Been working on the carrier’s CNC recently, and realized that it was way to big. If the gravity failed during combat, everybody would rattle around like pinballs (squishy, pulpy pinballs). So I shrunk it down to a much smaller 2 deck tube (sort of a high tech submarine control room). Pics as I get them.
As for the animation, that is a long time in coming. We’re still working on basic design and modeling, with lighting, texture, and final animation a ways out. But we are going to put up a webcomic based on the storyboards and animatics. This will allow me to see if the story is working with audience feedback. It’s not so much as a “Open Movie” as it is a movie I am open about.
I recently added two folks to help me out. Spacegoti is my writer and he expressed a willingness to help with the modeling, even though he is a complete blender newbie. I think I’ll have him take a crack at some of the Character modeling and animation work, so I can concentrate on the hard surface modeling (of which there is still a lot). Luckily, he has a PERL/C programming background just like I do, so picking up Python scripting shouldn’t be a problem. Spacegoti will also manage the webcomic website once that gets going. I live so far out in the boonies that I only have dialup for internet, so I can’t do any posting on the weekends.
Redrohk is an aspiring Industrial Design student, and she will be helping me with the design of chairs and consoles, places where I really can’t seem to get a grip on. I’m fine with ship designs, but human interfaces sort of stump me. She also told me that I “need more texture” in my work, so it looks like she’ll be taking a stab at doing the texture work as well.
I haven’t done much in the way of modeling done lately, as I have been meeting with Spacegoti and Redrohk to get them up to speed. I have also been working on the history of the universe from 2030 to 2144, as well as brief descriptions on the 75 projected episodes. So far I have completed 30 descriptions, working from the series finale forwards.
This history covers mankind’s leap into space as well as their encounters with all the local aliens, including:
Children of Sand and Sun - Radially symmetrical silicon “trees”
Kaath - Bipedal aquatic newts
Draath-K - Methane breathing carnivorous millipedes
Cepheids - Agoraphobic tunneling insectizoids
Flippers - Deep space silicon quadrupeds
Songmasters - Fuzzy, cute, loud, and very annoying.
Since this is animation, there is no need for guys in a rubber suit or a head piece for aliens. Most of these species use such a radically different form of language from humans that direct translation of their name is impossible, so nicknames are used instead. That’s okay, I’m sure they call us names too.
I’m still here. My little team and I have been working away on the art for the interior of the Marie, trying to show an emotional connection between the ship and her crew. I.E. minimal lighting, subdued colors, sterile textures, large empty spaces, etc…
I have also been working on a modular approach to the warships, sort of like the escort carriers of WWII and the modular destroyers from Blohm & Voss. The idea is that the ships can be reconfigured like giant Lego pieces depending on their mission. I should have some stuff to show next week.
Also, has anybody done work on integrating Celestia’s and Blender’s cameras? I know that I can create models in Blender and import them into Celestia. What I would like is a way to create matched camera movements in both programs so that I can composite Celestia backgrounds with Blender foregrounds. For long distance shots I would just do a screen shot video from Celestia. If such a plugin doesn’t exists, it’s not a big deal. I could code it myself, but it wouldn’t get done until sometime next year. If it exists, even in a broken outdated form, I could fix it up.
CC - As stated before, the animation will be a long time in coming. Please have patience. With three of us working on this, two of whom are complete Blender newbies, and working full time on our regular jobs, it will be a couple of years yet. But most professional animated movies take that long anyway.
What we are attempting to do is lay a foundation of tools (Blender, Celestia, Terragen, Gimp, Povray, etc) and models that we can turn into a production pipeline for the webisode series, so there is a lot more work to be done on the front end. We’re currently in the art and design stage of the production, with weekly meetings.
Spacegoti is off learning about character animation, starting with the Mancandy Rig. He is not a modeler by any means (that’s my job) but he has a good eye for character behavior. (I’m mildly autistic, so I can’t “see” most subtle emotional behavior).
Redrohk is working on design elements we can work into the 11th character, the Marie herself. She is looking for elements that enhance and connect the ship with her crew at an emotional level. Sort of like the Serenity, where they changed the colors from fore to aft, or had Kaylee doing flowers and vines in the kitchen. One of the things she found with my design was that the kitchen wasn’t anywhere near the messhall, and there was no way to get cargo to the cargo decks. Oops! While these problems don’t create a problem with the pilot, they would create continuity problems later on, so we are working on that.
I’ve been struggling with an overall sense of style for the Good Ship Marie, so Spacegoti and RedRohk have twisted my arm into agreeing creating a series of teaser trailers whereby we can explore style. I can be pretty obsessive about my work, and so I don’t like to do work that I have to then throw away. But this time I should risk that, at least so I can get some feedback.
These would be teaser style trailers, about 1 minute long, in the tradition of Mr Incredible’s exploding belt trailer. We’re working on the first one, so stay tuned.
Just found this thread, … keep going, with or without responses, creative dedication is worth while, and excellent outcome makes the point.
Thanks for the reference to the Samsung Zoom H2 as I need to do some foley work and recordings in the field and this looks like a good candidate.
Like your “toon” render look, but wondered about the line rendering. Did you really take it through the PovEdge toolset, how would this render animation, lot of work??
I am keen on the pending integration of the Freestyle Rendering toolset that grew out of the GSoC project. It is currently is awaiting??? whatever??? but should give us great resources eventually.
Appreciate the efforts shown here, thanks for the resources.
Paul
Well, seeing as you have a decided lack of answers and I know how annoying that is:
Do you want any crits? I wasn’t so sure…
Otherwise excellent preject there man. Keep it up. Very good modelling there.
Nope, I don’t really need crits, as my team consists of 3 obsessive compulsive perfectionists (read anal), who do most of the “I don’t like that” that I will ever need. I do this as more of a chronicle of my journey, and hopefully inspire other small teams to carry on.
On that note, I have included some work on a Anime Girl from this weekend. I started out with base female form from Makehuman 0.9.0, made some adjustments, and exported the obj. I imported it into Blender, and tweaked it for many, many hours. I wanted to see how far I could take the basic Makehuman mesh in turning into a anime girl. I am pretty pleased so far. I still have the forearms and lower legs to complete, then rigging and shape keys. The default relaxed face looks kinda creepy.
The last image, aka Rei, was with some quick hair from the Blender hair emitter. I didn’t do any adjustments to the hair particles. The children particles were set to wave, and I tweaked their settings just a little.
One of the results from the layout meeting several weeks ago was that the deck plans were nice and evenly laid out. They were also impossible from a story point of view. The mess hall was no where near the kitchen, there was no way to get cargo into the cargo bays, etc. So things got a little rearranged. All the shuttles and mini-tugs got moved up to the upper decks, the lower decks became one unified cargo bay, fuel tanks moved out of the living quarters, and the living quarters were placed on one deck.
The model can be the sweetest thing since sliced bread, but if it doesn’t work with the story, it’s useless.
A Songmaster Battle Cruiser, one of the major races from the Shadow of Stars. This ship didn’t show up until later in the series, but it’s in the trailers, so I got it done today.
Part trilobite, part wasp
modeled using about a dozen bezier curves, converted to mesh, with bevels and extrusions thrown in for good measure
2140 facets with level 3 subsurface
3 materials
rendered with AO
Been a tough month. I had a couple of teeth pulled, Spacegoti moved a couple of weeks ago, and Redrohk is moving in the next couple of weeks. Sooo… we really haven’t got anything done recently. Except for making gloves with the new 2.48. I am really liking the shrink wrap modifier.
The Valkyrie is the sister fighter to the Windego. The Windego is a dedicated space fighter, a light flying tank. The Valkyrie is larger and is designed for Aerospace combat superiority. As such it has two fusion engines to the Windego’s one, as well as rotary plasma cannons to accompany the gauss cannon.
In the Shadow of stars storyline, Captain Stanley Davis Sr commands the light tug “Marie”. His estranged son Lt Stanley “Birdie” Davis Jr is a Windego pilot assigned to the carrier shown here earlier. Lt Davis Jr’s love interest and/or competitor, depending on how you look at it, flies a Valkyrie.
The Valkyrie is show with it’s generic low observable green/gray camouflage, sort of like the kind used on US Navy aircraft.
As each model gets done, I get closer to my goal… Only 145,347 tasks left to do!
Spaceghoti & I spent the Friday meeting going over basic trailer scripts as well as picking music for different themes. We got about 15 different classical works picked out for sampling.
I believe that I had mentioned using the shrink modifier earlier, so here are some pics of the work at hand. I also am trying to address the blue skin tight space suit mentioned earlier.
into agreeing creating a series of teaser trailers whereby we can explore style. I can be pretty obsessive about my work, and so I don’t like to do work that I have to then throw away. But this time I should risk that, at least so I can get some feedback.
