Fun with EG's ReImagined Connie

I converted this outstanding ship into Carrara format last night and so I threw this little animation together to test things like specular mapping and ...well... Just to see her fly.

I did a couple of things with it - Like I took the inner and outer bussard domes and counter rotated them as the ship moved.

Also, Carrara Pro 6 has an awesome feature called 'Anything Glows' which turns any object into a light source. I used that to throw a blue light from the nacells and the bussards are 'light mapped' with the texture from the outer dome. When the domes spin so do the light maps.

I also did one other thing (I hope you don't mind EG) and that was a slight texture modification to the windows. I have a 'room' that I texture map to the windows and add a self-illumination property to. This way as the ship moves by the windows appear to have little rooms on the other side.

Anyway - I had fun with this and as promised before here are some specs.

Conversion time: 5 hours. I first opened it up in Deep Exploration to make sure the maps would all come with. Saved it, opened it in Carrara and then added the specular and bump maps. All of the maps went easily except for the engine pylons but they always give me a hard time. Also, I may have missed a texture or two because I was getting were I just wanted to animate it and watch her fly.

Animation Time: 10 hours @ 30fps - 10secs (or 300 frames).
The render time was much longer than I expected but it was due largely to my 'mapping a light'. That really slows things down. My average time per frame was about 1:30 due do this.

Over all it's not bad but I really don't like the way the camera spun as the ship passed - it's too fast - but other than that I think it's pretty cool.

EG - your ship (IMO) looks fantastic and I had a blast bringing it to life and watching it move. Thanks for sharing it. I'm already writing a story that will use both it and MKF's reImagined ship as soon as they make it public (in December - Thanks Taranis!).

If you get bored EG - how about a reImagined Klingon ship? Could be cool and would no doubt work perfectly into a short film with the other reImagined ships - hint- hint- hint- :laugh:

This file is an AVI (divX 5 codec) and it's about 4mb.

http://wabashponies.com/dan/EG180-TEST-A.avi

I have a couple of more scenes planned to animate with it.
A bit of a duel between this ship and a Romulan one.
When it's done it should be about 4-5 minutes long and hopefully be fun to watch.

[gmd3d]

looks great .. and great to see it animated

I can't wait to animate it from a bunch of other angles and have it doing combat manoeuvrings. I think it's going to look real tough in battle.
The ship has some real solid lines that I think will translate will in action.

[evil_genius_180]

Originally Posted by Fretslayer

I also did one other thing (I hope you don't mind EG) and that was a slight texture modification to the windows. I have a 'room' that I texture map to the windows and add a self-illumination property to. This way as the ship moves by the windows appear to have little rooms on the other side.

Why would I mind? You're using the model, so you're free to retexture it as you want. Besides, I do the same thing. In fact, the only reason I don't add my rooms to the archives is because I want to keep the archives a small as possible, so I only include essential textures.

Originally Posted by Fretslayer

If you get bored EG - how about a reImagined Klingon ship? Could be cool and would no doubt work perfectly into a short film with the other reImagined ships - hint- hint- hint- :laugh:

I started one but it was a mess (geometry wise) and needs to be rebuilt but I haven't found the strength to start over on it.

I tried to get the animation to work but Media Player won't play it and Quicktime is friggin' useless. (it freezes up on me before it can even open a movie) So, I'll have to try something else later.

If Media player isn't playing it odds are its a codec related issue.
I'll compress it with WMV and that should fix it.
I'll keep the resolution as it currently is (if WMV will keep the file size small) as well.
I have scene 2 rendering right now.
I removed the mapping from the bussard lights and it kicked 8 hours off the render time.

[Kai]

use the excellent Videolan (free & Open Sourced) - it'll play almost anything. (except MOV and RM)
www.videolan.org

[gmd3d]

You have give me an idea for a new thread for animation aid ?? what do you think

If there is a call for it or a need for it then I would say 'yah'.

In order to free up some space on my server I've removed a bunch of the eralier test footage. If you're looking for a link and it's broken that's why.

In the thread where we've been talking about the animated project you'll find the newest bit of footage and probably the last preview - except for those working on project.

If you're here then check this link for footage and other stuff

http://3dgladiators.net/forums/showt...t=22863&page=2

[evil_genius_180]

Originally Posted by Kai

use the excellent Videolan (free & Open Sourced) - it'll play almost anything. (except MOV and RM)
www.videolan.org

You know what the cool thing is? I realized earlier that I already have that media player. It's on a Maximum PC CD full of free digital media software that I got a while back. I installed a new hard drive earlier and I put the CD in to install GIMP and that's when I realized I have the media player.