501 replies to this topic

[Heffay]

haruko, on 02 November 2013 - 01:40 PM, said:

And yes, I plan to rebuild River city, at least, a small chunk of it, and with a few little changes.

Errrppp... how many lighting sources do you have in there? You have ambient occlusion turned on?

For lights emitting from things like a pad, are you using a simple plane with an emission texture assigned to it? It looks like you have dozens of light sources.

[Rina Fujimoto]

ArmyOfWon, on 02 November 2013 - 02:52 PM, said:

It looks like you've been able to extract the map data outside of the game? If so, do you think you could make topographical maps using the data?

Nope, the maps are all server side, they can't be touched in any way.
BUT, the building and street models are in the game files, so I can rebuild it by hand, should only take a day or two honestly, I won't rebuild all of it, I just plan to rebuild the lower city area and the tunnel/airport.

DragonsFire, on 02 November 2013 - 05:10 PM, said:

Attention, this thread needs it.

I want to report it, but in a good way so it get's pinned, bumped, popular star, and all the other things. My hat is off to you sir, excellent work. If you're not in line for Community Contributor award for this, you da*n well should be. (even if you aren't going for that, this is just fantastic either way)

I'm just doing this for fun honestly, I don't have an agenda or anything. I only made the thread because my own corp doesn't really care about MWO anymore so they weren't really too interested in me spamming them with images.

Heffay, on 02 November 2013 - 05:43 PM, said:

Errrppp... how many lighting sources do you have in there? You have ambient occlusion turned on?

For lights emitting from things like a pad, are you using a simple plane with an emission texture assigned to it? It looks like you have dozens of light sources.

U-Uh...I have 99 area lights, thats down from 190+ spot lights and point lights like I had before though!

I'm pretty terrible at lighting honestly, it's why my very first renders were so damn dark. I've been meaning to look up how to do emission textures since it would make for more realistic lamps and screens. But I just can't ever get my scene lit the way I want without literally spamming lights everywhere.

That and I need to figure out how to turn on Atmospherics in Cycles mode so I can use the River City skybox and well...you know, make it look like an outdoor area in daytime, I've watched tutorials on it but they just click a single tab and there's a billion options, yet I click on my world tab and it doesn't have anything, I think it's only in the blender render engine thought and not cycles? I'm still a big amateur at this,,,

[Heffay]

haruko, on 02 November 2013 - 10:04 PM, said:

U-Uh...I have 99 area lights, thats down from 190+ spot lights and point lights like I had before though!

I'm pretty terrible at lighting honestly, it's why my very first renders were so damn dark. I've been meaning to look up how to do emission textures since it would make for more realistic lamps and screens. But I just can't ever get my scene lit the way I want without literally spamming lights everywhere.

That and I need to figure out how to turn on Atmospherics in Cycles mode so I can use the River City skybox and well...you know, make it look like an outdoor area in daytime, I've watched tutorials on it but they just click a single tab and there's a billion options, yet I click on my world tab and it doesn't have anything, I think it's only in the blender render engine thought and not cycles? I'm still a big amateur at this,,,

The easiest thing you can do to improve the lighting is turn on ambient occlusion, under the World properties. You might also want to use an Environment Texture and find a nice HDRI image (should be a bunch of free ones out there; they can be very large files though). Not sure how that will affect an internal scene, but give it a try.

For lamps, just create a plane object, then go to the materials tab and change the Surface from Diffuse to Emission. You can tweak colors if you want a yellow lamp, play with the strengths, etc.

Edited by Heffay, 02 November 2013 - 10:48 PM.

[Aiden Whitefield]

Since I'm an apprentice filmmaker, I tend to take the cinematographer's/gaffer's approach to lighting in Blender. I build a scene, stick in a camera, look through it, and just think: "OK, where do I want my basic 3-point lighting?" Once I've gotten those 3 lights in place, I go around sticking in other lights, but only putting them in places I know the camera's going to be able to see- everywhere else gets ignored.

It usually turns out well in terms of light conservation, and thus, helping to cut down on computational intensity and render time. The only drawback to doing it that way is that you have to know exactly what shots you want, or you're going to be spending a lot of time aimlessly moving lights around and changing their parameters for each new shot, until you get something you like (or can at least live with, if you're short on patience).

[Vassago Rain]

haruko, on 02 November 2013 - 10:04 PM, said:

I'm just doing this for fun honestly, I don't have an agenda or anything. I only made the thread because my own corp doesn't really care about MWO anymore so they weren't really too interested in me spamming them with images.

Hey, some of us are sad that you're not spamming us with the cool pictures anymore, and a few do care about MWO, at least to a certain degree.

[DragonsFire]

haruko, on 02 November 2013 - 10:04 PM, said:

I'm just doing this for fun honestly, I don't have an agenda or anything. I only made the thread because my own corp doesn't really care about MWO anymore so they weren't really too interested in me spamming them with images.

Oh I figured this was a personal project with no agenda, but I always think good work is worth recognition either way.

[Rina Fujimoto]

Spend most of my morning trying to get the River City skybox to work...

Doesn't look quite like it does in-game and I can't seem to get the planet to look right either (I actually had to recolor it since the actual planet is red, you don't notice in-game because it has several filters over it.).

I might just render the atmosphere and scene seperately and just do the atmosphere outside of the Cycles render engine, since, I can't even get some jet effects in cycles! Unless someone can tell me where the hell, and how the hell to use the jump jet effect that's in the game files.


Also those are Lightning Aerospace fighters, I plan to detail them later.

[Alfonso McQuirko]

haruko, on 21 October 2013 - 10:13 PM, said:

I've considered all those options, trust me, I love the Commando, but it just isn't in scale, when FD drew it up for PGI he imagined it probably being larger than it is in-game.

Allow me to demonstrate:

Here is your pilot in the in-game COmmando cockpit:



Now lets just put it in the Commando head shall we?


Oh {Scrap}! It doesn't fit! This isn't surprising, none of the mech cockpits do (except for the Raven sort of), since the in-game mech cockpits are horribly blown up, with a fish eye effect, if they weren't you wouldn't be able to see anything out of your mechs viewport since most of them are actually pretty small when you look at them in actual scale, I like to handwave this away as; you're just seeing an enhanced composite image of your cockpit viewport through your neurohelm, hence the fish eye view and why they appear larger than they actually are on the model itself.

Ok so, the pilot is in the exact pose he is in-game, so lets just remove the in-game cockpit and he should fit in the head right?


Nope, as you can see, his arm sticks out of the side of it's head, now, sure I could just move his arm but we're trying to stick with what is in-game now remember? Lets see how his legs fit...

Well, he fits....well...not really, he's high enough that he'd be warm and toasty above the ammo loader, engine and it's heatsinks, BUT, he's in the way of the mechs arm actuator joint and the myomer muscles that would come out of it! The red circle is how the entire joint is on the model itself, and no, there isn't enough space for it to pass underneath him, he's practically sitting right next to it, on top of the fact that I had to remove the Commando's neck for him to even fit in the first place.


Well, we can just move him a little to the side right and it'll be fine right?

Nope.


Completely blocked by the eye sensor, which as you can see from the in-game cockpit, it extends past the cockpit, so you can't fit there, not to mention he wouldn't even be facing the viewport.

Lets just rescale the Commando then!


Unfortunately that doesn't work either, as the Commando's neck still completely blocks his feet.

Commando is just broke, only way to get the pilot to fit in there would be to resize it to a size that would be too big for a light, or to have the pilot sit higher up in the head, but then he wouldn't be able to see out the Commando like he does in-game!

Of course, this could all be fixed, by taking the lore friendly option of just saying that the pilot doesn't even use the viewport as he has a compressed 360 degree view through his neurohelm, unobstructed by anything and not requiring him to look through the tiny viewport. But of course, the game isn't like that, as I'm sure you know.

tl;dr pilot doesn't fit in the Commando.

And... if this model isnt for Big Mechwarrior, i dunno, may be young people or slim mens/womans... if we are from inner sphere (in game) not everyone had the same body (we are not genetically breeded like clanersI ) can be?

[Rina Fujimoto]

Here's a quick render of the in-game Lightning Aerospace fighter, with weapons added (4ML 1 AC/20 according to Sarna)



Note that the in-game model is actually incorrectly scaled, as you can see, no way in hell would a person fit in the in-game version the way it's sized, it's too tiny for a 50 ton plane.

[DirePhoenix]

haruko, on 04 November 2013 - 12:46 AM, said:

Here's a quick render of the in-game Lightning Aerospace fighter, with weapons added (4ML 1 AC/20 according to Sarna)



Note that the in-game model is actually incorrectly scaled, as you can see, no way in hell would a person fit in the in-game version the way it's sized, it's too tiny for a 50 ton plane.

While most inconsistencies in scaling drive me crazy (like the Commando cockpit) the Lightning doesn't because we don't see them on the ground, we don't fly them, and it was probably done intentionally to make them appear farther away than they really are (these are called in for the bombing run modules, right?).

[riTk0MA]

When you have a little more time, do you think you could show us a bit more detail on the Awesome cockpit and entry hatch? I've been trying to design a mechpit based on the cockpit, but need a little more detail than I've managed to find.

[Rina Fujimoto]

riTk0MA, on 04 November 2013 - 04:35 AM, said:

When you have a little more time, do you think you could show us a bit more detail on the Awesome cockpit and entry hatch? I've been trying to design a mechpit based on the cockpit, but need a little more detail than I've managed to find.

I'm pretty sure I already did earlier in the thread? Ill get you more detail later anyway

DirePhoenix, on 04 November 2013 - 03:11 AM, said:

While most inconsistencies in scaling drive me crazy (like the Commando cockpit) the Lightning doesn't because we don't see them on the ground, we don't fly them, and it was probably done intentionally to make them appear farther away than they really are (these are called in for the bombing run modules, right?).

Actually they were ingame before that, they appear in the river city skybox randomly, most people never ever notice them so yeah why bother detailing it? I plan to spiffy it up and make more aerospace fighters later myself to practice creating my own Meshes

[Rina Fujimoto]

So I detailed the Lightning Aerospace fighter during my little study break....

The canopy in the actual final render is orangish slightly transculent reflective glass, like some fighter planes have in real life, I changed it to a more transparent color though so you could see the pilot inside, unfortunately I forgot I left an area light in there so that huge white fuzzy spot in the cockpit is because of that, and I don't have time to do another render so oh well...

I added in engine vents as well as retractable landing gear too.

I detailed the cockpit too, no textures though, but it has pedals, a throttle, a joystick and the basic frame with space for panels, as well as the chair itself.


It even has a reticle screen! It appears solid in material mode but it's actually transparent too.


The dropship is supposed to have a glass canopy and pilots too but unfortunately I forgot to stick an emission lamp in there so it's all dark...

Next up is to redo it's texture.

Also the first two final renders for the dropship are finished, just 3 more to go, I plan to post them all at once so not yet!

Edited by haruko, 04 November 2013 - 05:12 PM.

[Aiden Whitefield]

haruko, on 04 November 2013 - 05:11 PM, said:

So I detailed the Lightning Aerospace fighter during my little study break....

The canopy in the actual final render is orangish slightly transculent reflective glass, like some fighter planes have in real life, I changed it to a more transparent color though so you could see the pilot inside, unfortunately I forgot I left an area light in there so that huge white fuzzy spot in the cockpit is because of that, and I don't have time to do another render so oh well...

I added in engine vents as well as retractable landing gear too.



I detailed the cockpit too, no textures though, but it has pedals, a throttle, a joystick and the basic frame with space for panels, as well as the chair itself.

I finally realized why aerospace fighters look so weird: There's no vertical tail fin on them; no conventional rudder, either. They must be suicidally unstable in atmospheric flight, I would think.

Edited by Aiden Whitefield, 04 November 2013 - 06:23 PM.

[Rina Fujimoto]

SOOON

[Arnold J Rimmer]

Haruko.

I love you.

I'm thinking maybe a summer wedding?

[Pariah Devalis]

Aiden Whitefield, on 04 November 2013 - 06:22 PM, said:

I finally realized why aerospace fighters look so weird: There's no vertical tail fin on them; no conventional rudder, either. They must be suicidally unstable in atmospheric flight, I would think.

http://www.sarna.net...r-aerospace.png

Sabutai or Gee Tee Eff Oh.

You are right, though. Somewhat. A flying wing approach has solid advantages, but many of the BT designs are made for looks first, function second. Understandably so. Honestly, if that particular aerospace fighter in the render had canards, it would probably be pretty stable. It looks likes CG would be out of whack otherwise.

[PropagandaWar]

the full tunnel needs to come back in on River city IMO.

[Iqfish]

Can we donate to you to help you with your electricity bills?

[Listless Nomad]

Aiden Whitefield, on 04 November 2013 - 06:22 PM, said:

I finally realized why aerospace fighters look so weird: There's no vertical tail fin on them; no conventional rudder, either. They must be suicidally unstable in atmospheric flight, I would think.

Space Magic.