Bare metal was a common finish for military aircraft in the past, from fighter to bombers to the ultra hightech (even for today in many ways) A-12, and still is used today on commercial aircraft. How many buildings are finished in metal? and for a space example, Apollo had an oh-so-shiny command module and many of the ISS modules are too.:) In fact you could make a case for not having a diffuse skin since The more you're diffusing light, the more you're absorbing which adds to heat buildup - remember shiny reflects heat as well as light.
That said, i may have a number of different finishes that you haven't seen yet, depending on where the ship is most commonly deployed bit I think the metal has the potential to look the most interesting. It's also the hardest one to do, and paintjobs look great when blended over a nice metal shader, so you can see scratched off bits through the paint.
considered it, yes. Ive got tons of designs i'd like to build. mostly just sketches i have lying around on paper or disk. Most likely i've painted it because i'm not going to build it. but you never know.
ok... well i've never been happy with the thermal protection, and how it blends into the hull material.. here's a section i've modified to have more 'feathering' of the hex pattern.
Thanks. I think its better, not perfect but defintely lets the texture fit the geometry - i wasn't keen on how the pattern was terminating on the edge of the panels. I'd been wondering what to do about it for a while and oddly, when i went to bed the other night the image of how it should look just popped into my head.
Here's a couple more renders just for fun, notice how the metal shader is somewhat cleaner as i turned down the anisotropy after staring at the pic of the bomber i posted a couple of days ago. On the engines, the dirt/soot streaks have not been added to the textures.
Darnest Steve, you have improved even more since the last time I dropped by. I can really envision something like this being manufactured in the future. I really like the "bulky"-ness feeling, like she was built to be tough.
In fact you could make a case for not having a diffuse skin since The more you're diffusing light, the more you're absorbing which adds to heat buildup - remember shiny reflects heat as well as light.
No, the "diffuseness" or "specularity" of a material has nothing to do with the energy absorption. It is a function of the base reflectivity (how *much* is reflected), not *how* the light/energy/wavelengths reflect.
A diffuse material with a reflectivity of 0.8 absorbs just as much energy as a perfect mirror with a reflectivity of 0.8.
Hyperspace, thanks I'm sure you're right... don't need all those fancy numbers and wavelengths to prove it... but i think you're reading too much into it tbh... I'm using the word diffuse to describe a non shiney, non reflective, non specular material, which as far as i know is a common term in 3d. ie, only the diffuse shading component being visible without highlights or reflections added over the top.
Don't forget that 3d terms are often different to the real world. Where spec for example is one component of a fake effect (gloss being the other) to simulate the reflection of a non existant light source in a surface and is quite different to diffuse, which is really just the surface colour generally, but even that can all change depending on application and the shader or material. Generally, in 3d apps specularity and diffuse are never interchangable terms as you've described them.
Simply put, A shiney, reflective surface will reflect more energy than a non shiney surface of the same colour and so on. thats all i mean. Regardless, surface colour and properties are really chosen for looks rather than practical consideration... we can assume the ship can somehow cope with any type of surfacing.
Sorceress, window? no i would call that a hole. didn't think anyone would notice.
Mauiman, why thankyou, its true, i even invented ray bans, and the fonz.
Oh yeah... I know specular and diffuse are complete hacks of 3D software. I figured you might be using it in that context.
On the other hand, it does have some implications, even in a simplified hack model. Shader settings are usually considered more realistic if they keep the sum of specular and diffuse components as < 1, which illustrates the same concept. Diffuse + Specular + absorption = 1. Of course nobody usually uses them that way, since the point of art is to make great images. (Which you certainly do!)
More physically accurate renderers and shaders may impose their own limitations. People tend to forget that movies for example are almost never shot with natural/existing light. They always have reflectors, spotlights, etc, to illuminate the scene as they want.
Back to the topic of your model... I actually prefer it without the honeycomb heat-resistant surfaces. Somehow it seems to "date" it, if you know what I mean. (In that it appears less advanced because it needs such protective measures)
The idea is that you can push things further with many shaders than might be considered realistic, giving the artist more flexibility. burning it out in a way. Generally the older the material, the more easily you can screw it up.
A good render is more than just making sure a few material settings add up to one - which really means very little in a material editor. textures, correct lighting and exposure play a part and though a material may look fine under certain conditions, under another set of conditions, a different environment or along side other materials in the scene it may need tweaking from 'textbook' or reference book values and/or pushing it further from 'realistic' values in some way to make it fit. What is actually realistic is very much up to the eye to tell you.
No doubt as things progress you'll need to worry less and less about tuning these things, as it is clearly progressing already, so you'll be able to make nice pics just with the default settings, which you can pretty much do nowadays anyway as long as you're not too adventurous.
here's a closeup of the belly of the beast. you can see lots of mapping problems up close. mis-alignments in places and there's a big difference between scale on some panels. the larger ones will have to be reduced and there's some stretching in places. you can also see strange swirls in places where the mapping of the dirt/soot isn't complete and its just using some default coordinates or something.
here's a closeup of the belly of the beast. you can see lots of mapping problems up close. mis-alignments in places and there's a big difference between scale on some panels. the larger ones will have to be reduced and there's some stretching in places. you can also see strange swirls in places where the mapping of the dirt/soot isn't complete and its just using some default coordinates or something.
Or you could say you gave the contract to the lowest bidder and leave it as is.:flippy:
Nyrath, if you want to make a panel that looks like its from an aircraft, lift your texture from a picture of an aircraft panel or use as much photo-data as you can, as opposed to painting it all by hand... say you want a nice texture for your ship, maybe find some closeup pics of real rockets and snag your textures from there. Try to find images that are taken under even lighting, overcast days for example and from face-on angles, as this tends to translate better to use as a texture, less distortion, less shading to compensate for.
Hope thats some help, i've spend many years experimenting with textures and even these have gone through lots of changes and tweaks and will most likely continue to do so. making a nice texture set and materials to go with it, along with adding the uv coordinates can take as long as the modelling.
speaking of which, the texturing and panelling continues, plenty of visible tiling on the wheel well doors... unfortunately at the stern i've added some kind of hyper-drone launcher, not sure how the mechanism will work, if it'll be kind of like a bomb bay door, or hang from one end like a cargo door. Also need to see if i can squeeze in some rods from god dispensers either side of it too... ship would maybe carry 3 hyperdrone fighters.
depends on whether you're bombing Earth or Mars...;)
here's a 3000 px render, hopefully the server won't mash the compression too much.
nearly 4 million triangles with 2x subdivions. image took 15 minutes to render on my modest 2 core setup, as always, try to ignore the flipped text...:D
Posts
That said, i may have a number of different finishes that you haven't seen yet, depending on where the ship is most commonly deployed bit I think the metal has the potential to look the most interesting. It's also the hardest one to do, and paintjobs look great when blended over a nice metal shader, so you can see scratched off bits through the paint.
Steve I was going to ask if you have considered modeling those Allied and Soviet power armor suits of yours? The paintings of those were great.
I would definitely go with this one over the system you had before.
Here's a couple more renders just for fun, notice how the metal shader is somewhat cleaner as i turned down the anisotropy after staring at the pic of the bomber i posted a couple of days ago. On the engines, the dirt/soot streaks have not been added to the textures.
Keep up the excellent work !
I may be mistaken, but I see a lot of Su-27 in this design.
No, the "diffuseness" or "specularity" of a material has nothing to do with the energy absorption. It is a function of the base reflectivity (how *much* is reflected), not *how* the light/energy/wavelengths reflect.
A diffuse material with a reflectivity of 0.8 absorbs just as much energy as a perfect mirror with a reflectivity of 0.8.
Unless I misunderstood you...
Don't forget that 3d terms are often different to the real world. Where spec for example is one component of a fake effect (gloss being the other) to simulate the reflection of a non existant light source in a surface and is quite different to diffuse, which is really just the surface colour generally, but even that can all change depending on application and the shader or material. Generally, in 3d apps specularity and diffuse are never interchangable terms as you've described them.
Simply put, A shiney, reflective surface will reflect more energy than a non shiney surface of the same colour and so on. thats all i mean. Regardless, surface colour and properties are really chosen for looks rather than practical consideration... we can assume the ship can somehow cope with any type of surfacing.
Sorceress, window? no i would call that a hole. didn't think anyone would notice.
Mauiman, why thankyou, its true, i even invented ray bans, and the fonz.
efritsch, travis, asz, leo. thanks.
On the other hand, it does have some implications, even in a simplified hack model. Shader settings are usually considered more realistic if they keep the sum of specular and diffuse components as < 1, which illustrates the same concept. Diffuse + Specular + absorption = 1. Of course nobody usually uses them that way, since the point of art is to make great images.
More physically accurate renderers and shaders may impose their own limitations. People tend to forget that movies for example are almost never shot with natural/existing light. They always have reflectors, spotlights, etc, to illuminate the scene as they want.
Back to the topic of your model... I actually prefer it without the honeycomb heat-resistant surfaces. Somehow it seems to "date" it, if you know what I mean. (In that it appears less advanced because it needs such protective measures)
A good render is more than just making sure a few material settings add up to one - which really means very little in a material editor. textures, correct lighting and exposure play a part and though a material may look fine under certain conditions, under another set of conditions, a different environment or along side other materials in the scene it may need tweaking from 'textbook' or reference book values and/or pushing it further from 'realistic' values in some way to make it fit. What is actually realistic is very much up to the eye to tell you.
No doubt as things progress you'll need to worry less and less about tuning these things, as it is clearly progressing already, so you'll be able to make nice pics just with the default settings, which you can pretty much do nowadays anyway as long as you're not too adventurous.
Nyrath, if you want to make a panel that looks like its from an aircraft, lift your texture from a picture of an aircraft panel or use as much photo-data as you can, as opposed to painting it all by hand... say you want a nice texture for your ship, maybe find some closeup pics of real rockets and snag your textures from there. Try to find images that are taken under even lighting, overcast days for example and from face-on angles, as this tends to translate better to use as a texture, less distortion, less shading to compensate for.
Hope thats some help, i've spend many years experimenting with textures and even these have gone through lots of changes and tweaks and will most likely continue to do so. making a nice texture set and materials to go with it, along with adding the uv coordinates can take as long as the modelling.
speaking of which, the texturing and panelling continues, plenty of visible tiling on the wheel well doors... unfortunately at the stern i've added some kind of hyper-drone launcher, not sure how the mechanism will work, if it'll be kind of like a bomb bay door, or hang from one end like a cargo door. Also need to see if i can squeeze in some rods from god dispensers either side of it too... ship would maybe carry 3 hyperdrone fighters.
here's a 3000 px render, hopefully the server won't mash the compression too much.
nearly 4 million triangles with 2x subdivions. image took 15 minutes to render on my modest 2 core setup, as always, try to ignore the flipped text...:D
*edit* fixed the flipped text and added below
ok, i've fixed the pic, i should really choose reversible characters like 8,0, etc... then i have 2 ships with one texture;)
here are some wheel well doors... keeping them simple as you're not going to see them much, but with some textures it should work fairly well.
You might be there for a long long time doing that and then by the time you're a 1/4 of the way thru you'd have to start over