Modifying my current battlestar mesh...

[martok2112]

Howdy, all,

Well, I decided I wanted to see if I could add some more detail to my current battlestar that I built in Blender (and use in iClone). This won't be a rivet-scraper like muad'dib's awesome battlestar, but I think it'll be quite good for my purposes.

She's far from finished, but here are a few pics of her current state:
I've given her anti-capital ship cannons, a couple of planetary bombardment cannons, some extra greebling, and some anti-starfighter/point defense armament.

I know, she's firing all her cannons. Lazy me forgot to turn them off. So now, the Big G's making a vulgar display of firepower. LOL!

I think, if I should do a video project of my fanfic "Galactica: The Last Battlestar", this is the battlestar I would use....since the Galactica in my story is supposed to be the brand new, state-of-the-art battlestar in the Colonial Fleet. In my story, the Ron Moore battlestars are the older ships of the Colonial Fleet.

Enjoy

[martok2112]

Basically, what I've been doing to add the greebles, since the .obj file for the entire battlestar is so memory intensive to try and do whole exports, is I'll import a "base" version of the battlestar into Blender, save it as a work file, and then add on a few greebles at a time in a specific part of the ship. When I'm happy with the results, I'll delete the baseline` battlestar (which is saved in the workfile for later recall), and then export the finished greebles to 3DEXChange for conversion to iClone iProps. Lather, rinse, repeat for other greebles.

The nice thing is, the greebles are already scaled for use with the iClone battlestar. So, she's been getting her extra detailing a bit at a time.

[martok2112]

I think I've done about all I care to to the Big G for The Last Battlestar.
This round, in addition to adding some front greeblage to the nose section, and the forward section of the flight pods, I also added blast shields and extendable platforms to the aft of the flight pods. Both are capable of being animated. The doors can open on command, and the platform extensions have to be keyframed, but, I think it will make a neat addition to the old girl. The platform extension I fabricated myself. The door is actually a resized iProp from the Starship Interiors Collection from the Reallusion content store. So yeah, I kinda cheated....but hey, sometimes cheating's okay.




The platform extension is designed to extend and retract, to create more of a lead deck for the Viper pilots to land on, instead of trying to land their ships inside a tiny box. I thought it would add a little more life to the landing sequences....which, I'll try to make a sample video a little later.

[martok2112]

I thought this would be a neat way to show off my new Galactica (if anyone's interested). A launch and land sequence. (Yeah, I know, the Viper flight animation could use a little more tweaking. LOL! I was experimenting with a custom animation technique, meant to economize resources. It'll work proper....I just realized the refiinements after the fact.)

Anyhoo, here's a launch and landing sequence for ya, featuring my new Galactica, my Colonial Viper, and a lot of space.

[TwoBrainedCylon]

Martock,

Same advice as I gave to Queen. I'd strongly suggest killing all ambient lighting and going with hard shadows and a couple of fills. I don't know anything about Blender but if possible, if you don't have textures on this model, you might try adding a couple layers of noise and also set smoothing on the rendering. The tubes are rendering harsh.

All my best,


Russell

[martok2112]

Thanks for the advice there, Russell. Indeed, I am a big fan of the single light source effect, as seen in 2001, and ALIEN. And I can indeed do that in iClone. I'll try to make another go of it later with the improved lighting effects.

And you're right...I should've set the smoothing before I put things like the launch tubes in place...but in my haste, I forgot. I don't know that I'll be able to smooth her out in 3DEXChange, but I'll give it a shot.

Because my Galactica mesh is so huge in terms of memory, I actually have to shoot the model against a virtual blue or greenscreen, and then add in backgrounds later.

Quite honestly, I was amazed I was able to shoot it and my Viper in the same pass.

I'll try the things you suggested, Russell. Thanks for the headsup.

[TwoBrainedCylon]

I'm admittedly a latecomer to this sort of thing but RJ demonstrated a mastery of assembling stuff in multiple passes. I think his final output justifies the approach -- essentially, get all the individual elements right and tweak whatever seems off.

David Kerin has also shown the benefits. He's cranked out a wide gambit reusing elements in different combinations.

I've got the full Adobe suite for this but that's a very pricey solution, especially for fan stuff. I know that in Lightwave and MAX you can jury rig the whole thing to assemble as multiple background layers. Its a workaround for a more proper video assembly rig but you can get some good results as you can layer the backgrounds until infinity.

Honestly, I never did use this sort of thing even to its minimal acceptable potential but I can attest from a lot of experience that trying to render out large sections of scenes very quickly becomes counter-productive.

All my best,


Russell

[martok2112]

Indeed.
The way I do it is I'll set up the background in iClone as blue or green (thus my virtual blue or green screen). I'll set up the principal ship that is the focus of the shot, and set up my camera passes on it, and then set up all the other background (or foreground) ships. Save that as a project.

Delete all the background and foreground ships.

Then I'll shoot the focus ship. Make sure it took.

Reload the project, select another ship, and delete the focus ship and all the other unneeded ships. Shoot again. If it took, repeat the process for all the other ships. It could take up to several passes, depending on how high-poly the ships are that I am using. If they're low poly ships, I can shoot multiple ships at once. All of this is shot at Hi-Def 720p, 24 FPS.

As for the Galactica, frankly, as I stated before, I was amazed I was able to shoot it (clocking in around 2,500,000+ faces), and my Colonial Viper (scaled to the Galactica) at the same time. So I only had to make two camera passes....one for the ships, and one for the starfield.

Anyhoo, continuing on.....after making sure all my takes took (LOL), I would set them up for compositing in Magix Movie Edit Pro, chroma-key the shots, and voilla....boom and bam. Sometimes it takes a while to render, depending on how many chroma-key shots I have to composite. This I'll render out in 1080p, 24FPS.

You oughtta see my Galactica on a 47inch HDTV in full Hi-Def. She's ginormous!

[martok2112]

I managed to smooth out the launch tubes...and then I took a look at other curved surfaces on my ship, and smoothed them out too. There was an unexpected side effect (because the ship was pretty much assembled), it ended up slightly smoothing out some other edges along the lines of the ship. It actually looks pretty good. It didn't smooth out every line on the ship, but it ...well...I'll just have to show you. As I said, I think it looks pretty good.

[martok2112]

Well, in case anyone's interested, here's an improved version of my launch and land sequence.

[martok2112]

Russell, a little later on today, I'll post another version, this time with the harsher, single source lighting effect, as would appear in 2001 or ALIEN.

[martok2112]

Here's a version of the launch/land sequence, done with the harsh space lighting effect, as recommended by TwoBrainedCylon.

Nice work harsher lighting gives it more real feel. definitely work on the 2001 effect
cheers