Many years ago, I was part of a collaboration which worked on doing some Shirow models & animation. Over the last week, purely by chance, some of the old team re-connected on social media.
This is my first dipping back into the waters, using Blender to re-topologise a dropwhip asset we had, the images show the old mesh, the new mesh and an OGL viewport. The object has yet to be textured, but the new geometry means at least we now stand a fighting chance of UV mapping it.
I’ll be the first to admit, this is my first go at re-topo and there are areas I am sure could be done better by someone with more skill, but I’m about 90% happy.
Old Mesh:
Hope you are well. I received a txt from SD on the 3rd of July. He told me you were running Blender these days I have done any 3d in a while but you just gave me an idea to try and get back into it. Looks like Blender is the way to go! Looking forward to catching up! Shirowproject reboot!
Hey man, yeah, moved away from LW after becoming disenchanted with the lack of modeller updates. I’d tried Blender in the past but just couldn’t get my head around the awful 2.49 interface. The new builds are way better and modelling wise, it actually feels more streamlined and intuitive than LW for me.
I havent tried Blender for a while but it looks like it has matured a lot from the old days of LW. I had moved to MODO for a bit but didnt keep up with it. Will give Blender a try. If you think of any good modeling tutorial you think I should start with let me know.
Hey Gang!!!
haven’t dropped the ball -
been stalled with getting my head around Blender -
Trying to apply Cokai’s advice and not expect it to be what i know/remember from LW Modo etc… but damn…it’s not easy - hoping to have a watershed moment soon!
also i’ve been thinking on which way to go with the shirowproject reboot.
Dec 2023 will be the 20th anniversary!!!
would like to do something special for that and soon the way over the next year.
We used to talk about creating something that you could walk through …
wondering if the Blender Unity route would be useful to do that or even more complex?
Picked up a couple prebuilt unity packages- one of a sci-fi city that would be cool to have some of our models loaded and let you fly w dropship or race the streets with the fuchikoma. Another is a sci-fi facility with a flight bay… i have managed to get the dropship i to the flight deck but i’m still working on texturing that dropship * the landing gear openings don’t quite work and i’m stuck in getting the openings into the excellent retopo Colkai executed.
it does look pretty cool and i think this second unity package (with aircraft landing decks) would fit into the millennium tower Aurora built!
any comments thoughts on this or other ideas?
have you guys had any (or know anyone) with exposure to unity/blender pipeline?
great finding you guys again!
if you know where any others are at let them know!
** tried to get the genius rig we had setup in Motionbuilder going but that was a dead end as there wasn’t a way i could find to get the MB version we used to load to a newer version.
i even tried MB ver 7.5 i got off ebay but the licensing is no longer supported by Autodesk it seems
Colkai- i REALLY apologize for having ended up using the original (terrible polys) hull mesh-
I spent a LOT of time trying to fix the landing gear openings but finally decided to move ahead with texturing as is and to accept- that at the moment, i suck at modelling!
… none of the current team members @ collabunlimited (only a couple peeeps atm) had time to fix the problem with the landing gear openings on your retopo’d mesh…and i didn’t want to bug you about it
Maybe in future this can get fixed but for now i’m gonna keep
moving
Some good news is i finally also figured out how to transport the LW animation of the landing gear via Alembic-
FBX just wasn’t working for me even though it’s supposed to. likely due to it being a very OLD lightwave file.
maddening but atleast now we can get the animated mesh moving between scene setup and render platforms🌟
haven’t tested it yet, but this should also work for the other LW animations. so the rigs inside LW can still be altered and used via .abc cache files yay!
Originally the dropship was aluminum reflective silver color- some updates might be good?
darker possibly with white hilites or white with gray? any thoughts?
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Also- dropship scene
BTW- here’s the old dropship clip we’re going to try to recreate and embellish-
Short clip and not very visually great by today’s standards - but i remember being super hyped back when we were getting these short clips out!
The Fuchikoma is also being updated and is slated to be in a real-time environment/mini game racer/explore/adventure.
Either of those schemes would work i think. You might want to look into “DecalMachine”, it’s ideal for all the text etc and doesn’t impact the actual geometry of the mesh. Also, I think the latest version allows baking of all decals to the main UVMap. I have it, but haven’t delved into that side of it.
As to what it can do, here’s an example. BoxyBot geo, decals only then geo with decals visible. Note, None of the decal “geometry” is real, even though in perspective mode, it reacts to parallax. Kit Ops parallax is anothe example of this, great for room interiors.
(I would add, I got lucky as I got in on the “ground floor” with the addons I use, so paid a fraction of their current price), I made a good decision for once.
This stuff is all pretty wowo!
You’re melting my head😜
the parallax plugin is especially nice because ive looked at the osl shader and have a couple i DLd from https://wparallax.com/ but making
custom sets was something that wasn’t quite easy!
i’m still dragging my feet on a full jump to blender but the need is increasing!
kudos on your choices! a bit envious of how far along you are in blender chops. :bowdown:
I clicked on this tread expecting cyborg-girls in skintight latex, or no clothes at all in very suggestive poses…
I am really disappointed
that my mind went there, of course you’re doing the industrial hard surface designs not his pin-up works
Looks good, I remember the machine from Appleseed.
I am huge fan of Shirow, especially his GiTS universe and I always wanted to do some Shirow inspired designs myself, but it never manifested as real project.
What are you planning to do with it once its done, is there more (vehicles, mechs characters)?
hey thx @Romanji
That’s awesome and good sense of humour!
Shirow does know how to render some “sintillating” imagery!
If you can spare time help out let us know your strengths and what you’d prefer to do. if you feel like messing around with mech animation and/or unity level setup- bonus
And yes, we do have more models from the Appleseed and GITS worlds.
Some more here artstation NPR and photoreal render
I’ve always had a fondness for this dropship so it’s getting some reworking and is slotted for some animations once it’s finished.
Here is a short clip from long ago done in Lightwave. Dropship animation to give an idea of of one animation we’re planning on redoing at higher quality.
some other models include another dropship from Appleseed, the spider tank, and ghost dubbing machine from GITS. There are more and we will be working through them all to get them updated and ready to use in animations and real-time if that gets support making it happen.
The Fuchikoma (see posts above) is also being updated
i’d like to see these in a real-time environment/mini game racer/explore/adventure.
Sounds tempting, but I don’t think I can spare time right now to work on another project since I am juggling 3-5 personal projects that are all way behind deadline due to massive feature creep, perfectionism and chaotic impulsivity.
Unfortunately its a rather common pattern that keeps me occupied all the time.
I am looking forward to what you guys can come up with.
I have done any 3d in a while but you just gave me an idea to try and get back into it. Looks like Blender is the way to go! Looking forward to catching up! Shirowproject reboot!
