United3dArtists Archive

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 11 Jun 2013, 02:55

I'll need this shape. Yes.

Hexagon. Kerkythea.

This was an accident. While experimenting with making strange shapes this just happened.

jamesmc · Post by **jamesmc** » 11 Jun 2013, 05:56

There are no accidents only alien mind suggestions.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 11 Jun 2013, 20:37

jamesmc wrote:There are no accidents only alien mind suggestions.

This means something. This is important. http://youtu.be/xqhE7ieH2R8?t=1m18s

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 15 Jun 2013, 04:09

Modeling a 3D printer. The guides and screw will raise a horizontal set of guides and a screw with the print head. That gives vertical and horizontal movement. A similar set up will move the table for the other horizontal direction. Then it gets some housings for motors, mechanics, and electronics, and a few wires or cables, and some structural parts.

The theme is that an alien radio signal was received with a 3D printer file encoded. Someone printed the shape in the previous post and, although seemingly just a piece of plastic, it activated and lit up.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 17 Jun 2013, 04:10

Add some motors, wires, and a few details. Then some basic textures. Then rendering. Kerkythea doesn't do FX well. I'll make the orange alien shape translucent or glassy and a light emitter and use some volumetric fog for rays. If I knew Bryce better I'd render there for FX.

The vertical screws and table screw will have motors to turn them on the bottom of the frame. The print head screw might have a motor on a side support or on the print head assembly.

pugman 1 · Post by **pugman 1** » 17 Jun 2013, 15:19

Hey Finis this is starting to look good .

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 17 Jun 2013, 16:54

Thanks Pugman 1.

Here's motors, a wire, box on back for electronics, and more bushings.

jamesmc · Post by **jamesmc** » 17 Jun 2013, 17:09

√ bushings

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 18 Jun 2013, 03:53

Now to transfer to Kerkythea, do materials, and render.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 18 Jun 2013, 20:05

Hexagon refuses to let me export these objects as an obj so the image above will have to be my entry unless I can find the problem. It just crashes. "Send to Daz Studio" doesn't work. Not all the objects are sent and some are distorted. I tried that to write to obj from Daz.

I saved to a new Hexagon file and deleted everything except the two large structural parts on the sides. Crashed on attempt to export to obj. Did again and deleted everything and made a sphere. That would export.

Exporting as other formats is useless since the textures aren't included. Kerkythea sees things as materials. Hexagon has some nice modeling features but is apparently meant for simple models and is very unstable for obj export.

I'll try to find the problem and get this into KT but after that I'm done until I can learn Blender. It is far from perfect too but it seems that is the only place to go without money and some forum members have found it worth the effort to learn.

Draise · Post by **Draise** » 18 Jun 2013, 20:23

Damn, hate when software doesn't make quite the cut to get the job done.

jamesmc · Post by **jamesmc** » 18 Jun 2013, 22:28

Finis wrote:Hexagon refuses to let me export these objects as an obj so the image above will have to be my entry unless I can find the problem. It just crashes. "Send to Daz Studio" doesn't work. Not all the objects are sent and some are distorted. I tried that to write to obj from Daz.

I saved to a new Hexagon file and deleted everything except the two large structural parts on the sides. Crashed on attempt to export to obj. Did again and deleted everything and made a sphere. That would export.

Exporting as other formats is useless since the textures aren't included. Kerkythea sees things as materials. Hexagon has some nice modeling features but is apparently meant for simple models and is very unstable for obj export.

I'll try to find the problem and get this into KT but after that I'm done until I can learn Blender. It is far from perfect too but it seems that is the only place to go without money and some forum members have found it worth the effort to learn.

Somewhere along the line, you didn't collapse the dynamic geometry (probably hidden in a group) and there are probably some curves you didn't delete that may have dynamic geometry on them.

At least from my experience, that's the most common reason for stuff not to export.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 19 Jun 2013, 02:14

Thanks James. I'll check for that. There was a lot of dynamic geometry and I had it set to "full" for a while too. There are mega-nested-groups so that I could move the machinery, pose it, as needed. Lots of hiding places.

I'm still not happy with Hexagon crashing and not having the exporter give a warning about non-exportable or troublesome things.

Edit: Meticulously checked all 90+ objects and found a few with dynamic geometry. Collapsed that. Also closed all objects. The wires and sides were open. No curves present. No luck. Crashes on export to obj. It even crashed with just the sides. Even with all the obj export options off.

It will export to 3ds. I'll try that for KT import.

Edit: 3DS worked to transfer to KT but without textures. Import with textures would have been good since KT can group things that way. Each object is separate with 3ds but at least I can proceed now.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 21 Jun 2013, 17:57

Some help from TS with textures in the 3ds file and it is manageable in Kerkythea. Here are KT renders with MLT. Not many cycles. The alien object's glow is a light emitting object which emits light inward but not outward. That way the light gets the desired color and it has a depth. The finished image will have some volumetric fog for rays. The dim lighting hides much of my modeling but is needed to make the glow effective.

jamesmc · Post by **jamesmc** » 22 Jun 2013, 02:04

I like the glow-ee center, kind of spooky.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 22 Jun 2013, 03:31

Thanks James.

I opened the Kerkythea scene and guess what? Parts of the model are missing and even the lights are gone. That's a death sentence for a program. If I can't save my work then the program is useless. Hexagon has already been hung. KT will get one appeal. Since this is being done with a 3ds file that has been troublesome and KT likes obj I'll let KT live unless it messes up with an obj.

I'll try to save as obj from TS and load that into KT. If that works I'll proceed. Otherwise the image above will be my entry.

Edit: obj export from TS worked except that the objects don't have texture names. That means each must be textured individually in KT. Oddly, textures won't apply to groups make in KT and you can't name the textures. Not that I have found anyway.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 23 Jun 2013, 20:03

That took more work than it should have. The volumetric fog is too difficult and test renders take too long to adjust it so I'll leave that out. Here is a render with just 3 cycles of MLT in KT. I'll do a larger one for the challenge.

Let's have some competition. Someone do an entry.

Finis · Post by **Finis** » 24 Jun 2013, 15:29

There it is. KT render, 18 cycles of MLT and "texture preserving smooth" in Paint Shop for the MLT graininess. There is an artifact, a light diagonal streak, on the blue printer table from triangulation of the mesh. The picture is deliberately square and filled with the printer to give a feeling of apprehension from being too close to the object. The object, printed from an stl file in an alien transmission is textured and lit so it is not clear if its activation is good or bad.

Title: Alien STL

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