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Feb 09 MMC - yesterday's tomorrow's car...
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Feb 09 MMC - yesterday's tomorrow's car... // Work in Progress
Post by Nez // Feb 12, 2009, 1:43am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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I think the topic this month is a great one and there's many things I'd like to tackle, but decided to settle (mostly!) for a good old flying car...
haven't got very far yet, but thought I should at least get something up before the last minute... guess I probably won't finish everything that I have in mind but will see how we go...
Basic concept is a single seat vintage 'roadster', where the big pronounced wheel arches have become the repulsorlifts/vertical thrusters, with a single jet engine (or similar) at the back... basic idea is to have it parked out front of a future-house...
Modelled so far: main body, 'radiator' grill, 'wheel arch' side pods (only showing on one side).
Materials are just for guidance as it's easier to select later on if different key materials have at least been identified - material instancing is one of my favourite new features when compared to tS5... e.g. can change all my chrome in one go if I improve my material settings...
Still to do:
running boards
windscreen
decorative exhaust pipes
chrome detailing/piping to bodywork
roll bar
drivers seat
jet engine to rear
improved materials (if anyone has a really cool car paint shader working under LW with HDRI, I'd love to have a look... need to get a good chrome setting too)
house!
background - have some ideas but could take too long!
i.e. lots... |
Post by Weevil // Feb 12, 2009, 9:54am
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Weevil
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Go Nez Go. |
Post by tahnoak // Feb 15, 2009, 1:05am
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tahnoak
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Very nice work. |
Post by Nez // Feb 16, 2009, 5:48am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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Thanks guys :D
Squeezed in a bit more over the weekend - didn't actually take the car model home from work so couldn't work on that directly, but did have a go at some of the bits on my 'to do' list without the model - bumper, roll bar etc. Modelled to no particular scale and then inserted to model and scaled/positioned today over lunch-break. Mostly simple solid objects with a bit of SDS. Latest preview included below - all textures still just placeholders for the moment, to be fine-tuned in due course. Haven't bothered showing some of the symmetrical parts again for the time being.
Modelling to date all done in tS5; modelling may continue in either 5 or 7.6 (depending what's easier for the parts concerned) but will move over to 7.6 for final texturing/lighting.
Given limited work I could do on car, thought I'd knock up a house for my back-drop; image below shows the result, bashed together in about an hour or so, again in tS5 (but rendered in 7.6 after throwing on some rough shaders for testing purposes). Don't want to add too much more geometry wise to the house but need to tweak materials and lighting some -this is just with a default HDRI and fairly basic materials... Need to decide on background behind the house too... |
Post by Mr. 3d // Feb 16, 2009, 6:34am
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Mr. 3d
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I LIKE this Nez !!!:cool: |
Post by Nez // Feb 19, 2009, 6:06am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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Cheers Mr 3d.
I've done a little more but running out of time now - pretty much done with the car - added the running boards, driver's seat and harness, jet engine at the back, some chrome trimmings and attachment fittings for front lamps and bumper; screen shot below is without subdiv, obviously, still all in tS5. Need to move it over to 7.6 so I can sort the paint job to work with the right kind of lighting. Oh and still need to do a windscreen, just remembered...
Also done a slight tweak on the house scene, adjusting the overall lighting and offestting the gloom under the 'garage', think it works fairly well. Need to up the AA settings for the ground... and still need some more background... |
Post by Nez // Feb 19, 2009, 6:07am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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oops, in case it's not obvious, there won't be a red sphere just hanging there, that was just to check possible paintwork shader and to check I was getting reasonable shadowing on the ground...!:rolleyes: |
Post by Breech Block // Feb 23, 2009, 7:05am
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Breech Block
Total Posts: 844
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Wow! Great job Nez. I love how you have set things up so that reflections show the details of the hover units. As for the building, in addition to being well crafted, it kinda reminds me of the McClaren HQ. Is that coincidental or are you a fan of the famed Silver Arrows? |
Post by Nez // Feb 23, 2009, 7:29am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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I am actually a fan of the silver arrows, but confess the original inspiration for the building came from a slightly different source - the Guggenheim museum, which to my mind was kind of sci-fi for its time. Obviously it's not intended as a clone, more of an inspiration... with touches of retro styling here and there (hints of 50s/60s, touch of deco, etc)
The image is supposed to be harking towards a very 'clean and bright' utopian sort of future, all very clean and shiny (even the ground!)
Expect that's going to hurt render times though!
Cheers for stopping by - was beginning to think no one was interested! :o |
Post by Breech Block // Feb 23, 2009, 8:02pm
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Breech Block
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Cheers for stopping by - was beginning to think no one was interested! :o
I think that may be more a case of the work is so good people find themselves unable to add a constuctive comment. That, and the biggest problem I have - so many threads - so little time. |
Post by kena // Feb 23, 2009, 9:14pm
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kena
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With a gradient for the sky, you could have a fantastic render there! |
Post by Nez // Feb 23, 2009, 10:53pm
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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I think that may be more a case of the work is so good people find themselves unable to add a constuctive comment.
Well it's very kind of you to say that, but I don't believe that! I think your second reason is more likely...
That, and the biggest problem I have - so many threads - so little time.
That I can believe....
Kena - thats for the feedback/suggestion - you may be amused to know I actually added a gradient to the sky yesterday during tinkering, just don't have a render to show for it, so I'm pleased that someone else thought it would be a good idea.... |
Post by Steinie // Feb 24, 2009, 2:22am
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Steinie
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Hey I've been watching this thread for a while and admire the work your doing. Only one thing looks odd and that is the front bumper sticking out so far. The building scene is really awesome and I would suggest really lighting up the window outlines in some unique futuristic way.
Sorry for my late input because I was screwing up my own stuff until now.
I'm alway watching your work even if it looks like no one is there.:) |
Post by Nez // Feb 24, 2009, 3:01am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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Cheers Steinie; interesting suggestion, not quite sure how I'd go about that at the mo; the current intention is for this to be quite a bright daytime scene, but in the longer term, probaly post challenge, I fancy having a bash at producing a dusk or night-time version to have some fun with lighting...
Down-side is that the scene is about to get quite a bit bigger - the car will add a lot of geometry with the SDS, and there's some background almost ready to be inserted too...
As for the bumper, well it's kind of supposed to stick out - I have made some mounting arms now so it doesn't float in mid air... have to see how it looks full assembled... |
Post by Steinie // Feb 24, 2009, 4:23am
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Steinie
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Maybe I was talking about the double lines around doors? It looks like self illuminated neon type lighting on the two left doors but not on the remaining ones in the back. I'd give all of them some lighting even for the daylight scene.
Is the vehicle designed to have two left fenders but no right fenders? In one example you have some polys floating over the right front (invisible) fender. Without the fender that bumpers is going to snag a lot of kids, dogs, mailmen, garbage cans and maybe a young woman or two when you put this vehicle in reverse! Where can I get one?:D |
Post by Nez // Feb 24, 2009, 4:46am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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Maybe I was talking about the double lines around doors? It looks like self illuminated neon type lighting on the two left doors but not on the remaining ones in the back. I'd give all of them some lighting even for the daylight scene.
Ahh, with you - yes I used self illuminating material for the panels in the 'garage' area as it was very dim under there and I wanted to lighten it up. The other matching panels I decided to have 'turned off' as they were to the more open areas and therefore lighting wouldn't be needed until it got darker. If I do a night/dusk render, these will definitely be illuminated.
Is the vehicle designed to have two left fenders but no right fenders? In one example you have some polys floating over the right front (invisible) fender. Without the fender that bumpers is going to snag a lot of kids, dogs, mailmen, garbage cans and maybe a young woman or two when you put this vehicle in reverse! Where can I get one?
Hah! Nice thought... but simple truth was that I left them out to save onlpolys whilst modellnig - the fenders are just mirrors of those shown (in fact they're clones, not even mirrored as they're symmetrical) so it was going to be a last minute copy. The floating polys however are chrome strips as embellishment - as these needed to be properly mirrored, I'd performed that operation but then left them floating - a bit messy for the temporary renders, but intentional.
Worryingly, my pc has been trying to render the complete car for the last hour and doesn't seem to be getting very far - don't know if it's down to all the SDS or Shaderlab materials - may have to tinker again :(
To show some kind of tangential progress, here's a quick test render of my 'hover train' - although it's not going to be seen at anything like this size... |
Post by Nez // Feb 24, 2009, 6:07am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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Well the car finally rendered - but at 2 hours-ish, I'm going to have to try some diagnosis to find ways to get it running faster...
have thrown in a few screen captures to prove there is a rough jet engine round the back though it won't get seen and just to show the general shape a bit better.
Need to pull everything together now... |
Post by Nez // Feb 24, 2009, 7:17am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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and some more to keep you going for the time being; a close up detail and a preview of the whole scene as it stands at present - a long render awaits, with a follow up Zrender pass to allow me to comp in some haze and DOF hopefully...
If anyone has any strong compositional views about the placement of the car, I'd be interested to know as composition isn't my strongest point - have placed it nice and close to camera as it is the main focal point and have tried to avoid it obscuring more significant areas of detail generally... |
Post by jamesmc // Feb 24, 2009, 7:46am
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jamesmc
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Love it! Lot of great work there!
Pimped your ride into the retro-automobile Hall of Fame, 1950s. :D |
Post by Dragneye // Feb 24, 2009, 10:46am
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Dragneye
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I would go with the angle jamesmc has, just not that high (the camera), so as to still see a lot of the background. That way one sees more of the car.
Did I mention, Great job! |
Post by spyfrog // Feb 24, 2009, 11:28am
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spyfrog
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and some more to keep you going for the time being; a close up detail and a preview of the whole scene as it stands at present - a long render awaits, with a follow up Zrender pass to allow me to comp in some haze and DOF hopefully...
If anyone has any strong compositional views about the placement of the car, I'd be interested to know as composition isn't my strongest point - have placed it nice and close to camera as it is the main focal point and have tried to avoid it obscuring more significant areas of detail generally...
I like it. Looking forward to seeing it finished. :) |
Post by kena // Feb 24, 2009, 1:49pm
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kena
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It looks like you have light-emitting textures under your car too. The more light-emitting textures you have, the longer the render times.
I also like the turned view that James showed. It would look more like it was coming out the garage rather than out of the front door. |
Post by marcel // Feb 24, 2009, 2:01pm
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marcel
Total Posts: 569
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Well the car finally rendered ......
Nice. Reflection of the ground shows the levitation of the car! ;) |
Post by Georg // Feb 24, 2009, 10:03pm
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Georg
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What a great thread, Nez!
I love the back side of the car, and therefore, for what it is worth I suggest you put the car in with the back towards you, so that the car faces the buildings and guides the attention to your beautiful building structures.
georg |
Post by Nez // Feb 25, 2009, 12:38am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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Pimped your ride into the retro-automobile Hall of Fame, 1950s.
Ha - thanks James, that's pretty cool! I wanted to try to achieve a bit of a mixed-time feel with this, hence hints of 30s, 50s, 60s etc in both the car and house - was definitely wanting a bit of a 'hot rod' look as well as the 20s/30s shape and 50s/60s fins and chrome... Maybe I should do a version with wheels at some point...
I would go with the angle jamesmc has, just not that high (the camera), so as to still see a lot of the background. That way one sees more of the car.
Did I mention, Great job!
Thanks Dragn; I'll ponder the viewpoint some more but I had originally set out for quite a low viewpoint so I could cram in scenery beyond the house, which a higher view would complicate -wanted that classic magazine 'car in front of house' look..:p
@spyfrog - thanks!
It looks like you have light-emitting textures under your car too. The more light-emitting textures you have, the longer the render times.
Kena - you're correct, well spotted - I'd added the light-emitting material for the 'hover pods' so they'd cast a glow on the ground as well as reflect off it, but I think that's probably what hurt the render time so much, so I'll kill that for the time being. If it really needs adding back in, I might fake it with some local lighting or a separate render pass....
Nice. Reflection of the ground shows the levitation of the car!
Thanks Marcel - that was definitely the idea - it's why the ground is so un-naturally clean and shiny, and hence my need to make the whole location pristine, in an artificial way, like some of the fun sci-fi films... (e.g. Space Odyssey again)
What a great thread, Nez!
I love the back side of the car, and therefore, for what it is worth I suggest you put the car in with the back towards you, so that the car faces the buildings and guides the attention to your beautiful building structures.
Cheers Georg. Hmm, interesting idea - I have to say I really DON'T like the back of the car personally and this view point will review a few modelling shortcuts (e.g. only top of steering wheel properly modelled, very little car interior, no dashboard etc, crude engine) as I always anticipated seeing it from the front - hence that big shiny grill... it's an interesting idea, with good compositional reasons but I don't really want to show it's butt :o:D
Thanks all for the comments. |
Post by marcel // Feb 25, 2009, 1:05am
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marcel
Total Posts: 569
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to reduce the time of render i think you don't need light emiting texture. the 'hover pods' can have more luminance to similate the light and put only a local light at the center of each "hover pods" with a squarred falloff near 1 (maybe without shadow because it is less important on a ground with reflexion).
For a movie you can change the intensity of the light to create a kind of electricity. Or to simulate the startup with a rocking of the car. It will be a nice clip.
For the composition, try a cam very near the ground to see under the car when it startup and go down at the same time light intensifies |
Post by Nez // Feb 25, 2009, 3:14am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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Some nice ideas Marcel - I can see you always think about the animation possibilities, which is something I rarely consider. I'm typically only thinking about still images.....
Some day I'll think about animation, but probably not any time soon - I think my computer would die... |
Post by marcel // Feb 25, 2009, 5:19am
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marcel
Total Posts: 569
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Some nice ideas Marcel - I can see you always think about the animation possibilities, which is something I rarely consider. I'm typically only thinking about still images.....
Some day I'll think about animation, but probably not any time soon - I think my computer would die...
It's very rewarding to see his animated scene. Just let the computer work at night. And the next morning it is as we receive a gift! :)
Then you want to add noise, then music. Finally made a film for hollywood :D |
Post by Nez // Feb 26, 2009, 7:02am
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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:mad::(:mad::(:mad::(
Well, I'm pretty hacked off - I've spent hours trying to get this blasted thing to render and my pc is really not happy... I managed to run a Zrender pass first (fortunately) in a separately named file, but the main render is proving a killer.
Tried leaving it to run over night last night but crashed partway through, probably due to power saving features trying to kick in (doh!)
After a few hours on the second attempt with maybe 5% complete, I reduced several of my quality settings, e.g. the hdri samples, but it has spent more than 6 hours running today and only got about halfway, with all the tricky reflections left to do. As this is my work pc and I;m not in tomorrow, today was pretty much my last chance as I can't run 7.6 at home and I can't get the render qulaity I was hoping for in 5.1.
So I don't have very much more to show. What I have managed to do is to composite the previous good render of the house (bottom section) with the top section of the new render - (upper part of house and skyline). I had rendered a separate pass with a single upwards pointing infiinite light (with all materials changed to dark grey and black background) which I then used in post to lighten shadows in a few places.
I've used the Zrender pass as a mask for a blurred duplicate of the image to give a touch of DOF and also as a mask for a blue coloured overlay to add a touch of haze - in hindsight, my depth mask needed to affect more of the intermediate buildings a bit more to do what I really wanted, but it starts to show the intended effect. As predicted, the trains are hardly visible. Also made one unintentional goof - accidentally changed the material on the hoop/posts supporting the railway tubes to glass - they weren't supposed to be...
So I've ended up with almost the scene I was intending, but without the car! The best current render of the car is sadly still the one posted previously, and again below. If I'm incredibly lucky I might get a chance to have one last crack tomorrow on my mothers pc but there's a lot happening (have got a funeral to go to amongst other things) so I may not get a chance. So this may be as far as I can go in the time - so annoyed! |
Post by marcel // Feb 26, 2009, 7:28am
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marcel
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I am really amazed at the huge computing time. what is your cpu, ram, etc ..? |
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