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General => Contests => NWDA 2022 Theme Challenge - Horizons => Topic started by: WAS on April 07, 2022, 08:33:00 PM

Title: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: WAS on April 07, 2022, 08:33:00 PM
Just working on assets. Here is a first relatively complete one. Wasn't about to really mess with correcting UVs perfectly as these should be in the distance.
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Dune on April 08, 2022, 01:47:00 AM
Cool piece of machinery.
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Balletdude on April 09, 2022, 04:09:27 AM
Quote from: WAS on April 07, 2022, 08:33:00 PMJust working on assets. Here is a first relatively complete one. Wasn't about to really mess with correcting UVs perfectly as these should be in the distance.
was that created in Blender?
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: WAS on April 09, 2022, 11:41:43 AM
Yep. All just excursions and insetting and some bevel on a circle shape to start.

Right now I am reading through docs on geometry nodes to try and tackle some procedural building like things. 
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: WAS on April 09, 2022, 04:40:42 PM
This is kinda fun. Getting somewhere with scifi buildings. 
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Dune on April 10, 2022, 01:57:29 AM
Looks fun indeed. The hardest part will probably be the texturing.
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: WAS on April 10, 2022, 02:14:01 AM
Yeah, especially when Geometry Nodes and Shaders don't exactly work hand-in-hand yet. For example, having serious trouble trying to mask out window frames and lights from Z-/+ axis to have either none or different type like larger skylights. It'll work fine on underlying object, or any other normal mesh but not from procedural geometry, even though it's all using the same world space and axis system. May end up just doing the windows more simply in TG as at least there as a raw OBJ I know i can mask by Y no problem.
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Dune on April 10, 2022, 03:15:18 AM
If it's for distance you have some leeway, but up close.... if this is for Horizons, it needs to be pretty photorealistic.
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Balletdude on April 10, 2022, 04:07:49 AM
Quote from: WAS on April 09, 2022, 11:41:43 AMYep. All just excursions and insetting and some bevel on a circle shape to start.

Right now I am reading through docs on geometry nodes to try and tackle some procedural building like things.
Have a look at the youtube channel Kev Binge. That hs some useful tips for that sort of thing
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: sboerner on April 10, 2022, 12:37:08 PM
Love the machine and flame. Nice start on the procedural buildings. The thought of UV mapping that makes my head hurt though. 

Maybe let Blender map it (don't worry about shells/tiles) then as you say mask in TG. Maybe project textures on X/Z axes or through a camera?
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Hannes on April 10, 2022, 01:06:25 PM
Don't know much about Blender, but this building looks awesome! I hope you'll get it UVed!
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: zaxxon on April 10, 2022, 03:51:49 PM
Nice start with the objects, curious where you are going with this?
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: WAS on April 11, 2022, 11:54:33 AM
Quote from: Hannes on April 10, 2022, 01:06:25 PMDon't know much about Blender, but this building looks awesome! I hope you'll get it UVed!

Everyone's advice on Blender was just to use "Generated" space, which is like our texture space. So I guess I'll be just texturing in Terragen if I end up using it. The only other way is to export, and import, and than UV the solid object, but I also won't have special date needed to slice it all without dealing with all the complicated geometry, so would have to manually slice everything.

I think all Blender needs is a "Recalculate UV" node for geometry. As it'll pass individual instance UV to the instancer, but then all the procedural scaling effects the UV scales, so noise looks different between each object part. So if we could just re-do UV, whether Box, SmartUV, or whatever, it would fix this issue, as the UV would be done for the new scale of the object.
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: WAS on April 11, 2022, 11:59:54 AM
I may spend time on just one or two "finished" buildings and the do some under construction ones or something that could use simpler materials. 

I figured out how to do this with this method I am using. Make a couple elongated cubes, transform mesh to wireframe, remesh, and boom, got like metal scaffolding. Then some planes extruded and instances 3 times on Z axis and X and Y so it looks like incomplete floors and walls. 
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Dune on April 12, 2022, 02:10:50 AM
Or make it easy on yourself and make a backlit landscape where everything is shrouded in dark shadow. 'Easy realism' ;)
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Balletdude on April 12, 2022, 04:09:31 AM
Was
Quote from: WAS on April 11, 2022, 11:54:33 AM
Quote from: Hannes on April 10, 2022, 01:06:25 PMDon't know much about Blender, but this building looks awesome! I hope you'll get it UVed!

Everyone's advice on Blender was just to use "Generated" space, which is like our texture space. So I guess I'll be just texturing in Terragen if I end up using it. The only other way is to export, and import, and than UV the solid object, but I also won't have special date needed to slice it all without dealing with all the complicated geometry, so would have to manually slice everything.

I think all Blender needs is a "Recalculate UV" node for geometry. As it'll pass individual instance UV to the instancer, but then all the procedural scaling effects the UV scales, so noise looks different between each object part. So if we could just re-do UV, whether Box, SmartUV, or whatever, it would fix this issue, as the UV would be done for the new scale of the object
WAS can you inbox me, I may be able to help you, will take too much space on here
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: WAS on April 13, 2022, 03:56:02 AM
Still working on asset ideas.

A ship which uses a sun like singularity for its power source, engines, and weaponry.

Forgot to mention I plan taller city like structures for the top.
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Dune on April 13, 2022, 04:28:44 AM
Awesome idea!
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: WAS on April 14, 2022, 01:38:50 PM
Some progress. Still got figure out some better texturing. May just do it in TG since I am more familiar with warping here than in blender, which is just always warping texture space before a noise shader, which always yields similar results.
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Hannes on April 15, 2022, 02:38:46 AM
Great idea indeed. Looks very interesting.
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: WAS on April 15, 2022, 12:04:51 PM
Kinda meh on my idea. Other assets are not coming along like I'd hope. And the main suacer was just massive. Was over 5gb at first, so I couldn't even open it anywhere to clean it up. Meshlab just crashed, and Blender couldn't even reopen it (somehow 5gb turning into over 20gb consumed).

Finally lowered the density of all the instances, got rid of the main city tower, and was able to get a 1.88gb file, which I was able to further reduce to 650mb, but it lost a lot of computed normal information, and boxes look weirdly convexed with TG computing the normals. So specular highlights look like weird ribbons popping out.

Also really dislike how TG handles emission. I blender you can ramp of emission and it's just brighter colours that you chose, but in TG, the colours blow out and go white with higher intensities. So you gotta use two objects, but even then, to get the colour I want, WITH SOLID REDS, at the intensity I need, it's just bright yellow-orange. :( Unless I'm actually trying to simulate colours blowing out like this, it's kinda just wrong to default too. I dunno.

May end up doing this project in Blender. Cause not having the brooding blooms I envisioned kinda ruins the whole mood of the scene.
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: masonspappy on April 18, 2022, 11:28:46 PM
Kinda like what you've generated so far.
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Jo Kariboo on April 19, 2022, 08:41:34 PM
This is definitely the most creative image submitted for this contest so far.



Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Dune on April 20, 2022, 01:53:46 AM
Nice idea to make text white ;D
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: WAS on April 20, 2022, 04:14:29 AM
:P Is this the equivalent of "don't quote me" but they're the only person to quote? lol
Title: Re: Whipping up WIPs
Post by: Jo Kariboo on April 20, 2022, 08:57:38 AM

Ouan... don't look for intention in the colors of my texts. I still use google translator and copy paste it...for some time the text comes out black, I changed it here to white. By the end of the year I should find the trick.

;D