SciFi - Little big project

[Rigel]

Nice lighting rig on a wonderful ship.

The only thing I would suggest is that the volumetric beams on the twirling lights are a bit much. I realize it helps reinforce the idea that the lights are spinning, but it makes it look a big cartoonish.

The interior (both the living spaces and within the framework) is just beautiful!

I too will chime in that I would love to see this appear in a movie of some sort. It's right up there with ships like the Nostromo and its refinery.

[rustythe1]

i know what you mean about the lights, been racking my brain on how to make the actual geometric light look half decent, to be honest the volumetrics on them is near enough default, i have purchased myself IFW2 which is how i made the engine thrust, maybe i can work some texture into the lights after a bit of study of some real ones. (you can see why i came and hijacked your cycalist thread lol!)

[Pete Paterson]

Originally Posted by rustythe1

thanks, to be honest, if you take a step back and plan a ship like this for rigging in modeller it is actually quite logical and easy, the best trick i use is the cycler and cycalist motion modifiers, you just animate all your motions in one go backwards from frame 0, then hide those frames and apply cycler/cycalist to all those objects, for the option i link it to a control null that has an item display on it to make it look like a steering wheel, it is a similar method as adding sliders.

What I'l need to do I suppose, it sit down and put in some time with the manual.

[Starbase1]

I started to get good results with a texture image over a volumetric cone light, but put it to one side. I found the problem with any texture was the shadows went straight back...

I could show what I have if you like?

[Afalk]

I'd enjoy seeing the WIP on the volumetric lights.

[Rigel]

Honestly, unless the ship is sitting in a dense nebula or debris cloud, I don't think you are going to see a lot of volumetric light in space anyways. Yes, space has dust, but not in great quantities to my understanding. Even here on Earth, volumetrics only occur in specific circumstances, not everywhere every time.

I would call it a done deal just to see the spots of light sweeping across the ship as those lights rotate.

[Starbase1]

Originally Posted by Rigel

Honestly, unless the ship is sitting in a dense nebula or debris cloud, I don't think you are going to see a lot of volumetric light in space anyways.

Forget nebula - even a comet's tail is better vacuum than the best we can make on Earth - you really need particles or droplets.

But as this massive marvellous beasty is clearly in the realm of SF anyway, I'd say tone them down a bit, and carry on...

[rustythe1]

yes they all did cross my mind, however, all the lower ones would only be active when the ship is on the ground as they signal that the doors are open, starbase, any help is help, actually i was making use of the shadows to create lines and distortions, a noise channel also altered the size of every thing over time to create a flutuating look.
as you can see i used viper to create a lot of presets!

[CAClark]

I think the transforming for my tastes is just a bit too much, but regardless of that personal taste, it doesn't detract from being really really cool. I'm interested to see the final item that's for sure.

On the subject of volumetric lights, I think just being way more subtle and a more gradual fall-off would be good. It's easy to get tangled up in whether there should be volumetrics or not, but given that most of this stuff resides in the realms of science fiction rather than science fact, I'm more than happy for my eyes to be fed first, and the brain be fed later

Cheers!

[3D_CG]

All I can say is this is Awesomely Done...

[rustythe1]

came up with an accidental effect, was messing with the ortho camera and then realised you can create a cutaway effect by moving your camera along your model, give it some angle and you get a sort of isometric reveal, i used 20 deg H and 20 deg P, then lifted the camera and moved out on the x axis a little, render was at real low settings so not too clear, but could be usefull for people who like that sort of thing

merc_cutaway.mp4 - YouTube

merc_cutaway.mp4 - YouTube