The good news: I'm still alive and still not given up the film.
Less good news: Every day I come closer to the decision to stop that all and to work in the garden instead of at the computer - but later more.
While collecting and checking all the animations for the peaceful impressions in my film I had an idea to show a galaxy in overview.
I found a masked plane with a nice galaxy on CGTrader and added some populations of spheres to get enough stars for a spatial impression.
Not spectacular but good enough for me:
Some other things and things you already know are in the pipeline, but in general i am in bad mood and actually feel no more real pleasure in the project.
And all that since Windows 10 2004 decided, that all my NAS drives are no longer present. And there are saved all my collected models since 7-8 years, all my TV shows and films I recorded since 15 years.
My complete workflow depends on these NAS drives. A migration of all data would cost me thousands of bugs and would need week up to months. I little bit it's my own fault not having taken care that SMB1 is a protocol that Microsoft wants to get rid of. (The standard workarounds like manually activating SMB1 don't work since Win10 2004. And roll back again? I've enough about being scared every month what happens after the next Windows update - or what is deactivated or doesn't work any more. What you always can be sure is that using Windows (or other products) always works perfectly if you only consume and pay!
At the moment I have some workarounds to keep my data safe (almost 16 TB of models and films) But all that is no more pleasure at all...
Another reason for being at the limit to think about giving up is in reality a success I had not expected:
You perhaps remember my interpretation of Cdr. Adama:
temp.0250.jpg
Because of my low skills and no better solution I always let "my Adama" wear a Helmet.
After some experiments I got a new version and that means (again) re-rendering 10 thousands of frames.
If I go on with the project, I'll do that of course... but it's all so tiring...
Only for a little soul peace... does anyone agree that there's a similarity to Edward James Olmos?
(The uniform is a modified Austrian police uniform)
200713_0939_1.jpg
Here one of my templates (only as link because of copyright):
http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/37100000/Admiral-Adama-battlestar-galactica-37183077-1089-1450.jpg (http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/37100000/Admiral-Adama-battlestar-galactica-37183077-1089-1450.jpg)
Anyway, maybe I'll not any more be here so often. But I'll let you know if important things are changing.
CU
Sorry to hear about these Win 10 problems.
I see some similarity to E.J. Olmos, only the hairline on the forehead
seems to be off.
Good luck to you Nils, hope you'll find your solutions.
Cool stuff, Nils!! I agree about the hairline, but I think he is quite recognizeable.
Sad to hear your problem and mood. With a big and long project like this it can happen more then ones.
Please don't quit. It is up to you of course. But if you ask me you will be more sorry if you don't finish it.
Just take your time and don't stress yourself out.
Nice work. Adama looks usable.
The galaxy...i would use smaller and a little more stars. Other then that it looks good.
I am really sorry to hear about your win-10 problem. I share your feelings, as I am too often afraid the machine will break up on me, especially after again a minor problem. But never had anything big like yours.
But do continue!! But maybe on a more relaxed pace. And maybe let go of your perfectionism, and take up less new ideas? Health is the most important. I remember your problems a few years back, so take good care of yourself, Nils!
Maybe roll back to win 7? I still stick with 7 on my offline working machine. It works, and I wouldn't know why to update to 10. I suppose your NAS drives are local? Not some cloud 'solution'?
That problem really sucks. But at least your data is still there, and it's not completely gone because of a HD crash for example as far as I understood it, yet not readable with your current setup.
However, I agree with Ulco and Kadri. Continue your work, but take it a little easier. If you always try to improve what you already have, because there are other new ways, you'll never be done, and you'll never be happy with it.
Working with TG should always be fun.
Thanks my friends.
Your encouragement helps a little not to throw everything away. Fortunately the model data are safe for the moment on a newer WD NAS readable from all Windows versions now. The DLink NAS are still only readable from the PC with the Windows 10 Version 1909 and I kept an old Win7 PC for real emergencies.
About the last renders and comments:
Yes Kadri, some more, denser and smaller stars would be nice. I decided to use that compromize after many experiments. The spheres are modelled objects to keep the necessary micropoly datail small (0.01) for faster rendering. The amount of "stars" is much higher than visable, but the smaller they are the higher the risk of flickering of the stars was. I could reduce that flickering to a minimum and I could increase the visibilaty of small stars by increasing the anti-aliasing. I could have increased that more but to keep the rendertime below 30-60 minutes I stopped AA at 18 (!). I was quite amazed how fast the frames still rendered.
Perhaps I'll look after the hairline of my E.J. Olmos model (It's besides one of the seldom really selfmade head-models I created with facegen) The hair is admittedly only borrowed from the Stan Lee model whose hair has a slight side parting so it look a bit off o Adamas head. I will see what I can do.
Just a small trick: (perhaps you already know it but perhaps it helps soebody some times)
I used the glas.object of the glasses twice in the render. One object is rendered without shadows but visible and a glasshader instead of the default surface shader. The second copied object on the same place with the default surface shader, the opacity set to something betwen 0.501 up to 0.75 depending on the darknes of the glas. Here the object rendering is set to invisible but causing shadows.
I would roll back to the Win revision that supported your hardware, then disable auto updates in group policies (it's a bit convoluted, but uncle Google will help you). If you want to stick with the auto updates... Maybe try posting on some Windows forum for a workaround. M$ removing support for a hardware may mean it's still there, only hidden.
Second thing, I do encourage cyclical backups. In at least 2 places.
As to the project, I can advise splitting it into smaller milestones (episodes?), and trying to treat it like a road/adventure and not a monolith to chisel. Helps with perfectionism a lot.
Yeah, this guy looks quite a bit like EJO, probably was modelled after him.
Quote from: amandas on July 20, 2020, 11:23:43 AMI would roll back to the Win revision that supported your hardware, then disable auto updates in group policies (it's a bit convoluted, but uncle Google will help you). If you want to stick with the auto updates... Maybe try posting on some Windows forum for a workaround. M$ removing support for a hardware may mean it's still there, only hidden.
Second thing, I do encourage cyclical backups. In at least 2 places.
As to the project, I can advise splitting it into smaller milestones (episodes?), and trying to treat it like a road/adventure and not a monolith to chisel. Helps with perfectionism a lot.
Yeah, this guy looks quite a bit like EJO, probably was modelled after him.
Oh, sorry, just noticed your second post. Hope my first one is still valid, at least a bit ;)
Not much to say in these hard times without sounding preachy......but please carry on if you can, knowing that your endeavors bring much knowledge and pleasure to all of us here at this forum.
I too lost it all to Win10 at one point about four years ago, but I pieced most back together and decided to learn again what it took (and you know I am not a youngster) I do what I can, accepting I may never relearn it all. Even the kids I am around get discouraged at the fast track changes now too....and they learn a lot easier than me and are way less attached to these old file types, haha.
I am converting things I probably do not need to just in case I have to go another direction with my "hobbies" but I will find the fun in it somehow and so should you.
A garden is a good thing too...in the long run someday we will all be there I hope. :)
Thanks for your warm and motivating words.
Meanwhile I took a little break (letting the PCs render and render and render... :) )
I found out that there was something much more difficult and challenging I could do than Terragen renders on Windoes 10 PC:
I've read J. R. R. Tolkiens Simarillion and a book of Stanislaw Lem... using Terragen and Windows isn't that complicated ;)
In future I think I'll keep all about the film in this category/thread. I am not suited to compete with real Terragen artists. I just want to make my film and share it. That's it.
And I hope that I can do that before (among others) the Unreal Engine is able to render my seven years of effort in real time with 120 FPS and ray tracing taking a developing effort for the artist of only 7 minutes. Last time I played with the Unreal engine I needed 7 days to develope a scene, I needed 2-3 years in Terragen but the Terragen-result was more than 100 time more realstic and beautiful. I see some frighteningly strong and rapid quality developments in those game engines. But I have faith in Matt that he keeps the render and detail quality long before the game engines to justify longer render times. :)
Now a little update since the last video. further description on Youtube - here only the link:
... and in the coming days/weeks let me see, what you created meanwhile. I hope it's ok for you that I'll limit myself to the like button when I like something
So cool! Stick with TG, Nils! Maybe one day Matt can take the render engine from Unreal and put it in TG ;)
Very nice. Keep it going Nils :)
Glad to see a new little update. 8)
Coool, Nils!!!! Keep it going, but take it easy!
Ha! If you managed to make it through the Simarillion then you're a better person than me. I made it through about 30 pages (a very long time ago) before I gave it up. It was like the guy was never sure when to end a sentence. But please do keep up your work. It's fun to watch and see what you do next. Work in the garden AND do Terragen stuff - that's what I do to maintain some balance.
Thank you, friends! :)
...I must admit, that having read the Simarillion, doesn't necessarily mean I fully understood ;D
The first half of the book with all the names and protagonists is really heavy duty! In a year I will read it again, perhaps it will be more clear then.
Meanwhile I become more and more motivated again and also I have saved enough money to start the first parts of my NAS, PC and server reorganization.
The SMB1 problem is still not solved (And I guess it never will). So I will exchange the first two D-Link NAS by 2 Synology DS218 (empty enclosures).
Some "how to's" of the latest film update: There're some older shots of my 2015-2017 Riddicks Poolhouse projects. I just changed some details and instead of AA3 these are at least rendered with AA6 - mostly even AA8 or higher.
For the hair animation of Agent Rieger I studied this nice tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bpxRLwsQeE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bpxRLwsQeE)
The flames of the Viper engines are some planes with a projected animation of a gas burner:
Zwischenablage-1.jpg
Jason Statham is a face model from PrintedReality on CGTrader with a body from Renderpeople
Vin Diesel is a Riddick body model by norbert-2105 on CGTrader merged with a face model of Vin Diesel by vefilanna on CGTrader
"Agent Rieger" is a self scanned face model of my office colleague Rebecca with her friendly permission and a "Pose girl in leather skirt" Rigged by Polygonal-Miniatures on CGTrader
Unfortunately I bought that girls model BEFORE I saw that she is pregnant - so I had some work (though no experience and skills) to flatten the belly without destroying thr rig and the texturing ;)
a-pose-girl-in-leather-skirt-rigged-3d-model-low-poly-rigged-obj-fbx-mtl.jpg
200716_2243.jpg
200717_1347.jpg
For her glasses I used that trick again, to add some glasses invisible and set opacity to 0.5-0.6 and render another pair of glasses without shadow.
Many movements are from MIXAMO but e.g. the Vin Diesel sitting pose on the bike, the puppy and some corrections are hand made in Blender3D
...and the fleshy lady... ;)
Quote"Agent Rieger" is a self scanned face model of my office colleague Rebecca with her friendly permission
Curious about this. Can you please elaborate?
Quote from: sboerner on September 05, 2020, 10:28:00 AMCurious about this. Can you please elaborate?
Of course. As good as I can do:
All work started with taking 3 photos of her with my Nikon (Nikon D7000)
One from the front and one from the right and left side. Important is an uniform illumination without shadows or highlights that are intensified to the right or left.
Then I imported the pictures into the "Facegen Modeller" You can get it here: https://facegen.com/modeller.htm (https://facegen.com/modeller.htm). I have the "Core Version"
Next steps were adjustments with the integated tools until I got a result, I found usable to exported as obj. file including a texture map.
MAKING OF AGENT RIEGER 001.jpg MAKING OF AGENT RIEGER 002.jpg MAKING OF AGENT RIEGER 003.jpg
Then I made first tests in TG:
MAKING OF AGENT RIEGER 004.jpg
Then I joined the face with the body and added some new hair because I didn't like the version offered by Facegen:
MAKING OF AGENT RIEGER 005.jpg MAKING OF AGENT RIEGER 006.jpg MAKING OF AGENT RIEGER 007.jpg MAKING OF AGENT RIEGER 008.jpg
Many steps joining body and face were try and error and try again because as I some times mentioned I am really not a modeller. but sometimes I have some lucky shots. :)
...and voila... Agent Rieger visits Uncle Riddick together with her Partner Jason to do engine tests with the old Galactica Viper... ;)
temp.0084.jpg
Thank you for the thorough explanation! Great to get a peek behind the curtain. Very cool and the results are quite impressive.
What a job, but the result is great!
Thanks and you're welcome Steve.
Thanks Ulco. In fact the development of Agent Rieger as she is now needed almost 3 years but with recurring time interruptions.
I hope my experiences will make another idea be realized a bit faster. One of the last needed "peaceful intro scenes" of the film shall show the Klingon Homeworld with Christopher Lloyd as "Klingon Shakespeare Artist". So far I only did a little shopping tour on Luc Biancos homepage for inspiration and played around with a cold world :)
I hope I find some good front and side/portrait pics of Christopher Lloyd ... I still have enough turtles to create his Klingon head :)
Good morning everyone, happy day - so far :)
Fortunately after 1 1/2 year I found a nice and usable model of the Roadrunner, so I could go on with my "peaceful times scene"
Another little step... another new craze and madness.
All rendered frames provisionally cut together for testing with MS Movie Maker and added the planned main music theme. I already started that music with Magix Musicmaker in 2015.
The scene will be part of the first Fan Film part, describing just peaceful times ... and the waste of taxpayers money on stupid buildings, which also took place in the 23rd century.
The Roadrunner / Coyote sundown scenes are just raw shots from the Terragen openGL 3D preview and will be rendered in the coming weeks / months :)
Have fun :)
;D ;D ;D Fantastic! I love how you got all these objects animated, and working for you. Great! Actually, there's almost too much to see :P
Thanks Ulco :)
...???...too much to see...???. I hope I didn't forget to render Rosies underwear on the platform ;D ;D
Besides: the "Rosie"-model leaning at the barrel and "Pierre" sitting on the barrel are both Renderpeople-models. Originally just posed but I could rig and animate them in Blender3D. Then the usual workflow: Exporting as obj-sequence and integrate into my tgc.
The coyote is animated in Mixamo and then converted the resulting fbx in Blender3D to obj-sequences, too.
I prefere the "NOT in place" walking/running animations of Mixamo, because they fit much more accurate later concerning the footsteps and positions.
i usually get loops of approx. 20-40 objs so that I can almost exactly position the objects throughout the entire animation. I just have to use linear animation. The breaking and walking in place over the missing floor needed a bit adjustent but worked good. Here is the animation curve, where you can see how I kept the movement linear and changend to slightly curved at the end:
Zwischenablage-1.jpg
This is soo cool!Quote from: DocCharly65 on October 09, 2020, 03:46:22 AMI prefere the "NOT in place" walking/running animations of Mixamo, because they fit much more accurate later concerning the footsteps and positions.
That's true. I prefer to use the "in place" animations.
Usually I try to scale my models initially to real world scale, and I try to find out the exact distance they walk or run per loop in 3ds Max. Doesn't take too much time. And then I store the distance in the filename, so that I can reuse the obj sequences whenever I want.
When the movement is not only in one direction I'd prefer your method as well.
Sweet :) Nice work Nils.
Thank you all.
Hannes, I unfortunately had my first experiences with not so good animations where the footsteps were quite unclean and imprecise so that I had sliding and hovering at any distance - the worst were animals with their 4 feet each one having a different step width. So I never tried the mixamo animations in the "in place version" - simply out of habit :)
Some credits:
Road Runner by subhasharavind98 in cgtrader
Wile e coyote by Supercigale on cgtrader
The big metal path is my own construction built from parts of a Projector Mast by Vadelrey
Hot air balloon VR by dafunk on cgtrader
The Workbee and Cargo train by Raul Mamoru
Some more models from archive3D.net and the formerly TF3DM
...and here we go:
I will add at least one more animation, and the Coyote looking around is rendering again, because I want a smoother horizon. I chose a to small lake radius so the horizon is too sharp because its too close to the viewer.
Some postwork color adjustment, some nice comic sound effects and the next part of the "Federation in peaceful times" is ready.
Until then, I hope you have fun with this:
Super! ;D ;D
Thanks Ulco :)
Haha super cute. I loved those cartoons.
Beep beep!
Great!
Thanks friends :)
Just a short story about how I got the insane idea to integrate Roadrunner and Wile e Coyote in a Star Trek fan film:
while creating the Airwolf scene I was on the search for many different warning notices and prohibition signs.
At first I didn't think about it or noticed anything special when I found this one:
16760715_web1_airportsign.jpg
The top half of the sign seemed just to be a serious ment warning and I thought it would look good on my chain-link fences:
Warehouse13A_CoyoteWarning NG190702 a.jpg temp.0001.jpg
But while changing some things of the texture for the sign (more dirt to impress Hannes ;D and deleting the clean big nails) I took the time to read it completely and I noticed it - they were talking about Wile e Coyote... ;D
The rest was just searching for an adaequat 3D model ... and the story took its course :)
;D ;D ;D Who knew that airport superintendents could have a sense of humor? In this case they did some of your work for you!
https://www.juneauempire.com/news/yes-that-wile-e-coyote-airport-sign-is-real/ (https://www.juneauempire.com/news/yes-that-wile-e-coyote-airport-sign-is-real/)
Quote from: sboerner on October 28, 2020, 11:02:49 AM;D ;D ;D Who knew that airport superintendents could have a sense of humor? In this case they did some of your work for you!
https://www.juneauempire.com/news/yes-that-wile-e-coyote-airport-sign-is-real/ (https://www.juneauempire.com/news/yes-that-wile-e-coyote-airport-sign-is-real/)
First it was just a story -- you made a
top story out of it ;D ;D ;D
Honestly I wish TG had better modeling and animation tools cause these scenes are really well done. Interiors and all. Would love to see a movie mostly rendered in TG.
Quote from: WAS on October 28, 2020, 02:40:32 PMWould love to see a movie mostly rendered in TG.
you will! ... some day you will ;)
...and now something completely different - in several respects...
For me the "Easter Island with Platform, Roadrunner and Coyote" is finished. Some minor improvements and corrections are already in my render pipeline as I told.
I hope it's ok for you all that now I'm trying to make a Christmas film (not with a Christmas theme - only for my YT channel around Christmas time :) )
Except of course, you force me with the threat of severe physical violence, first to finish the Easter Island scene and show it here - but that would not be wise, as I would have a few unreleased animations as a surprise for the final version ;)
The film part I want to publish at Christmas is intended as a reassurance for all those who, because of all the coyotes, Airwolf and other things, no longer believe that I wanted to make a Star Trek fan film.
I want to publish almost the full animation of the starting Federation fleet facing the final "End Boss"
Some Renders I already started in 2016 and earlier. Increasing some of my skills and Matt's great work on the TG features made me rendering soem them again and again...
Yesterday I had the final idea of a kind of home of the
suspected (I love plot twist s ;) ) End Boss.
Just to make you a bit curious:
201029_0747.jpg
Here only a 17 frames testanimation:
Testanimation.mp4
The "alien?" - structure is a combination of 32 of tubes rotating in different angles with a texture composed of a glass shader, illumination and animated image map...
In the last post the files show the Enterprise short after entering the border of the sphere, which produces panic, pain... and - rubber ducks everywhere.
Here we see the Enterprise inside the structure...
Animation Alien Planet 001 ALIEN EGGS BIG TUNNEL - RAW Test Rendered - LQ.mp4
...of course at Christmas it will stay a cliffhanger but you can enjoy some starships again... :)
Incredible! I won't threaten you or conduct bodily harmfull actions against you :D , otherwise the long-awaited Xmas movie won't be shown either, and I'm raelly looking forward to that.
Wow that is beautiful. I love the last still!
Thanks :)
Rendertimes are quite long because of the 32 glass shaders so I gave my two fast i7 PCs the job...
...meanwhile my new Adama with hair instead of a helmet has done his first job. I think two or three shots about the captains should be added in a scene about a starting fleet.
Only a 2 seconds animation. Rendertime was quite fast. Nothing special except that I'm a little bit proud of one of my almost completely self-modelled faces.
Here the old version with helmet:
Animation Adama Alliierten Start - RAW Test Rendered - Helmet.mp4
Here the new one with hair:
Animation Adama Alliierten Start - RAW Test Rendered - Hair.mp4
You aged him, how cool!
Halftime :)
The "contact with the intruder" animations are still running. But as usual I did a test with one of my old music scores to have a better imagination if my idea works or not.
This one is officially invisible (not listed) on YT.
I used the original old MS Moviemaker again - just put all the rendered pictures into the timeline (except start and ending - they are faded so I had to do a minimum of postwork)
If you don't want to spoil the fun, ignore this spoiler:
Beautiful and mysterious! I like the music too!!
Thank you very much, Ulco :)
Fantastic!!!! I didn't expect something else... :)
Really like this. Nice to see a bit of whimsy as well (the teddy bear). Might be fun to dress him up with a Klingon sash and a knife.
Thanks :)
It's a kind of necessary tactics that most of my animations have some whimsy content. Step by step I've realized that my capabilities and those of my equipment are limited. E.g. real human characters are too difficult to be created and animated in a perfect way. So I mix more comic like actors like Abe or Lara Croft into the film, to get a balance between realism and comic art.
I still didn't see many realistic animated humans. The latest Princess Leia animations were already very close to perfection but human eye and brain cannot be fooled so easily. I can't define why but even with these highest quality work in StarWars there's something wrong. Funnily enough, Gollum in the 2nd part of LotR looks more realistic because it's something / a creature we humans are not used to see in our natural ambience.
Besides a little update. The closing gate needed some changes and now rerenders because I hated this unbalanced and exaggerated lighting effect. It will need some time - it's a construction of 68 scale-animated and rotating curved glasstubes. I hope in HQ render quality it looks as I want, but so far with the LQ Test Version I'm quite satified (640x360 Detail 0.01, AA 1):
Animation BIG TUNNEL A ROSETTE SCHLIESST SICH - RAW Test Rendered LQ.mp4
I'm satsfied too, looks good, Nils.
Just a little interim report :)
I will need more time (as usual ;D ) but I have enough patience this time... I think for christmas I'll upload the short moose-animation from 2018 on YT - I only posted it here in the forum so far so I hope the YT audience will forgive me and be patient too.
The planed newest "teaser/trailer" will be bigger than I planned first:
I want to do a kind of summary in the style: "what happened so far"
Central element or climax will be the already shown but completely rerendered start of the federation fleet.
And all will "open- end" with an "almost look" at the intruder.
Because the end will have several story lines in parallel here comes just a hint what is rendering at the moment :
The professionals and connoisseurs among you will surely recognize which video game series I want to parody/quote. Guess - you have exactly ONE attempt! ;)
201201_1425.jpg
temp.0008.jpg
Meanwhile some things are much easier to handle since I found out that even Robbie the Rabbit can be animated with Mixamo.
...and the story goes on... :)
... here an animated preview of a part of the animations:
Animation SilentHillNurse The Keysmith 001 - RAW Test 001_3.mp4
Thank you for the compliment but what does the YT Link mean?
I am not sure if it's a good idea, self-promotion for external companies is probably not that popular here.
Quote from: DocCharly65 on December 02, 2020, 08:14:07 AMThank you for the compliment but what does the YT Link mean?
I am not sure if it's a good idea, self-promotion for external companies is probably not that popular here.
This is spam for sure. I reported it to the moderator.
Cool animation!!!!!
Thanks Hannes :)
(also for reporting / I did too)
I did some recherche and found out - the most authentic look for the most of these scenes would be like this ;D ;D ;D :
Broken Lock.jpg
While the last animation part of my this years little Christmas movie is rendering, I could insert some new work on the Silent Hill scene. The animation ist reduced to 720P on Microsofts Moviemaker for a small upload size.
More important to me was the test if I find an adaequat sound for the vibrating coin... I think the sound of a big stampede seems to work - though the scene will finally show the arrival of a big space ships fleet ;D
Later with my Magix studio I'll have more tracks for a better sound than in the Moviemaker with its only 2 tracks. The rumble sound will go on and anyway the arriving space ships will be some more... I just had not more rendered "arrival"- frames and I was too impatient to wait :)
Testrender The Coin.mp4