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Low-Poly War Mech #1
About Truespace Archives
These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
Low-Poly War Mech #1 // Work in Progress
Post by hemulin // Jul 8, 2006, 8:52am
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hemulin
Total Posts: 1058
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The 'box' at the bottom of the chair looks a bit....erm.....boring :( |
Post by Shike // Jul 8, 2006, 5:40pm
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Shike
Total Posts: 511
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The leather looks good, and the cartoon style idea sounds really good ! :D
Hm, I havn't seen enough robot-anime to know how a mech-cockpit looks like, but I always imagined the chair to sorta engulf the driver...
Or a pod filled with fluid and a matrix-interface..because when your big boys starts the battle...I wouldn't feel safe with just a seatbelt.;)
Eh, of course...a Pod would be a pretty boring thing to look at...with your chair and a pilot, the movie will be more interesting ! :D |
Post by Alien // Jul 10, 2006, 3:05pm
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Alien
Total Posts: 1231
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So a rail gun is just one UBER powerful lazer cannon, right?
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alien42/smilies/no.gif Lasers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser) are beams of coherent light, a railgun (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail-gun) uses electromagnetic energy to accelerate an electrically conductive projectile. |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 16, 2006, 1:46pm
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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This is bugging me. Take a look at this scene, and imagine the background blurred and the Mech in focus... now spend 20 minutes going back and forth with little dials and you'll be at the same point as me :mad:
I've never been able to get used to the focus function. I've tried having the camera look at an object and having the settings auto-matically change, but npe... never managed to make it work. It's either completely blurry... or not.
This render is HDRI, and I'd love to render it with it, but for some reason there's always a 10 second pause before it actually gets to work... and this is with any render, not just this one. Once it gets going it's lightning fast, but I'm not will to wait so long per frame. However I did figure out a really useful tip for animators with HDRI. If you want the background to move with the camera, forget about giant spheres with the texture on it surrounding the scene. All you need is to find a panoramic view of the sky and put that in place of your HDR image. Turn off all your layers but the camera's movement, then render the scene. It will record only the sky. Once rendered, turn off HDRI and set the animation you just made as an animated background image. If you set the same FPS you'll have it work perfectly, and it looks really good.
So, if anyone does have any secret way of speeding up the HDRI rendering, let me know... if not... I'm afraid the animation will only look as good as tS6.6.
Andy |
Post by Shike // Jul 17, 2006, 11:15am
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Shike
Total Posts: 511
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Are you using raytraced or mapped shadows for it?
And how many samples? I always use raytrace shadows, 100 samples and 0.5 noice with lightworks HDRI. (completely useless for you, because it takes way too long to render an animation ;) )
You could try to use HDRI only for reflection and try to use standard lights to match the HDRI lighting... I think that's a common method in CG-movies..? :confused:
Looks good though, can't wait to see the battle :D |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 17, 2006, 1:23pm
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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Are you using raytraced or mapped shadows for it?
And how many samples? I always use raytrace shadows, 100 samples and 0.5 noice with lightworks HDRI. (completely useless for you, because it takes way too long to render an animation ;) )
You could try to use HDRI only for reflection and try to use standard lights to match the HDRI lighting... I think that's a common method in CG-movies..? :confused:
Looks good though, can't wait to see the battle :D
See the two scenes I have there? The top one is HDRI, and the bottom is my custom light set up. They look pretty close to each other, don't they. Never really noticed. I'm trying to figure out how to have one of the Mech's crush a car atm. I saw a thread a while back (Humdinger I think) where he used the cloth motion tool. I'm doing a few tests on that, but so far each has resulted with an explosion of polygons after 10 frames. Ah well, I'll keep going anyway. I've asked a talented friend of mine to do all the sound effects for it, so I might end up with something professional in the end. I might also render it out in High Def and shrik it down, as it would be a shame to miss out on all the stuff. I've had a break on the animation, but am back in the mood :)
andy |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 17, 2006, 2:19pm
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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ARGH! Just spent ages making a simple walk animation for the good mech, made one tiny mistake and went to correct it using the scene editor. LOL! I CLICKED DELETED ANIMATION CASCADE INSTEAD OF EXPAND COLAPSE! There's no undo from that I'm afraid. I couldn't believe it. It was the last step as well! Lol! Ok, well back to it I guess. That's what late nights do to you I'm afraid. |
Post by Shike // Jul 17, 2006, 2:58pm
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Shike
Total Posts: 511
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I guessed that was the difference between the two images ;) ...but you're not using HDRI reflections in the bottom one..are you? Or does that also decrease performance?
Ah, it's good to be a non-animator....the pic might take long to render...but I only have to wait for one :D
Yup, late nights can be dangerous... requires regular saves :rolleyes:
It's 3 in the night (morning?) over here and I've forgotten to eat dinner...gotta go now...starving! :D
( That makes it 2 in UK? What are you doing up this late...also vacation? ) |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 17, 2006, 3:10pm
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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Yeh, it's just gone past 2am over here. I'm always up around this time. Student loans and savings are dangerous things. Finished college, and meant to be looking for a job... meant to be. Lol! Nearly run out of the money, so I'd better get back to doing real work soon :(
I finished a rough version of him walking again, but didn't put in as much effort this time around. It's strange, I had him walking on a massive single plain, and the render time was 9 hours for 100 frames... I changed it to a thin path for him to walk on, and it's gone down to 5 minutes. It's a little confusing how a single large polygon can slow a scene down. It didn't even have textures on it! Just plain white.
Yeh the top one was tS7 HDRI, and the bottom was tS6.6, so no HDRI at all. Render times were completely different. I need to start getting this fight on the way. Shall I post up the individual scenes, or just save it for the gallery?
andy |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 17, 2006, 3:14pm
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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Ok, just finished it... that was fast. Here's the last one, then i'm off to bed :D Hey, if it's 3, why are you still awake? Lol!
Ok... the animation seems jerky, which is odd, cus in the original it isn't. Darn Windows Movie Maker. It's it odd that the only video file these forums accept is the only one you can't render out as. Unless I'm mistaken.
Anyway, Night all! |
Post by Alien // Jul 17, 2006, 3:39pm
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Alien
Total Posts: 1231
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Ok... the animation seems jerky, which is odd, cus in the original it isn't. Darn Windows Movie Maker. It's it odd that the only video file these forums accept is the only one you can't render out as. Unless I'm mistaken.
Just a guess, but have you checked the frame rate that you're rendering to in tS & the output frame rate of Movie Maker are the same? IIRC, by default tS renders to 30fps, & being a fellow Brit, when choosing settings in MM you told it to output at 25fps. When you convert from 30 to 25fps, you get jerkiness. When the pros do it they have ways to make it not so noticeable, but it's still there. For example: Tomb Raider 1 on DVD. It's not done direct from the film, it's an NTSC -> PAL conversion. I didn't notice it myself until my step-dad pointed it out to me [he does that sorta stuff for a living]. |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 17, 2006, 9:50pm
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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tS rendered out as 24 frames/P/S and Movie maker did 25FPS. Might that be the problem? I might change the camera movement, as I can imagine it's pretty hard to actually see the walk cycle. Let me have another go... |
Post by Alien // Jul 18, 2006, 1:24am
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Alien
Total Posts: 1231
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Could be, try setting tS to 25 - that ought to sort it out. |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 18, 2006, 2:21am
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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Ok, here we go. Well isn't that odd? I just rendered a 155 frame, 10X motion blur animation at 800x600 resolution, and it came out empty... It took 4 hours! What's with that?
I can tell today is gonna be a good one :confused: |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 18, 2006, 5:21am
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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Oh yeh... Me likes this one ;)
I have a feeling that Motion Blur in tS6.6 is backwards somehow. The after images are occuring before the movement... so if I have something moving the blurring is in front... that making sense? Maybe I'll try it on tS7 as a comparrison.
Anyway, Crits please! |
Post by Steinie // Jul 18, 2006, 5:56am
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Steinie
Total Posts: 3667
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I kept waiting for my speakers to go WOOOOMPPPP! (Earth rattling, ground shaking, teeth hurting subwoofer bass boom sounds)
Was the ground shake intentional? I would try to make it even more pronounced, like the camera couldn't be held still. Make it synchronize with the foot stomping hoedown. The ground seems to lower with each stomp, they are big you know!
To sum up the above, I liked it.:) |
Post by Shike // Jul 18, 2006, 12:21pm
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Shike
Total Posts: 511
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YEAH ! The last animation was great !
Almost expected the camera to drop to the ground the last couple of frames :D
BTW Have you tried to deactivate shadowcasting for the ground when using the HDRI.. since HDRI images send out light from below, the ground have to be taken into account which makes everything slooow. (that's why you never see any groundplane in my WIP ;) )
Probably works best with an HDRI that is black in the bottom hemisphere...otherwise the bottom of the mech will have magic lighting coming from....well...below ground ;) |
Post by Rareth // Jul 19, 2006, 2:56am
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Rareth
Total Posts: 149
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Wow that was awesome.. loved the ground shake.. |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 19, 2006, 11:42am
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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Finally (FINALLY!!!) started the actual animation itself. Although it's rendering a bit slow, lol. It'll be done in 2 hours Approx... so I'll post it at around 00:00 GMT.
andy |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 20, 2006, 12:10am
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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Ok, it finished at 1am, and I was too tired to bother editing and posting, so here you go. I rather like it and I hope you guys do too.
Check it out :) |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 20, 2006, 4:20am
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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Ok people are viewing but not commenting! Come on people! Is it that bad? |
Post by Rareth // Jul 20, 2006, 4:57am
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Rareth
Total Posts: 149
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LoL Awesome sounds and all..
great work!:jumpy: |
Post by Steinie // Jul 20, 2006, 5:19am
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Steinie
Total Posts: 3667
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In this one I like the smoke or steam at the end. Gives it that extra touch of life. Are you doing anything with the first one? I liked the viewing angles on that one too. So far it's looking good. |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 20, 2006, 5:30am
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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The first one was just a walk-cycle test. Now I'm getting into the real animation :) More to come, but any crits are welcome. Sooner the better. |
Post by brianalldridge // Jul 20, 2006, 8:01am
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brianalldridge
Total Posts: 397
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Ok people are viewing but not commenting! Come on people! Is it that bad?
These forums have guests you know;) REally great animation btw, I love the camera shudder |
Post by Délé // Jul 20, 2006, 9:36am
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Délé
Total Posts: 1374
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I've been wanting to comment on this thread for a while now, but have only had the time to peek in here and there. Anyway, this is great Andy! That last video looks real good! :) I like that smoke. Can I ask how you did that?
Keep up the great work! :) |
Post by splinters // Jul 20, 2006, 11:41am
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splinters
Total Posts: 4148
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Agreed, I enjoyed the video...and just how did you do the smoke? |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 20, 2006, 11:52am
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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The smoke was easy. Primal Particles FX. Very powerful tool for making fire, explosion and smoke effects. I simply put two emiters in the tubes and set them to go off once the camera stopped. They have a subtle change from black to grey to make it appear that it is blowing out soot, or impurities.
Thanks for your comments guys! Glad people like it. No changes though? Because I'm going to get started on the other scenes soon. The rendering is quite long on this one... espesh with motion blur :(
andy |
Post by Shike // Jul 21, 2006, 7:54am
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Shike
Total Posts: 511
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This was worth waiting for :D
Good use of soundeffects also !
Will it be a full-length feature ? ;) |
Post by Zeipher // Jul 21, 2006, 9:29am
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Zeipher
Total Posts: 224
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Will it be a full-length feature ? ;)
Have you seen the other Mech yet? ;)
I'am aiming for around 3 mins. Not too long, but long enough for the tS gallery. |
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