I’m still working on my lightsaber, so serious work on this project is a bit ahead in the future, but eventually I would like to model a very high poly stargate. Anyway, I was messing around in Blender trying to figure out how I might make a convincing event horizon, and decided to try messing with wave modifiers on a circular mesh. This is my rather dissapointing first attempt, and a few reference pics for those of you who don’t watch the show and don’t know what it’s supposed to look like. Like I said, help is appreciated but don’t expect any/many updates until the LS is done.
Well, you should be able to use a liquid if you put everything in the scene as facing downward toward negative Z (of course, you can probably just change gravity direction) and then the stargate is just a shallow pool…
I recommend either a “magic” material with blue colours, or your own texture, that you use with the noise button in the edit buttons, so the mesh (which needs to have a lot of polygons) transforms according to the texture.
And add some reflectivity, and a lamp to the middle.
Funny, I had the urge to do the exact same thing, and in less than an hour threw this together:
I’m not as good a modeller as many proffesionals, so it’s not too good, I’m afraid. The event horizon is two seperate textures displacing a plane with subdivision. One texture is wood with noisy rings, the other is a cloud texture with voronoi F1. The sky is also procedural, with stars. The light from the Gate is a spot light with a halo behind it, and the event horizon has emit turned on, and raytransparency halfway on (Alpha .5 and no fresnel).
Notice on the pictures from the show that the event horizon bumps tend to go in circles around the center. That’s why I have the wood rings texture, and the voronoi cloud texture does the bumps.
I also like the idea of a fluid simulation. You could have a high gravity, and force the fluid “up” rapidly, but then it’s forced down. That would get the effect of opening a wormhole.
No offense, but that is one sad reference picture for someone who wants a detailed stargate. (As least not enough detail to satisfy an uber-fan of the show…) Thanks for the event horizon advice though. Check my third post for links to a proper looking gate. From the looks of it you did do a very good job of replicating the reference pic you had though.
Well, it was the only schematic I had. I like to go by schematics, and that is pretty detailed to me. Those pictures are not from an orthographic veiw directly in front of the gate, which is what I rely on. But thanks, but I didn’t include most of the detail, so I still look down on it compared to the picture I have… Have you considered putting this into the Blender model repository, the one featured on Blendernation.com? That is, when it is finished.
Edit: Now that I look at it, I think I made mine a bit wide…
I want my stargate to be animateable, so I think I’ll go with the fluid sim idea. Thing is, I’m pretty unfamiliar with the fluid simulator and can’t think of how to do this. Maybe have a shallow bowl set as an obstacle and a cube set as a fluid just above it? Would there be constant waves on the surface as in the real gate? Also, does it currently support animated obstacles? (Like say; someone moving through the event-horizon creating turbulance.) I’m not too concerned about the ‘kawoosh’ at this point, that can always be set up as a separate fluid system.
Naw, I have a feeling that the ‘Kawoosh’ is important to getting the proper effect. I think you should have a cylinder extend outward from the stargate, and have the cylinder extend to both ends of the bounding box for the fluid domain. Have it the width of the stargate opening, and make it an obstacle. Make sure the normals are facing inward. Make the edge of the domain at the center of the Stargate. Make the gravity make the fluid go towards the stargate, and set the gravity to a high setting. Then, have a fluid “Add” object emit fluid for a short time, like one second. Have it emit it from the center of the stargate, which is the edge of the domain, and have it emit at a high rate. The high rate, inside the cylinder will keep it from splattering outwards, and when it splashes back to the Stargate, it will still be within the Stargate. Because of the gravity, it will stay down and not splash out again. It will ripple, and because it’s rippling against the cylinder, it makes the circluar rippling effect. You have a perfect ‘Kawoosh,’ and a perfect event horizon. That’s my theory. I still have to test it.
Edit: And you could use the test build, or wait for 2.42 to use animated obstacles for objects going trough the gate. The fact that the domain is at the edge, and the fact that there is a high gravity, it will be perfect for people going in and out of the gate as good as the show.
Ok, I’ll primarily be working on the event-horizon for now, so I imported a stand in low detail gate for fluid testing from this site: link Note: I will be doing all my own modeling and this gate will only be used as a reference. My still texture test horizon seems to be a bit off somehow…
Yesterday, I tried my fluid sim idea, and the only reason it did not work is because there is no option yet to stop adding fluid without stopping the simulation. I also did not quite tweak the gravity settings right, but I see how I can improve that, and it’s not a problem.
Nice event horizon so far, although it lacks the more random bumps that you can see in the actual picture. I like the way you made it brighter in the middle, but the coloring is off. It should be the same color all the way through (except the brighter spot in the middle), and let ray-transperancy and displacment do the rest.
I just watched an episode or two of the show, and I noticed that the ripples in the event-horizon are only cocentric for about a second after the ‘kawoosh’. After that, the ripples seem to be pretty evenly distributed, so I’m going to redo my horizon. I snapped a few reference shots from my TV, it’s surprising how hard it is to find horizon pictures on the net.
Slightly better, but if I set the hard and spec settings the way I want, only the very center of the horizon is visible. (Meaning about spec=2 and hard=300) Shown render is spec=2 hard=75. Second render has light energy turned up some.
[Edit] Third pic has two additional wood type texture layers.
You’re getting some good results, but I think you’re going to need an environment - or at least put some reactive lighting in your scene - pretty soon. Look at how much light the Event Horizon is putting out in the pic in post #6, you need to start looking at that. As a fan of the show (I’ve met some of the cast, too) I’ll be looking forward to your progress.
You met some of the cast?! looks at Gmanx jealously Which ones? For some reason the picture in post #6 looks photoshopped to me, not from the show. Also, what to you mean by reactive lighting? Always learning…
From the looks of it you did do a very good job of replicating the reference pic you had though.
Scaled up some of the textures in the second pic.
