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Old July 10th, 2005, 09:36 PM   #1
rjandron
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Default Just Playing with my Cylons

Here's a couple of quick radiosity renders of a Cylon Raider I'm building. The model just has a basic texture on it at the moment, and may have to undergo some modification to its geometry. C&C appreciated.





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Old July 10th, 2005, 11:11 PM   #2
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RJ -

That's fan-fracking-tastic!

A wonderful rendering - I could almost hear that Raider flying....!

Really excellent work!

Best,
Bryan
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Old July 10th, 2005, 11:29 PM   #3
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You'll go blind

Wow, that looks amazing. You must keep us posted on this thing.
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Old July 10th, 2005, 11:33 PM   #4
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Very very nice job. Would love to see my Viper and Cobra blow it up
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Old July 11th, 2005, 12:32 AM   #5
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That's awesome .. can't wait to see it fly
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Old July 11th, 2005, 05:01 AM   #6
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Excellant work RJ.

Excellant.

I see you seemed to get that curvature of the body very well.

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Old July 11th, 2005, 05:45 AM   #7
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Very Very nice RJ, can't add nothing
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Old July 11th, 2005, 06:57 AM   #8
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Cool
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Old July 11th, 2005, 08:54 AM   #9
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Outstanding
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Old July 11th, 2005, 07:36 PM   #10
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Thanks for the kind words everyone. I've still a lot to do on this one--texturing is proving to be especially interesting.

Here are some additional stills with some upgraded textures, this time in different types of lighting.

Radiosity:



Traditional 3-point Lighting



And the Babylon 5 Single-point lighting...



Still some work on the geometry and textures needed to make it look less like a Monogram model, and more like a real spacecraft.
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Old July 11th, 2005, 09:48 PM   #11
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Sweet!
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Old July 12th, 2005, 05:01 AM   #12
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Traditionally i like how the single lighting setup always looks. Everyone is into lighting the entire model with the 3 point lighting setup.

Of course in space you really are only going to have (in most cases) the sun to light the model from one direction.

Excellant work RJ.



Now from one modelor to another, did you model the raider from a ball?
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Old July 12th, 2005, 06:16 AM   #13
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Jewels: Thanks. I'll try to get some more on this done in the next few days. I want her in the finished category by this weekend.

Titon: I laid out splines for the main hull of the Raider and meshed those. Certain areas, like the notch in front of the cockpit and the tab between the engines, were done by slicing the splined hull to get something close to the right profile. A lot of the surface detail on the hull was Sliced and Smooth-shifted. The rest of the surface structure is a combination of boxes/discs or extruded custom profiles.

She still has some repair work to be done, and a fair amount of texturing as well.
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Old July 12th, 2005, 07:06 AM   #14
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Cool.

Never did get much into splines.

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Old July 12th, 2005, 07:12 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Titon
Of course in space you really are only going to have (in most cases) the sun to light the model from one direction.
Ironic isn't it, that the most realistic lighting is also the most unforgiving for models, both real and digital.
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Old July 12th, 2005, 07:55 PM   #16
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Quote:
Ironic isn't it, that the most realistic lighting is also the most unforgiving for models, both real and digital.
Exactly!

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Old July 13th, 2005, 11:35 PM   #17
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A couple more renders. The Geometry on this craft is 99% done...I'm going to have to add some more detail to the weapon hardpoints tomorrow, and then I can keep going on texturing.

I did an almost complete rebuild of the rear hull deck between the two engines to get it closer to the Studio Scale model. I think I'll leave that section alone for the duration.





The Earth in the background of the first image is based upon the Realistic Earth tutorial by Dean A. Scott located here
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Old July 14th, 2005, 05:40 AM   #18
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Excellent work RJ
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Old July 14th, 2005, 07:14 AM   #19
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RJ -

Those pics are absolutely beautiful. I love how the Raider looks flying over the planet, it's a view that we don't see very often (if at all). The pair of Raiders with the galactic "streamer" going across the middle of the frame is very dramatic.

I think that the thing that amazes me is that they don't look like "models" and the pics are almost breathtaking in composition.

Well done!

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Old July 14th, 2005, 08:04 AM   #20
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Great work sir, top notch!

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Old July 16th, 2005, 06:08 AM   #21
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cool renders, I think I dig the single point lighting effect the best, it gives more warmth to the model. Shadows and edges stand out a lot more. .
Excellent detail in the raiders, put a boat load of time into them I can tell.
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Old July 20th, 2005, 01:11 AM   #22
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Mother of god that ship is great
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Old July 20th, 2005, 06:20 AM   #23
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Quote:
think I dig the single point lighting effect the best
I concur.

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Old July 20th, 2005, 06:57 AM   #24
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the texturing job on that is awesome as well, I just took another look at it . . I am totally digging the mung/spooge on the fusalage, the gritty stuff hylighted by the sun . . . . nice touch
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Old July 20th, 2005, 07:15 AM   #25
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Hey RJ, have you ever attempted to use radiosity renders as your diff and spec maps?

It's what we used at Zoic for alot of the ship texturing. It adds that realistic texture to your models and adds that special look.

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Old July 20th, 2005, 11:33 AM   #26
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Thanks again for the kind words.

I haven't had a chance to get back to Lightwave to work on the Raider for a few days--though I did manage to sit down yesterday and do some plumbing (so to speak) on the Viper.

Titon, I did try using radiosity to do an access map of the Raider, which I would have added into the ship's diffuse and specular textures, but didn't like the results I got. I'll keep playing around with it until I'm happy with it because it is a very good technique. Even so, the current upper texture maps are "good enough" for a lot of the work I have in mind.

Old Russian Saying: "'Better than' is the enemy of 'good enough'."

It's hard to step away from a project when there are endless amounts of tweaking possible.
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Old July 20th, 2005, 01:23 PM   #27
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Titon
Hey RJ, have you ever attempted to use radiosity renders as your diff and spec maps?
Titon you'll have to explain this to me, I think I know what you are talking about but knowledge is power
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Old July 20th, 2005, 02:01 PM   #28
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There are a few ways that I can think of doing this.

The first is to set up a radiosity render, using basic texture maps and colouring on the mesh, and then render out still images--these still images are then applied as planar maps to the surface of the mesh as a colour texture, and with modification, as a diffuse and specular texture.

The second is to use LW's built-in Suface Baker plugin to write the radiosity information into a UV map. This is what I was attempting to do to create an "access map"--the access map measures, roughly, how much light can reach certain polygons and simulates weathering extremely well by darkening creases in the mesh. The UV map that is written is then able to be applied to diffuse and specular textures (with modification) and combined with existing colour maps.

Surface baking does, however, take a lot of render time--so I'd suggest rendering overnight if you want to try this approach.

By the references to "with modification" I mean in the case of diffuse and specular maps, converting those to greyscale, painting on any additional grunge and adjusting the contrast as needed. My specular maps tend to be copies of the diffuse maps, with the contrast cranked up by 80% or so.

Both of these approaches can give radiosity-style looks without the render hit of radiosity.
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Old July 20th, 2005, 05:51 PM   #29
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I thought that was the theory but I needed to make sure I was right, I have necer tried anything like that before . . . . hmmm I have this one project I am working on that could benefit from this sort of surface treatment . . .
are there any tutes on this technique out there anywhere?
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Old July 20th, 2005, 07:24 PM   #30
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Try this one to start.

This one's not exactly on point, but the core of the tutorial does deal with using radiosity to create a UV Texture map.

Here's a shot of the Access Map described in Method #1 (Non-UV)



You can see how crevasses tend to be darker, simulating grunge collecting.

And here it is composited (using mulitply layer mode) with the ship's colour/diffuse map:



For the Surface Baker, the same sort of principle applies--except using UV mapping.
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