The other space station ;)

[DocCharly65]

... an easy job for an old i3 with only 6GB Ram

To give all my TG licenses a meaningful employment I just played with another idea:
The Galactica arrives at the drydock some time. But from where?

I was very unhappy when I had to delete the beautiful Federation Spacedock 54 from Raul Mamoru end of 2014. As I remember, some others in the forum liked it as much as I did. But unfortunately I had extreme problems with rendertimes and flickering of all the small lights...

But after some experiments It's back now:

Testframes 100, 310, 430, 600

[attach=1]  [attach=2]

[attach=3]  [attach=4]

I decided to hide it on the dark side of the moon (which nevertheless is lit a bit because of the approaching space bubble )
Rendertimes maximum 15 min per frame on that old i3
It's also one of my seldom Detail 0.5 / AA4 renders, because stars and details need it.

[Kadri]

Phew yes that looks like it could flicker a lot.
What settings did you use in the end Nils?

[DocCharly65]

In general I use Detail 0.3/0.4 and AA3 - 4 for my movie to get a compromise between acceptable rendertimes and a smooth picture.
Very seldom for example here where I want a clearer picture of the stars and all the little windows I use Detail 0.5 and AA 4 and additionally 0.5 anti-aliasing bloom.

One thing I learned about reflections by the time:

In the beginning I did one big mistake: I wanted crisp reflections and reduced all specular roughness to almost zero >>> leaded sucessfully to a million percent more flickering .  Meanwhile, I use the Highlights intensity a little more wisely 

Not higher than 1 and roughness not much below 0.2-0.1. It's tha same for glass and reflectivity shaders and the specular roughness of the default shaders work similar.

[Kadri]

I see.
I had a horrible flickering object and used just an image of it in the end.
But that was a background object and no real moving 3D was needed.
The detail you use is is quite low. Nice

[DocCharly65]

Yes sometimes it is amazing which combinations work well.

The closeup of ripleys eyes was even only Detail 0.2 but AA4 - I tried with higher detail up to 0.5 but saw no improvements (only the bad quality of some texture files with 0.5  ).

Also it depends on the overall size of the picture and on the objects.
For 1920x1080 renders I don't go beneath Detail 0.5 / AA 5.

With many procedural content I also need higher Detail of course. With fast camera movement and motion blur on the other side I need less details...

It's always a bit a tricky game and needs sometimes time until you see what the video software does with it.



Of course these are all my personal impressions, aims and tactics for the personal minimum quality I want to reach in my film. Professional artists or movie makers may laugh at me but they have custumors to satisfy and I am free. 

[Dune]

With only objects even a very low detail will be similar as 0.5 or up, like 0.001 (don't know really)

[Oshyan]

In the Ripley's Eye render you had only objects, so micropoly detail (which is the main Detail setting) basically had no effect. Only AA has an effect on quality of ray traced objects... There could be some effect if there are some procedural (non-object) elements in the scene, even if they are out of camera, for example with shadows being cast. But if the scene is all objects (as some of your scenes are), then you can even use Detail of 0.1 with no downside (though it will probably not affect render time much anyway).

Oh, the only exception to this of course is if you are *not* using Defer Atmo. But with your low AA I would definitely recommend it in most cases.

- Oshyan

[DocCharly65]

Thanks for the informations, Oshyan. 

Seems that I instinctively did most things not completely wrong
The space renders all need a Detail of minimum 0.3 (with DoF) or 0.4-0.5 without DoF. Otherwise the stars look frayed.
And in the scenes where I didn't deactivate the planet of FrankB's planetpack I need higher Detail settings anyway.

[Agura Nata]

amazing work and look Doc! 

[DocCharly65]

Thanks Dragonfire

I should have called this post The other space stationS   

Again I was bored waiting for a renderjob and so my free older PCs got a new Job.
I found another nice model from bcelestia on celestiamotherlode.net
And I thought I could fill another little logic hole: Where do some more of the space ships of the fleet come from?

So welcome the next new station:
Babylon 5 suddently appeared somewhere near Mars and nobody knew how and why it dissappeared from Epsilon Eridani 3...

[attach=1]



Also I was not really satisfied with my integration of the 1999 Eagles - I thought about where they should come from to support the fleet and decided to add a little additional scene especially for Kadri

Frames 066 and 411:

[attach=2]   [attach=3]


... and now a little little glow of a thought of a little scene with the DS9 station flickers very gently in the background of my brain...
Let's see how long I can resist

[Kadri]

Great. Now crash-explode them Nils 

[DocCharly65]

That f...g flickering in my brain... I am sure you all knew I would do it 

The station drifting into the screen like in the TV show intro:

[attach=1]   [attach=2]   [attach=6]


The docked Enterprise NX 01 (forget about chronical logic in my film    )

[attach=3]   [attach=4]   [attach=5]


Models found on trekmeshes:
Deep Space Nine by Joerg Gerlach
U.S.S. Enterprise-D by Chris Setterington
Enterprise NX-01 by Kenny Z
U.S.S. Voyager by Sarod

Some of the hardest "model repairing" jobs this year. The problems:
The Enterprise NX 01 needed really much work eg: some inverted normals on only some surfaces.
The Deep Space 9 station had many missing poligons in the wall so that you had shining trough the illumination.
And with all the lights I have a big big challenge to avoid them flickering.

[Dune]

There are programs that find missing polys (and fill holes), I think. But reparing large compliacted objects by hand is not my favorite pastime. Just like flipped normals in such an object. I don't know any method to quickly find and reverse those.

[Kadri]

...Just like flipped normals in such an object. I don't know any method to quickly find and reverse those.

"Align" (under Details+Polygons) (or Unify Normals) in Lightwave modeler does work mostly very good in that regard Ulco.

[Kadri]

I made this crashing Eagle test a while ago in Lightwave.
Shared on Facebook then. Not sure if i posted it here.
Crashing them is fun Nils