Messages

46

Artwork / Re: Need a modeler?

« on: June 07, 2008, 07:31:11 am »

I was just thinking, a simple ring-shaped clip like that can probably offer very high fire rates, quick reloading of new clips, linkless feed, and little manipulation of the round between the drum and the chamber. If the propulsion method is in the gun (magnetic or otherwise), then the needles will probably be quite thin and might even fit 50 or more rounds inside that ring magazine anyway. The system will also probably be quite simple and thus robust and durable. Artistically, it looks exotic and unique from human technology.

Another idea is to just thicken the ring, increasing the number of rounds that can fit in, but leave the center open. I don't think a full drum would offer five times the ammunition capacity. By my math, a ring with thickness 20% of its radius has about 1/3 the area (35.9%) of a full disk (ie: its total diameter is 10 units, and the ring is only 1 unit thick, leaving an inner diameter of 8 units). That looks close to what he has already. Doubling the thickness from there doubles the area to about 2/3 (64%). Going on to 3x, 4x, and 5x (solid disk) gives the percentages of 84%, 96%, and 100%. (A spring-loaded drum magazine doesn't use the center core anyways: http://www.minsky.com/portfoli/ammo2.jpg)

So the ring magazine might not be all that bad. Doubling the thickness would probably be the best balance between increasing capacity and keeping the advantages of such a system.



About the barrel: an alternative to enlarging it is to flatten or thin the top support, making it look less like a barrel. Maybe have the main ellipsoid shape end instead of extending into a tube, and have a few thin strips or rods extending out as supports instead of one thick tube.

47

Artwork / Re: Green Animated background for alien base?

« on: May 29, 2008, 02:25:22 am »

There's also
https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/xvi_test1_0001_0125.avi

Which is more of a bubbly green.

48

Artwork / Re: 1st Animation with Blender and stock video

« on: May 22, 2008, 07:53:26 am »

Of course, then I go and make my own jet engine effect using particles...

Blend file, if you want to take a look: (needs Blender 2.46)
https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/afterburner_4.blend

I use three particle systems on three different meshes - those planes. Also I animate the material properties of the particles, which causes a lot of the effects you need. (Particles tapering off, plus those shock diamonds)
It's not perfectly accurate, but I like the effect.

The way I have it set up, it won't work well for animations of indefinite length. Also, I want to figure out a way to make it start and stop better, as well as have the tail end flicker.


On a mostly unrelated note, here are some other methods for jet engine effects: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=124826

49

Artwork / Re: 1st Animation with Blender and stock video

« on: May 22, 2008, 12:04:23 am »

You don't have to use particles, actually. Depending on what you want, you might get away with simple meshes with some neat shaders applied, or even some post-processing in Blender's compositor. (For example: Make a simple afterburner cone, but blur it in the compositor.)

If you want, look at the renders I made of the Saracen:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v388/Psawhn/UFO-AI/saracen_missiles_3.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v388/Psawhn/UFO-AI/saracen_cloudscape.jpg

The actual glow on the Saracen's afterburners is just a series of partially transparent shadeless planes inside the nozzles. Sure, I use a bunch of other particle effects, but you don't have to.

50

Artwork / Re: First model from scratch w Blender

« on: May 20, 2008, 06:04:50 pm »

It's relatively easy to export blender materials to a file.

First: UV unwrap the file. If you're using image-based textures, you'll need this to happen already. If not, there are tools to help unwrap, and if you don't particularly care if your end UV wrap is logical, you can use the lightmap-pack uv unwrap to practically eliminate distortion, except that drawing on the image will be a nightmare.

Second: Set the faces to use a texture. Just enter face-select mode (or edit mode, now that the two are combined in the latest version), select all faces. Open a second panel with the UV/Image Editor, and create a new image.

Third: CTRL-ALT-B.

Fourth: Profit!


Most models I've made lately actually rely heavily on this technique. I was able to make the Shiva ammo drum's textures without leaving Blender, and the same goes for the fuel tank. I had to enter GIMP a few times to tweak the paneling and the AO map for the UAV, but other than that the texture was 100% Blender, too.

51

Artwork / Re: MIMIR Telescope/Carrier Animation

« on: May 19, 2008, 07:57:41 pm »

Yeah, I don't think I want to fiddle with trying to compress it into ROQ, after hearing of your tales of adventure and horror trying to fiddle with it.

If you want a version without the xvid compression: https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/MIMIR_sequenced7.zip
(You may have to wait a while until the file completely uploads. At the time of writing this, it's at 30MB/88MB at 57KB/s)

Those are the final composited results, before the compression into a the xvid avi. It's a sequence of 955 .png files, about as lossless as you can get.
Half of the effects in the staticky-rewind are actually from the compression algorithm not knowing what to do with the static, so the ROQ video may look considerably different in that part.

52

Artwork / Re: First model from scratch w Blender

« on: May 19, 2008, 07:47:04 pm »

Alternatively, you may be more comfortable photographing a real boot with a simulated studio setup (using a few blankets and sheets and lamps) than trying to model and texture a photorealistic boot.

Actually, photographing your boot isn't a bad idea if you want to texture the 3D model. That way you can use the clone/stamp tool of GIMP/Photoshop/etc to help add a lot of realism to your texture. For reference images (eg: how the specular ("shineyness") of the boot behaves) you can photograph under differing lighting conditions (such as a softer light, or harsher direct light).

53

Artwork / Re: First model from scratch w Blender

« on: May 19, 2008, 07:19:13 pm »

The polycount is in the upper-right corner. It's given in faces, which counts both quadrangular faces and triangular faces. Currently yours shows 272 faces. By the looks of that, most of them will be quads, so if it were in the game it'd be 544 triangles or fewer.

If you want to give more than just an OpenGL screenshot, you'll have to do a render. This uses the lights and the camera in the scene. This is also the way to showcase more advanced materials. It's found in the scene panel (the part on the bottom, the little icon that looks like a photo of mountains) - it's the big button labelled "RENDER." A shortcut to render is to press the F12 button. To save the render, press the F3 key. If you accidentally close your render window before you save it, you can pull up the last render by pressing F11 and then save with F3.

There's plenty of tutorials about to learn how to use blender. The main wiki at http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Main_Page contains a multitude of resources, plus links to more. If you're a visual learner, try http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com/ or search for blender video tutorials on google.

54

Artwork / Re: MIMIR Telescope/Carrier Animation

« on: May 19, 2008, 07:03:39 pm »

https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/MIMIR_final17_0001_0955.avi

I fixed that little blooper, as well as getting rid of some annoying stars in the first shot, and also increasing the bloominess of the jump-flare.

If you have no objections, this will be the final version of the movie.

The visual blooper was the inconsistent location of the UFO relative to the moon at the point it jumped in. (The old video's still up if you want to take a look). In the wide-angle shot, the UFO appeared well to the right of the moon. In the zoomed-in shot, the UFO appeared while in front of the moon. This was because in the zoomed-in shot, the moon (and UFO) were actually physically enlarged, and the moon sort of 'reached out' to grab the UFO .

55

Design / Re: Defending downed DROPSHIPs?

« on: May 18, 2008, 06:01:29 pm »

Are the spawnpoints defined by a flag setting their team, or by which tile they're in?

Alternatively, it could essentially be a 'landed UFO' mission, focusing on the UFO that is coming to assault the Terrans, but the player's dropship tile uses a crashed version.

56

Artwork / Re: MIMIR Telescope/Carrier Animation

« on: May 07, 2008, 08:15:59 pm »

I had to cheat a bit to increase the resolution. I actually increased the size of the carrier and the moon by four. See if you can spot the visual blooper this causes.

https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~djetowns/public_html/misc_files/UFO_AI/MIMIR_final16_0001_0955.avi

57

Design / Re: Original Alien Ideas

« on: May 06, 2008, 05:29:22 am »

Doesn't really matter. My response was specifically towards your "need flying enemies," and so would have been out of place in the other thread.

58

Artwork / Re: Armour types and their models - PHALANX

« on: May 05, 2008, 09:36:44 pm »

On the other hand, why would anyone develop and field armour that they know has exploitable weaknesses?

The devs also want a new nano-composite armour model, if they can get it.

Something kinda funny, Powered Armour starts to cross the line into small mecha. The added strength from the robotic servos lets the trooper wear heavier armour and wield heavier weapons. Heh, imagine a 30mm cannon with plasma burst shells.

59

Artwork / Re: MIMIR Telescope/Carrier Animation

« on: May 05, 2008, 06:25:19 pm »

I know what you're saying, and I think that even to a space telescope, a distance of several hundred km is as good as infinity as far as focusing is concerned.

The part I'm skeptical about is not focusing on the UFO, but the UFO staying in the shot longer than a fraction of a second. Relative velocities even in LEO can reach past 14 kilometres per second (Mach 10, which doesn't apply in space as there's no air or sound in space, is only about 3.4 km/s). At any distance, if the camera can zoom in to visibly see the UFO, the apparent velocity (speed the object moves across the sky) will be too high to see more than a streak in a single frame of video. The camera would have to somehow be rotating at the right speed to track the UFO, then the UFO miraculously jumps in front of the camera.

Actually, maybe the best way to fix this is to not have the tracking camera be a space telescope, but some other, lesser, camera with a wide field of view. Considering the Hubble can see the moon at this level (top image), even my zoomed-in shot is way too wide of an angle to be of any scientific value in a photography mission.

60

Design / Re: Original Alien Ideas

« on: May 05, 2008, 07:10:34 am »

We already have a robotic hovering alien.
(To see animations: http://psawhn.deviantart.com/art/Alien-Hoverbot-Animation-68398741)

The problem, as has been stated already in other threads, is that ideas are easy to come up with. The hard part is making the content itself. For aliens that means:
Modeling
Texturing
Rigging/Animation