Hull texture is a bit too glossy (I don't recall them being shiny in the show, more that same matte white / light grey they used for the Eagles in Space:1999 too). But the design is looking good!
You are quite right, they should be matt and in screen shots they look positively shabby with what I presume is supposed to be luna dust, my excuse is they are just out of refit
I have gond back over my Skydiver scenes and painfully added lighting, it has been a bit of a nightmare, it soon dawned on me that for some bizarre reason the skydiver model will not receive light properly, at best it will show some reflected light (as in a light source bouncing off another object), baffled me, tried everything, stripping the materials, new light sources, exporting to FBX and back, nada, will not play, some corruption I guess. I don't want to rebuild the model and start from scratch so I have had to settle for self illumination with some noise added to take off the uniform effect, the customer seems pleased anyway, here is a finished example of one scene.
I have done enough of the painful water scenes now and can concentrate on the combat clips in space and in the air, if I have time I will include a land engagement with mobiles.
Launching Sky One, the bubbles from the compressed air start are rather naff, but they will have to do, my MI has set me back on my deadline for the publication date. Vey inconsiderate of me. I have chosen not to add caustics, with the model refusing to accept any light it seemed pointless.
Rats, just noticed the sea stops moving halfway through and the shadow effect on the boat (caused by phase shifting the noise map over time) going to have to revisit that one.
One thing I don't think they ever showed us during the entire series was the SkyDiver actually recombining (or the Sky Fighter descending back to the water and diving to meet the sub).
Your work so far has been innovative in showing us some stuff the series didn't do, so maybe take this step and show something they never got close to?
Cool work, so far. The nice thing about CG is that it scales water correctly. Whenever any of the Gerry Anderson shows depicted water it was clear the scale was off. Unless water droplets in the real world are boulder sized!
Nice animation of the ship submerging (10:53 yesterday). The water flowing round it is great but the moon is somewhat too big, and given the big create i can see i don't think it's our moon. Better lighting this time has helped the video.
Your 1100 and 1105 videos aren't so good because it looks like your models have been ruined, the poly level looks much lower than it other videos and some parts of the geometry seem to have collapsed in on themselves, like a metal can containing water heated on a fire then let to cool. the choice of colours in this video is also a lot less pleasing to the eye than in previous animations of yours. If i were you i would try doing these latest two videos again with more realistic backgrounds (less of the bright brown seabed and bright blue surface) and the models as they were in the earlier videos. the flame trail effect that appears in the first of these two launch videos is ok, but it could use being a little faster "flowing".
Yah, very unhappy with the underwater scenes, and increasingly fed up with V-Ray, maybe it is me but even with global setting unchecked on the lights they are being over-ridden by the ambient settings. It is hopelessly inconsistent when trying to deal with low light situations.
They recombination of Skydiver has actually been bothering me, I came to the conclusion it had to be something like the CAM ships of WWII where the fighter was ditched after it's mission. Does not add up at all, if they had a carrier handy, why use a sub? And the fighter cannot head for the nearest airport without compromising secrecy. If I had to solve it I would use some sort of mother aircraft onto which the fighter would dock in mid air and then be flown back to base to be re-attached.
Anyway, my first attempt at a combat scene, I cheated and got the shuttle from the NASA site, as you can see I struggled with the timings on the laser blasts and will need to figure out a better way to deal with that. Sorry about the end, could not resist it!
My final result, would have loved to have spent more time on it, but just cannot, in the end it was an astonishing 20 mins long and I had to really hack it down to the required 4-5 minute clip, handed over now for the music track. My first film, warts and all!
[video=youtube_share;xrMVJCHInKg]
Posts
You are quite right, they should be matt and in screen shots they look positively shabby with what I presume is supposed to be luna dust, my excuse is they are just out of refit
I have gond back over my Skydiver scenes and painfully added lighting, it has been a bit of a nightmare, it soon dawned on me that for some bizarre reason the skydiver model will not receive light properly, at best it will show some reflected light (as in a light source bouncing off another object), baffled me, tried everything, stripping the materials, new light sources, exporting to FBX and back, nada, will not play, some corruption I guess. I don't want to rebuild the model and start from scratch so I have had to settle for self illumination with some noise added to take off the uniform effect, the customer seems pleased anyway, here is a finished example of one scene.
I have done enough of the painful water scenes now and can concentrate on the combat clips in space and in the air, if I have time I will include a land engagement with mobiles.
Your work so far has been innovative in showing us some stuff the series didn't do, so maybe take this step and show something they never got close to?
Cool work, so far. The nice thing about CG is that it scales water correctly. Whenever any of the Gerry Anderson shows depicted water it was clear the scale was off. Unless water droplets in the real world are boulder sized!
Your 1100 and 1105 videos aren't so good because it looks like your models have been ruined, the poly level looks much lower than it other videos and some parts of the geometry seem to have collapsed in on themselves, like a metal can containing water heated on a fire then let to cool. the choice of colours in this video is also a lot less pleasing to the eye than in previous animations of yours. If i were you i would try doing these latest two videos again with more realistic backgrounds (less of the bright brown seabed and bright blue surface) and the models as they were in the earlier videos. the flame trail effect that appears in the first of these two launch videos is ok, but it could use being a little faster "flowing".
They recombination of Skydiver has actually been bothering me, I came to the conclusion it had to be something like the CAM ships of WWII where the fighter was ditched after it's mission. Does not add up at all, if they had a carrier handy, why use a sub? And the fighter cannot head for the nearest airport without compromising secrecy. If I had to solve it I would use some sort of mother aircraft onto which the fighter would dock in mid air and then be flown back to base to be re-attached.
Anyway, my first attempt at a combat scene, I cheated and got the shuttle from the NASA site, as you can see I struggled with the timings on the laser blasts and will need to figure out a better way to deal with that. Sorry about the end, could not resist it!
[video=youtube_share;xrMVJCHInKg]
As for the Moon being too big or too small, there is no right size: in a real-world photo, it depends entirely on your camera settings.