Some of the things that I think I've never uploaded, in no specific order

Started by Chinaski, April 22, 2012, 09:20:19 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Zairyn Arsyn

wow... the first set of renders are incredible, the second set is just as good, quite inspiring.
awesome stuff.
WARNING! WIZARDS! DO NOT PREDICT THE BEHAVIOR OF OTTERS UNLESS YOU OBEY BIG HAPPY TOES.

i7 2600k 3.4GHZ|G.skill 16GB 1600MHZ|Asus P8P67 EVO|Evga 770GTX 4GB|SB X-FI|Antec 750W
http://zlain81.deviantart.com/

Seth


Chinaski

I'll try to respond in order. If I forgot something, tell me. And please, don't be upset by the slowness of my answers. Try to talk an understandable english is very hard & tricky to me (even if google translate help me sometime). :D



My hope was to fake a "long time exposure" picture. So, I merged (postwork) multiple frames, with different seeds (random) on water and clouds (maybe a moved the sun too, don't remember). The result was quite good (I love the light and the "little blurry" thing) but not exactly what I expected. So I stopped the experiment.

I think we can have better result by using a translation on clouds & water shader instead of a random thing... But at this time I was not aware of this method. Maybe someone with a complete version of TG2 can try to merge all the frames of a short animation, and see the result. :)

[attachurl=1]
You don't understand me ? That's normal, I don't speak english.

Chinaski

About dôme (caldera-panoramique):



Nothing really complicated in the scene itself... Even if the shader's cumulation can seem insane.



I used several crater shaders (positive or negative) to build the volcano, smooth erode shader and multiple power fractal shaders (redirect shader) to deform it. A distance shader (coupled to a camera) is used to mask the center of the crater, so it (the cold lava's dome) can be darker and shinier.

To have the hiking path I used a simple image map. This map is used as blending on the stones shader. I used a lot, also, a "gradient altitude group" (found here, on this forum, thank to the autor) to mix textures and constrain vegetation. The hut at the top was made with an old version of 3dsmax and converted to object format with PoseRay. There are three cloud's layers. One of them is deformed by power fractal shaders (redirect technic).

At this point I had a good scene (I thought). And so I wanted it big! And that's a problem, let me explain...

I use Hugin & Panotool to make panoramique images (it's cheating, I know, I'm not proud of it). So I had to: use 9 cameras on TG2 preview version (hard to have good angles and orientations), calculate the 9 renders (one week of computation), and put them together with Hugin (define an importante number of key points, choose the projection technic, tweak the thing, etc.). Arduous. And the result was... Flat! The atmo was boring, no sense of deepness.

No way I modify the scene and re-calculate the thing. Ultimately, I had an idea, and saved the situation by using the distance shader trick.

Recalculate the nine views without atmo and textures (just the distance from active camera). Build my panoramic view with the key points that I've defined the first time (because it's impossible to do with a black & white fade image), and used it to enhance (postwork) the picture. \o/

That's all. :)

[attachurl=1]
[attachurl=2]
You don't understand me ? That's normal, I don't speak english.

otakar

Ok, your volcano explanation seems like tons of work, even though I can't quite follow. The result, however, is epic! Very sharp and intriguing, hard to tell this is a render as opposed to a photo. Bravo!

Chinaski

Maybe I wasn't quite clear, sorry about that. The important thing I learned with this scene (and now always use) is:

When you do a long big render on a enormous scene, you must also do a fast "distance render" (the last shader of your build is a "distance shader" connect to your render camera, no atmosphere, no complex shadows, etc.). This black & white "distance render" is quick to do, and really useful in tweaking (postwork) the density of your atmosphere (perspective atmosphérique in french). That can save your day, especially if you are working with an old computer. ;)

By the way, you can also use it for depth of field.
You don't understand me ? That's normal, I don't speak english.

Chinaski

Dragoon eggs is a happy coincidence that started with a test on big rounded stones (the scene's name is bigrocks).

The principal fake stones shader is 50 size, 1 tallness, and 0 pancake effect. By cons, the surface layer of these stones have enormous displacement (200 amplitude, 100 offset).

When I launched the fist render I was very lucky. My preview window was not at 100%, the diplacement not totally applied, and the stones not so big... When I saw the first render I thought: It's so cool! The camera was, by chance, just at the right place, the rocks were enormous, 4 or 5 time bigger than in preview window, texture was fine, and perspective was great...

And I immediatly thought: "dragoon eggs" a "quiet" little scifi exploration scene. So I add a little guy in space suit at the back (just a spline directly drawn and extruded in 3dsmax), some scifi plants I made for the occasion, fog (for distance), water (to reflect light), and it was done.



After that I tried a lot of things, less succesfull: First I've added a space ship (a space dragoon in my mind). It was a modified Homeworld mesh, very nice mesh (this game is superb), but I never found the right place to put it. I also wanted to add some sort of hieroglyphs on the eggs... To give the impression that they were very ancient/antique, and that next civilization have used it to draw, like the first men in the caves...

I think that was a good idea, but I wasn't able to do it right. Draw a hieroglyph, and put it on these stones, with projection camera, is not easy. :D

nb: The space plants, and the (flat) space exploration suit.

[attachurl=1]
[attachurl=2]
[attachurl=3]
You don't understand me ? That's normal, I don't speak english.

Dune

This is all very understandable, thank you very much for taking time to explain. But what I am wondering most about is the way you got your rocks textured (one of the first few sets of small images). Were they procedural (fake or internal TG) rocks or objects with proper UV-mapping? In the latter case, texturing is not hard, but if they're procedural and you used an image map, the technique eludes me.

TheBadger

Thank you, Chinaski.

Hope you will continue down the list of questions. This is a fun and insightful thread.
It has been eaten.

Chinaski



The atmo-eclipse-0002 scene doesn't want to open anymore (TG2 crash, maybe an accent in the tgd file). So I've opened atmo-eclipse-0003 file, to have a look at it. :D



Here is the small space module & here is the first version of atmo-eclipse TGD file (it's extremely simple you'll see).

The camera is orthographic. The asteroid is a little planet with procedural displacements. It was my multi-atmosphere test period (like for atmo-triple-bleu & triple-atmo-red). The idea was simple: Put several atmospheres shader (2 ou 3) on one little planet. This way, by tweaking the atmospheres (primary one/off, secondary on/off, haze, density, color, lighting, ambiant, improved glow model on/off, etc), I could have all sort of merging effects, superposition effects, shadows effects, and nice colors. No postwork here.




For this one, it's the same method, at a smaller scale... 3 little planets (10 size) side by side, with 2 atmospheres each. The 6 atmospheres are touching and merging.


About peau d'orange:



A very simple scene here, again. Just 3 shaders: one image map (make with Fyre, and applyed in spherical mode), one surface layer (who take color, luminosity, and displacements from the image map), one reflective shader, and all that points to a little planet (with 10 radius). Nothing more.

It was a lucky experiment. Maybe I could do more of this sort of little things. Quick & easy to do.


About Rockland 006, I have nothing to say (except that I love the TG2 rocks). :D

See you tomorrow. ;)

[attachurl=1]
[attachurl=2]
[attachurl=3]
[attachurl=4]
[attachurl=5]
[attachurl=6]
You don't understand me ? That's normal, I don't speak english.

ndeewolfwood

bravo, super boulot.
Le volcan est vraiment impressionnant. Beau travail.

Chinaski

Now, about the city...





First, Here is the scene, objects, and maps. With it you can play your own Simcity game. ;)

So, therhat's the city itself (I will tell you later how it was generated). There are three materials for this object: One for buildings, one for city soil, one for soil with some vegetation. Last element is a water plane (channel). And I used some imagemaps to do some masking. Nothing special about light, atmosphere, or anything else. Just look at the scene to see how it's done. ;)


To generate the city I've used a little program I've did myself, with Processing.

Be aware that was one of my first programs. So, it's not a very elaborate thing, or a clever thing. No comment in the code, no *@#$! manual, but I think it's relatively simple. It's a loop. It's drawing 400 "blocs", in each "bloc" there is a "building", the shape of the "building" is random (66 types of buildings). When the 400 blocs are drawed... It start again, and again, and again (and again).

There is no interface, or elaborate function. If you want to change some parameter you must edit the code. The only thing you can do is to press the R key of your keyboard. When R key is pressed: the city is saved in DXF format (no incremential function, if you want to save several cities, you must rename the files). You can find the last version here. There are the sources, a Linux version, a Mac version, and a Windows version. Fell free to use, modify, and do whatever you want with it (improve it would be a good idea). ;)
/!\ Warning: executable versions were never tested! You use it at your own risks. /!\


Now, if you have tested the thing, and exported some DXF city, you'll see it's crap. If you want to use it in TG2 there's a lot of work to do. :D

What I do step by step: Import a DXF city in 3dsmax (it can take some time). Import an other (superposed buildings are nicer, more complex). Put on them a double sided surface (because some faces are drawn the wrong way). Ok, now you see better. Reunite the two meshes. Edit it (you can clean some blocs to make green spaces, or change height, build a channel, modify the streets, you can also unify the faces normals, etc.).

When it's done, you must define your materials. So, I apply a Multi/Sub-object material with (for exemple) 3 "sub material" (one for buildings, one for soil, one for green spaces). After that, I edit the material ids of the faces of my city mesh (id 1 for building, id 2 fot soil, id 3 for green spaces). Last thing to do with 3dsmax: Export the thing in 3DS format. I'm sure you can do all that with an other program (better than 3dsmax5). ;)

Now, we must convert the file in OBJ format. To do that, I import the 3DS file in PoseRay, and export it directly in OBJ format. you can now use it in TG2.

Enjoy!

[attachurl=1]
[attachurl=2]
[attachurl=3]
[attachurl=4]
[attachurl=5]
[attachurl=6]
You don't understand me ? That's normal, I don't speak english.

Chinaski

I'll just take a little time, before start writing the long last part (textures!)(tomorow!!!), to thank you all, for comments, interest, and support.  That's just some old TG2 Works, make with an old version of TG2, but I think it can maybe help or please some users. So why not take the time to post it... By the way, when I finish here, I will also post all the files in the "file sharing" section.

And, to speak again about the cityexporter, and respond to Oshyan... When I started this project, Processing was an all new thing to me, and I was very excited about it. You could write a simple line of code, press the play button, and the it run. That was fantastic!

So I had great expectation... The thing is... I'm not a programer. And after I slowly wrote the different building shapes I was broken. I couldn't see it more. The faces normals was a problem. How to export directly in obj format? How to reunite some blocs? How to have oblique streets? How to add simply some details in the architecture? How to add different textures? etc. My method was wrong. I couldn't improve it. Too big/hard for me.

So it stayed like it is, a small "one button" program. But it was good enough to do what I wanted to do at this time. And, please don't mock me, I was very proud of it. :D

Since I saw some Introversion Procedural City Generator project video. Neeeeeeed!!!
You don't understand me ? That's normal, I don't speak english.


ndeewolfwood

Thanks for the .pde Chinaski.

If you really want to get into procedural modelling it can be a good idea to take a look on Houdini. (there a free non-commercial version with limitation and 99$ non commercial without limitation).
It's the perfect buddy when you want to do things procedural with less (or without) coding.

The city generator made by introversion looks very cool too bad that the Subversion project is cancelled.