Howard, I'm digging your ships. They look great and the design language separating the humans from the aliens is excellent. I'm curious though, you seem to pump out these models at lightning speed and I'm curious how much of the details in the model are polys versus shaders. which of the two do you spend most of your time?
Howard, sorry about that man! I should of thought better of my phrasing, wasn't meant to make you feel like an ass at all. Got me all nostalgic. Love it. Has it really been 13 years since the days of Black Widow?? God...i'm getting old. Anyway, figured i'd post of the classic goodness as well! Loved the bases you did too. And the fact that you did it all in POV-Ray...still baffles me, that program litterally blows my mind. Look forward to more!
...And the fact that you did it all in POV-Ray...still baffles me, that program litterally blows my mind...
I remember seeing some of howard's work on the povray website about 9 or 10 years ago, it definately inspired me to learn povray and I moved to lightwave after that, I guess I owe a lot to howard
Comco: Huff, Puff...These things take forever to fill up! Gasp.
Tovette: Thanks, it's very important to us that you can easily distinguish friends from foe. And on the modeling side, Well, the last two were kinda cheats - I already had the models made, and it was just a matter of retrofiting them into the style I needed, and most of that was simple shader and lighting tweaks. Probably 5-6 hours of work apiece. As for where the work goes on the other, newer models, I'd say it's about 50-50 geo/shader. A lot of these are going to be seen from much closer than just the in-game view, for instance when you're walking around on the hangar deck, you can walk past most of the human fighters at one point or another.... Here's the model for the Boomslang, for instance - up close...
That took a couple of days of free evenings. Probably close to 5 hours for the model only.
Oh, ****. This one was ALSO designed by BradMick - but only 5 years ago. :P
Here's another model I'm working on, sort of the Midrange Commonwealth fighter, the Mongoose!
Model is at about 75%, and the textures, at least the unique textures, have yet to be started. Thoughts?
Armondikov: Aaaaah, youth. I remember what 25 felt like. :P A lot like 29, actually. :P
BradMick: You didn't, really - it's just that I had meant to mention you in the original post, but totally spaced....You wouldnt happen to have any more of the art from Black Widow, would you? If so, feel free to post it here, or drop me a archive. I seem to have lost all my old records.
IRML:Hmm...You Owe ME! MUWHAHAHAAHHAHAH. Go make more awesome Ent-E artwork, and I will consider the debt re-paid. :P
Here's where I got to on the cockpit...building the alien now. It's going to take a bit.
I still want to see some bubbles/particles floating around in there. Apart from that, it looks brilliant. I especially like the control arms/tendrils.
I'm really looking forward to seeing what your aliens look like. I don't think I've ever seen much in the way of character modeling from you...Are you going to work build him in Max? Or something like Mudbox?
Yep! those are going to be dynamic - You'll understand what I mean when you see the cinematic.
I've done some creature work...but nothing I'm really proud of. I'm going to be modelling it in straight max, with maybe some mudbox goodness afterwards.
I'll post some screenies when I'm further along.
You ask, I answer! I've still got the entire archive from Black Widow, i've gaurded it relentlessly thrugh new PC's, DVD failures, Hard Drive craps....you name it. But, here are some more. The little details you've added to the fighter pit is awesome by the way, makes me feel like i'm sitting in the busy-ness of my Apache (....****....every....where....so awesome there!)
Great looking cockpit. As for improvements...I don't see anything that is obviously missing. The only thing I could think to add would be more visible control systems - IE, maybe the joystick and throttle (Unless that is the throttle there on the bottom left...Hard to tell... Usually sits on the right on today's aircraft...).
I'm not sure what your plans are for a HUD system....Were you planning on just overlaying targeting directly onto the screen? If you really wanted to get immersion, you could have the HUD mapped onto a similar plane to the cockpit glass - so that it looks like the HUD is in fact projecting directly onto the canopy. Might be more complex than you want to get with this but it would certainly look cool. :cool:
Please forgive the quick photoshop doodling, but to give you a vague idea of what I'm talking about...
Without distortion - more traditional sim HUD
With distortion to match canopy plane
I couldn't design a HUD to save my life but hopefully you get the idea
If you think back to the cockpit of the original X-Wing game, a lot of it was considerably functional for the player, rather than realistic. Sticking too much detail in the way of controls and HUD effects is just going to distract from the plain functionality that you need. If a piece of HUD is taking up space for purely decorative reasons and doesn't convey useful information, drop it.
I dig what you've got so far with your fighters. I also love the bright colors. It's what I've been doing with my ships for my scifi universe as well. I have another question for ya. Do you UV these models? What portion of the models is a custom texture that you spent time tailoring to the model compared to a generic, tiling texture that you just slap on there? Looking forward to more. You're stuff is always an inspiration.
Comco: Excellent suggestion for the HUD. I'll definitely do something similar to that, I quite like the idea. Thanks for the paintovers! I'm also in complete agreement with the visible control idea, but that would need to be a different pass than the one rendered here. Something I do need to eventually hit.
Armondikov: Absolutely. There will be very little clutter.
Tovette: Thanks. I do custom UVs for around 40% of my models. the other 60% is some variation of Box, Planar, or Cylindrical mapping. In most cases the 40% are the leading and trailing edges of the wings, areas around intakes, or anything where the textures need to flow with the geometry.
Here's the current progress on the Cockpit - I've added smaller details, with an eye towards making the model feel more...properly scaled. smaller, tighter packed lights, tiny wire bundles, that sort of thing. I've also cleaned up the shadow mappings, to better represent the small scales of the details.
Personally, I think that looks much more interesting.
Thoughts?
The changes are nice, Howard. But somehow, the right hand pylon (for want of a better term) has lost the impression of being 3d. It looks distinctly like those red wires have been mapped onto a flat plane towards the front of the canopy.
Apart from that, it looks great. :thumb:
How's those aliens coming along? Got a teaser pic for us yet?
Yeah, I agree, Comco. I dide some stuff with the wires to try and pull them off the surface, but then wasn't able to come up with a good working solution, so I canned it. I also added in little cylindrical blue glowing emitters to help sell the idea of a glass-projected HUD.
Adding more details, and probably the pilot's legs as well.
I've paused the Alien work right now toget the cockpit and cockpitty things further along. I'll get back to them soon.
Looks great, Howard. I especially like the glowing buttons/control panels. My only caution would be to make sure they don't draw the player's eyes off the main focus of the gameplay - obviously, what is going on outside the cockpit. I do wonder in that latest render if the lights are too bright. But they also look awesome - so don't think I'm saying they should be dimmed...Not necessarily.. :cool:
Comco: Yes, that is a worry. They're also going to be twinkling a bit. So that should help some. We're going for subtle activity around the edges of the screen - make the ship feel alive.
Boy Genius: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0pbT9lVFag
Thanks.
Howard, have you thought about the lights flickering and coming alive AFTER the cockpit closes? Like a "hard seal" light and so forth, then more twinkling as the ship starts communicating to itself.
Klavs81: Awesome! Yes, I had thought of that...and I'm glad we're on the same page. I'm also going to do a pass of the control and display panels starting up. That's the next step.
So, I think this is the final Copperhead Cockpit for now.
And this is the updated cockpit close and launch sequence. http://www.hedfiles.net/CockpitLaunch.png 22MB APNG
Enjoy, and any thoughts are welcome!
In the previous version you had it pulling back as if to lock in place. I liked that effect, although there should be a short beat between it coming down and pulling back as it wasn't too smooth in the first version.
Bah. I posed a far more elequont version of this post but for some reason, it got lost in the internets. So, suffice to say -
1) it looks awesome, Howard :cool:
2) I agree with Armond - A 2 second-ish pause between the canopy dropping and locking into place would transition a little nicer
3) Have you considered having the lights on the upper canopy pylons off until the canopy drops, wait 2 seconds or so after it locks into place and then have them come on one at a time in sequence as if they are showing systems coming on line/batteries powering up or similar? Would look pretty cool... :thumb:
Posts
Brad
Tovette: Thanks, it's very important to us that you can easily distinguish friends from foe. And on the modeling side, Well, the last two were kinda cheats - I already had the models made, and it was just a matter of retrofiting them into the style I needed, and most of that was simple shader and lighting tweaks. Probably 5-6 hours of work apiece. As for where the work goes on the other, newer models, I'd say it's about 50-50 geo/shader. A lot of these are going to be seen from much closer than just the in-game view, for instance when you're walking around on the hangar deck, you can walk past most of the human fighters at one point or another.... Here's the model for the Boomslang, for instance - up close...
That took a couple of days of free evenings. Probably close to 5 hours for the model only.
Oh, ****. This one was ALSO designed by BradMick - but only 5 years ago. :P
Here's another model I'm working on, sort of the Midrange Commonwealth fighter, the Mongoose!
Model is at about 75%, and the textures, at least the unique textures, have yet to be started. Thoughts?
Armondikov: Aaaaah, youth. I remember what 25 felt like. :P A lot like 29, actually. :P
BradMick: You didn't, really - it's just that I had meant to mention you in the original post, but totally spaced....You wouldnt happen to have any more of the art from Black Widow, would you? If so, feel free to post it here, or drop me a archive. I seem to have lost all my old records.
IRML:Hmm...You Owe ME! MUWHAHAHAAHHAHAH. Go make more awesome Ent-E artwork, and I will consider the debt re-paid. :P
Here's where I got to on the cockpit...building the alien now. It's going to take a bit.
Enjoy!
I'm really looking forward to seeing what your aliens look like. I don't think I've ever seen much in the way of character modeling from you...Are you going to work build him in Max? Or something like Mudbox?
I've done some creature work...but nothing I'm really proud of. I'm going to be modelling it in straight max, with maybe some mudbox goodness afterwards.
I'll post some screenies when I'm further along.
Any thoughts? any ideas on how it could improve? Anything?
Brad
I'm not sure what your plans are for a HUD system....Were you planning on just overlaying targeting directly onto the screen? If you really wanted to get immersion, you could have the HUD mapped onto a similar plane to the cockpit glass - so that it looks like the HUD is in fact projecting directly onto the canopy. Might be more complex than you want to get with this but it would certainly look cool. :cool:
Please forgive the quick photoshop doodling, but to give you a vague idea of what I'm talking about...
Without distortion - more traditional sim HUD
With distortion to match canopy plane
I couldn't design a HUD to save my life but hopefully you get the idea
Armondikov: Absolutely. There will be very little clutter.
Tovette: Thanks.
Here's the current progress on the Cockpit - I've added smaller details, with an eye towards making the model feel more...properly scaled. smaller, tighter packed lights, tiny wire bundles, that sort of thing. I've also cleaned up the shadow mappings, to better represent the small scales of the details.
Personally, I think that looks much more interesting.
Thoughts?
Apart from that, it looks great. :thumb:
How's those aliens coming along? Got a teaser pic for us yet?
Adding more details, and probably the pilot's legs as well.
I've paused the Alien work right now toget the cockpit and cockpitty things further along. I'll get back to them soon.
So here's a slight update - and oddly the lighting seems much off now. Not sure why.
Thoughts?
Boy Genius: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0pbT9lVFag
Thanks.
Here's what I'm working on now:
http://www.hedfiles.net/CockpitClose.png - 14MB png file, the Cockpit closes.
Okay, back to it!
It looks awesome so far!
So, I think this is the final Copperhead Cockpit for now.
And this is the updated cockpit close and launch sequence.
http://www.hedfiles.net/CockpitLaunch.png 22MB APNG
Enjoy, and any thoughts are welcome!
1) it looks awesome, Howard :cool:
2) I agree with Armond - A 2 second-ish pause between the canopy dropping and locking into place would transition a little nicer
3) Have you considered having the lights on the upper canopy pylons off until the canopy drops, wait 2 seconds or so after it locks into place and then have them come on one at a time in sequence as if they are showing systems coming on line/batteries powering up or similar? Would look pretty cool... :thumb:
Either way, it's looking great man.
Thoughts?