but funky.

This is a WS shader btw, real time, Direct X 9 baby!

But I have to smooth out the UV seams in the normal maps...... I will do that in Blender (smudge it over) or change to "object space" or "Tangent Space" for the normal application.

Real nice Draise.

Is that going to be the camera distance?

The final camera angle.. um.. no.. I don't think it will be like that, but from many other ones, more realistic ones I guess. Depends on the final Composite.

I am making 2K textures, which work, but obviously 4K ones would do better.. unfortunately my little blender on my dual-core machine can't hack a 200K object to paint on. I accidentally froze the object which made things difficult. I dessimated it to drop the polycount to about 65k, but I lost some detail. Due to the fact that the background crater part doesn't need as much detail, I left it as is.

I used some handy nifty TS displacement. I figured.. since it's the happening topic, to put it to good use.

I used the false AO pass from Insane Bump in Gimp.

I also improved the shader and displacement for the cave. It's much nicer now... very pretty.

I wish I could have a free software that could paint 4K textures on HD models. I will try learn Mari next time, I do like texture painting, in a way, it's quite relaxing. Maybe I will try Modo for that also..... hmm....







I must say, I need to either drop the contrast for the back crater, or up the contrast of my cave texture.

There is a bit of stretching, I must admit, my bad texture painting skills. That is one thing I DON'T like about Blender, is that it has no simple "Object Space" brush projection. It's almost.. absurd! =P

So it is easy to get stretching.

I also started to play with post to see how I could make the image look pretty, but really I think in the end Blender Composite nodes will get the final image sorted.

Up next: incorporating models with their shaders - lighting experiments - pass structure and scripting (for Z-depth to create atmosphere and DOF).

It should look quite nice even for being just WS. At least I don't have to render.

I guess Maya is good for it's viewport and exactly that... but I am very unhappy with Autodesk right now for shutting down Softimage - so I don't want to support them. Screw Autod*cks. Sorry, I'm tired and it's late.. but screw Autod*cks!

Nice work , im sure blender has object space iv seen it so many times , it maybe in the nodes ,or under uvin the uv
Editor

Modelling in a casual way, while texturing and doing simple UV's.

Mikom also has been doing the same and has some objects I will try port over into the scene shortly. Looks like we are doing a more of a modular/lego block building approach to the scene.

We have had some logistical issues with internet and change of location that have hampered a bit of progress, but all is coming on slowly.

Did you find anything like object space?

I found... auto unwrap through Object Space, and object space Normal baking, etc.. but no object space paint brush projection. Only the following:

• Stencil
  Random
  3D
  Tiled
  View Plane

I think the closest projection type I'm looking for would be "3D".

Resolved to instance the shaders to Object based, then setup my passes later, it won't be animation ready (scene wide shaders with passes set by a script I created).

Mikom has some cool nifty little props. My computer is crunching hard already, we will see how it all is put together. If TS can't take it, I will port it all into SI and do it there.

Slow Progress... it is hard knowing what to do with scenes of large scale!

Kerbal Space Program > Minecraft

What to do with large scenes? Do as Silent Hill did, lower the draw distance.

...Or don't actually I want to see more of these models because they're looking great

I only used model side but can you not hide stuff on Layers?
You could also use low resolution textures then swap them for the final shot, every bit helps

The lower res textures is a good idea! I am using layers also.

My modeling is so slow! I have a lot on my plate, so I work on this in the late hours of the night. Mikom has been doing some great little support models, I think I will place them in the scene shortly, closer to the camera shots, different angles. As much as I would like this scene to be a whole world, like a game level or something, I think I will have to suffice on beauty shots. The pass/layer system of TS works, cumbersomely, and... never mind! It will be awesome when done.

Looking good already. It does look like a great world for a game but right about focusing on the beauty shot at least for the challenge.

Time is ticking! Mikom has made a bunch of cool stuff, and now I'm slamming everything together. Still a lot to model! But I'm confident I can whip out a cool image by the end of this!!!!! Right now I have to Glue Glue Glue, and then put it all together. It's like playing Lego, except you have to make the blocks!

I decided to ditch the pass system, which would need some heavy scripting (well for me) in TS to do, but I'll just do the quick way of "retuxture" everything to the depth pass so I can add atmosphere, DOF, and fog, maybe even cloud effects later on through Blender compositing.

Started doing lighting, and started working on some... well the background needs some details which Mikom gladly built, and also the foreground needs it's finishing touches, and the lighting.. then I will get into fun post effects! Not sure though, I think I can pull off quite a cool image from this.

Lookin' good.

Lookin' Real good.

Lookin' ...gulp...ptweeeeee.,.good!

DONE.

Well atleast I think it is, up to Mikom!













Not bad for a WS realtime render, still could work in about 15fps, then using a depth shader, made a second pass then in Blender put in some atmosphere and DOF, also added better contrast/colour. I am sure I could push my skills for the realtime engine a bit more, but I think this is good for now.

Beautiful work guys!

Thats some awsome work there guys ,