Thank you, Richard. Yeah, probably this is the better forum for this thread.
At any rate, back to the circus…
After taking a long break to hmmm and haw about different renderers and other projects, I’ve come back to this one and Cycles with determination.
Here’s the newest test, a fail. I thought I’d see what you guys have to say, and see if you wanted to brainstorm about it some.
This is an effects shot. Unlike Star Wars and Star Trek, the spaceships in my thing do a much more Battlestar Galactica-type deal when they travel long distances. They don’t go to lightspeed or warp through spacetime, but instead tend more to jump around it. So I didn’t want some effect where the ship stretches ridiculously like the Roadrunner in the old Roadrunner-Coyote/ Star Trek:TNG shows.
In Battlestar, the ships just jump to a new spacetime coordinate, suddenly appearing there after a very brief flash of light, probably taking about 15 frames.
I didn’t exactly want to do that, but something slightly more elaborate. My ships are not as advanced as the ships in Battlestar. The process is not as quick and easy, the tech not as perfected. The shit might just blow up.
I wanted something more like Terminator, where the timetraveler is surrounded by a slightly glowing bubble, which can rip apart stone and metal and any matter it happens to unfortunately intersect with, and which dissolves leaving the traveller. You’re here and now and then you’re there and then.
So, that’s the sort of thing I’m after.
Believe it or not, the giant starship I’ve been working on in this thread is inside the bubble. On about frame 100, the starship pops over from another layer into this one. Also, I will scale the sphere from frame 30 (invisibly tiny) to frame 100 (this size), until it collapses or dissolves at the end of the vid. I just wanted to keep it this scale now to get a good look at the surface.
(Disregard the ghosts glare node on the sun. The sun glares where also tested for the first time in this vid, and so this is the first chance I’ve really had to look at that setup. The ghosts one goes WAY too far, so I’m going to dial the ghosts back a little, but I like the other glarework on the sun. Anyway, this is about the Jump Bubble thingy, not the sun…)
This is all rendered in Cycles (of course.) On the sphere I’m using the Dispersion Glass material from the thread of the same name. So, there are no compositing effects on the sphere yet. I wanted to see what I could get out of it naked. It’s less than impressive, but it might be a decent start.
I might do a renderlayers thing where the sphere is on a different renderlayer from the ship so you can see both better, and put lots of crazy lights and screwy nodes on the spheres.
But, first I wanted to see what ideas you guys might have. Go crazy with the cheesewhiz. I won’t be offended. As I’ve said, this test is a fail. It’s already broken, so take a sad song and make it better.
@Animaniac: LOL! Sorry, I just saw your post. I didn’t realize so many people would have replied to this thing in my absense. Sorry.
At any rate, no, I was not angry when I originally posted this thread. The title is not in anger but in humor. I’m a big fan of Dan Browne’s “Giant Spaceship Thread,” where I’ve learned a lot about modelling (and applied to and experimented with what I’ve learned to the giant spaceship in these posts) and his new film-in-progress, “Plagarus.” I was shocked by how much attention and the instant fanbase Dan had generated for the film (already a cult classic) by keeping up with a thread on BA in which he designs it before your eyes. I always thought that was a brilliant idea, and a huge service to the community, where we are forced to stretch our skill and imagination and help work on someone’s thing.
So, my title here is more tongue-in-cheek than angry. I do that a lot. I love humor and being silly. You’ll probably never see me actually pissed off on this site. The only way anyone would ever know is because I say absolutely nothing. And just how likely is that?
No, assume I’m kidding or “taking the piss out of” (as the English say (I JUST LOVE THAT SAYING!)) because I usually am.
And thanks for keeping up with the thread. Good to see you again.
@Cuddlyogre: Yes, you’re right. I had switched back to BI for a while, and was using BI’s ability to deform the surface using a texture. But, it started getting a little messy. And, Cycles is getting better and better and faster, so I’ve pretty much decided to do all of this in Cycles. I’m just not sure how Cycles handles things like that yet…
I would tend to agree with you about a metallic surface look. However, for these ships, the armor isn’t a metal. Instead, I’m going for a more mirror-looking type of material for the armor. The reason for that is because the ships in this universe don’t use laser beams or projectiles (for the most part) as their main amrament. Instead, I’m going to be using lightning. Now, I’m no scientist (obviously) And I didn’t want my ships to have rubber armor. So, for some reason, one day I figured that my ships ought to have mirror armor. They won’t be able to completely stop a bolt like that dead on, but they might deflect it if it hits at an angle. I know that probably sounds absurd. It probably is absurd… At any rate, this rapidly encroaches on the territory where someone like Spielberg says “It’s not the sort of thing you can over-intellectualize. It’s a movie. Think about it too much, the whole thing would suddenly collapse.” (And I moan about JJ Abrams…)
The model will have more detail, guns and such. I’ve just taken a breather from modelling for a while in order to get back to working on how the action of the whole scene will flow.
Thank you for dropping by and for the suggestion.
Now, my point in doing this jumpbubble thingy test was to see how much of the visual effect I could get out of doing it as a “practical” effect. I’d like to use this dispersion glass material to give a basis for an effect, then possibly do the rest with compositing nodes. I just don’t know enough yet about doing effects that way to make it happen. Probably I will wind up doing an effect similar to the techniques in this cool tutorial on renderlayers effects…
The point I’m making (badly) with all of this today, is that this IS going to be a VERY MESSY THREAD. Like a redheaded orphan, it will get kicked around between forums, abused, crapped on, and the rooms themselves will be completely disheaveled and meander without direction from topic to topic, making very little sense during and in between. At points, you’ll even wonder if you’ve started to lose your sanity. The thread should be taken more as a stream-of-consciousness stab at this or that, not an organized painstaking effort to carefully design a movie from a perfect outline. In fact, if anything, it will be much more like going to the BigTop, a day aimlessly wandering the halls at ILM or something, while tripping on Acid. There will be random, completely unrelated displays and demos.
And maybe, just maybe, if I’m damn lucky, some bits of this might turn into a movie that is somehow worth watching. 
So, you can all feel free to drop in whenever you like with whatever odd thoughts or concerns you have, however unrelated. No point in formality here. If you’re convinced the guy who runs the joint is cuckoo, then why clutch onto perfect sensibility and reason yourself?
Don’t you just love how the internets work!? 
