Starship --- work in progress

[Erik Heyninck]

A very original design indeed, David. When I see this kind of immense spaceships, I can't help but try to find out what's where and what it's used for etc...

[dk_art]

Here's an update image .

http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/tru...ip_planet1.jpg

I had to redo a few parts and got rid of some problem ones and the render issue is gone. In this I'm adding lighting some of which are wide spotlights behind the front area of the ship just glancing that area to look like glow from the planet. It all still needs work but this is starting to look alright.

Need to change the textures and the star background and add a fuzy atmosphere to the planet border. Also need to add some more parts

David K ... www.dkingdesign.com

[This message was edited by D. King on December 29, 2002 at 04:39.]

[Crow Haven]

Looking very cool, David!!! Love the coloring and angle...it's progressing wonderfully!!! [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
---Maya

[gidgit]

Hey Hey, right on Dave... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] looking very nice... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

[dk_art]

Here's a quick animation test . It has 80 frames and took quite a while to render.


http://www.dkingdesign.com/stuff/tru...flyby_test.avi


The ship is actually not moving but the camera is moving backwards past the ship and rotating to keep the ship in view. I did a keyframe every 20 frames so only 4 positionings of the camera and the animator filled in all the other steps. This test is not perfect though but I don't want to re-render it at the moment.

David K ... www.dkingdesign.com

[bmh216]

David,
You might want to slow that ship down. Even if it is travelling at a great rate, a large part of realism in ships this size is to make them pass the camera (or the camera pass them) at a slow, deliberate rate, thus emphasizing their sheer size. Think of the scenes of the Imperial Starcruisers in Star Wars: the ship always passes very slowly, and it greatly enhances the perception that the ship must be very large in physical size.

Otherwise, very nice work. I think the ship should move past the camera, not the other way around, and that would help the realism factor as well.

Glad you got that render problem worked out, I knew something had to be amiss for the renders to take that long.

Brett

[Earl]

Hi David,

Agreed with Brett's comments on slowing the fly-by down. Unless it's an exciting battle or chase scene, it would probably be more convincing seeing it move slower. You chose a nice dramatic angle though. I like it.

As far as the star backdrop goes, I would either wrap a star field texture to a giant sphere (flipped inside out containing the entire scene), OR, more preferrably, I would create a star field using points. Unless it's moving at 'light speed,' it's best to create the points for the stars many many kilometers (or whatever unit) away - that way you can't see them moving. It has to *look* like they're lightyears away. Anyhow...just a suggestion. Great look so far.

Btw, for the star field - adding faint colors to the stars can also be useful, since most stars don't give off white or even yellow light. You've got a whole spectrum of colors out there. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

[dk_art]

Thanks for the pointers. It was a test of the animator and I thought it was just so neat to get any result so it's not really perfect. The animation part of the program turned out to be pretty simple to use and record keyframes so that was good. The moving the camera was a temporary test action as none of my spaceship parts are glued together yet and I was too lazy at the moment to do so [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

What I'd really like to do is make the ship pass by with some blinking navigational lights. Some engine thrust glow and effects would be nice but I don't think I can do that without some FX plugin.

I need to find some better star textures (preferably larger and with a proper milky way). This one appears pretty much greyscale although I'd only want a few brighter stars showing a tiny bit of colour.


I would really like to get some sound in there (I know ... no sound should be heard but still for effect). Ah, sounds like a lot of work to get a few seconds of spaceship fly-by [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

David K ... www.dkingdesign.com

[gidgit]

Good to see you are having so much fun with this Dave... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] Keep it coming man, this is cool [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_cool.gif[/img]

[Mark (theKeeper)]

Ya this is looking really cool Dave, keep it comin'.

Ship looks great, and i too really like the dramatic angles used.

Did you paint the lights on the texture Dave? Or use lights objects within TrueSpace for them?