Hi,

I've contacted someone online who has a 3D model of a ship, that I'd like to turn into a Nova sprite. They've agreed to send me snapshots of the ship at whatever angles I specify.

I know that for a direct top-down view, every frame should be rotated by exactly 10 degrees, with a total of 36 snapshots.

However, I tried once before to instruct someone on how to make graphics from an angle, and the result I got was imperfect----the ship was pointed upwards on the right frame, and downwards on the right frame, but when shown spinning in the relD resource, it seemed to slow down in the top arc of its spin.

I'm wondering if the angle between frames needs to be adjusted at all based on what angle the camera is viewing the ship at.

On a related note, is there a program which is really good at automatically making masks? I have yet to find a dependable method of making masks manually.

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The standard angle for spin resources is 45 degrees, but you may want to find you own angle.

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that effect is caused by depth of field. Otherwise known as normal vision. When you look at things, objects close to you appear larger than objects farther back. Perspective. When an object rotates and you view it from directly above, you see that each angle is the same. Duh. When you view it from an angle, it will appear to move faster horizontally than vertically. The greater the depth of field, the more this effect is exaggerated. What you need to do is get rid of the depth of field. This can be done one of two ways depending on your program. The first and most straight forward way is to find the check box that takes your perspective view and makes it orthographic. I don't mean it makes it a top or side view, I mean that it gets rid of all perspective (the definition of orthographic). The other way is to find the zoom of your camera, and zoom it in several thousand percent which will do the same thing. Generally, however, you have to reposition your camera, which can be a pain.

Matrix

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Quote

Originally posted by Lindley:
**

On a related note, is there a program which is really good at automatically making masks? I have yet to find a dependable method of making masks manually.

**

I have heard of some people setting thier whole ship model to have a pure white texture, and then rendering that.

Personally, though, I would just use photoshop and the magic-wand-selection tool.
-Az

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Quote

Originally posted by Azratax2:
I have heard of some people setting thier whole ship model to have a pure white texture, and then rendering that.

That is pretty much the best way to do it. Using magic wand can cut out areas that are heavily shadowed, and is basically just a very inaccurate way of doing things. Although it may seem ok when flying through the systems, when you are over a planet you would notice the wanding

What I do is I render the ship spins at double size for LASIKing, then apply a bright white glowing texture to the whole model. I then render again at normal size with anti aliasing turned off to produce the mask

ewan

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- Harry Hill

(This message has been edited by Jules (edited 02-02-2004).)

Quote

Originally posted by what_is_the_matrix:
**that effect is caused by depth of field. Otherwise known as normal vision. When you look at things, objects close to you appear larger than objects farther back. Perspective. When an object rotates and you view it from directly above, you see that each angle is the same. Duh. When you view it from an angle, it will appear to move faster horizontally than vertically. The greater the depth of field, the more this effect is exaggerated. What you need to do is get rid of the depth of field. This can be done one of two ways depending on your program. The first and most straight forward way is to find the check box that takes your perspective view and makes it orthographic. I don't mean it makes it a top or side view, I mean that it gets rid of all perspective (the definition of orthographic). The other way is to find the zoom of your camera, and zoom it in several thousand percent which will do the same thing. Generally, however, you have to reposition your camera, which can be a pain.

Matrix

**

Thanks.

Its times like this that make me wish I was proficient with 3D modeling.

I wonder if CMU offers a course in that.....

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Quote

Originally posted by Jules:
**That is pretty much the best way to do it. Using magic wand can cut out areas that are heavily shadowed, and is basically just a very inaccurate way of doing things. Although it may seem ok when flying through the systems, when you are over a planet you would notice the wanding:p

What I do is I render the ship spins at double size for LASIKing, then apply a bright white glowing texture to the whole model. I then render again at normal size with anti aliasing turned off to produce the mask
**

I find it's slightly simpler to go with the "green screen" effect, and render the ship at double size with no anti-aliasing on a brilliant green or yellow or blue background. I copy the background layer in Photoshop, paintbucket the green away on the top layer, LASIK, flatten and save as (If I'm working in Resedit, I just select all and copy without saving). I undo the flatten step, delete the top layer, use the magic wand to delete the ship (the background's an outrageous color that will never appear on the ship), flip the selection (command+shift+i), paint bucket with black, and save as the mask. That way I only need one render of the ship, and I get the sprite and the mask.

Matrix

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"Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought -- particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things." - Woody Allen

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Quote

Originally posted by what_is_the_matrix:
**I find it's slightly simpler to go with the "green screen" effect, and render the ship at double size with no anti-aliasing on a brilliant green or yellow or blue background.
**

Indeed... I use a similar technique.

~ SpacePirate

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Quote

Originally posted by what_is_the_matrix:
I find it's slightly simpler to go with the "green screen" effect, and render the ship at double size with no anti-aliasing on a brilliant green or yellow or blue background.

It's strange the simple things we never think of. I was doing like Ewan and rendering two movies. I never considered that I could just change the background color

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Strata has the ability to generate alpha channels when you render, so I just use that channel and convert it to a separate bitmapped image. Works fine for me.

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Quote

Originally posted by what_is_the_matrix:
**I find it's slightly simpler to go with the "green screen" effect, and render the ship at double size with no anti-aliasing on a brilliant green or yellow or blue background. I copy the background layer in Photoshop, paintbucket the green away on the top layer, LASIK, flatten and save as (If I'm working in Resedit, I just select all and copy without saving). I undo the flatten step, delete the top layer, use the magic wand to delete the ship (the background's an outrageous color that will never appear on the ship), flip the selection (command+shift+i), paint bucket with black, and save as the mask. That way I only need one render of the ship, and I get the sprite and the mask.

Matrix**

Yeah I tried that a few times but I find it can sometimes leave green marks around the edges which looks very nasty. I prefer the rendering of a separate mask movie.

ewan

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'It's only when you look at an ant through a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realise how often they burst into flames'
- Harry Hill

Jules, surely you could get the same effect by killing all lights and adding brightest possible level of ambient lighting. It looks exactly the same and is easier than texturing everything. Simply use a raytracing renderer so you get no glow effect, and it looks perfectly white.

Jules: How do you use the LASIK technique when you render a quicktime movie?

~A~

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Quote

Originally posted by Azdara:
Jules: How do you use the LASIK technique when you render a quicktime movie?

M2s.

Anyhow, there is a way to not get Photoshop to select heavily shadowed areas. In the magic wand preferences, uncheck "Anti-aliased" and set "Tolerance" to 0.

Or use AppleWorks. No need to worry about anti-aliasing or tolerance.

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If you adjust your brightness/contrast values you can often times seperate the black backdrop from the shadows enought to use the magic wand tool to select just the background.

The best way though was already mentioned. When you render set the #D Proggy to also render Alpha Channel and you don't have any extra steps at all.

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so um, (kinda on topic)
how do you do engine glows? i have yet to add engine glows to my plug-in.

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Quote

Originally posted by Azdara:
**Jules, surely you could get the same effect by killing all lights and adding brightest possible level of ambient lighting. It looks exactly the same and is easier than texturing everything. Simply use a raytracing renderer so you get no glow effect, and it looks perfectly white.

Jules: How do you use the LASIK technique when you render a quicktime movie?

~A~**

Yeah, you could get the same effect, but you have to texture each item individually remember! Surely you have all the objects in one group anyway yeah? Well, apply the glowing texture to the one group and robert's your mother's brother! Ive never used the lighting way as I find it takes longer to render, and even with shadows turned off some weird looking stuff can still show up. To cut a long story short, its up to you. I prefer my way as its the way I learned to do things and I can do it quickly without thinking. If you're happy with your way then use that

LASIK... render the movie double size and convert it to a pic using m2s. Then just do your LASIKing in Photoshop... I use a slightly different way to the way everyone seems to use, which I find seems to make the final result a bit washed out. Mine takes a bit longer but I think it has better definition (I would post a pic but my host is down at the moment so I cant )

-edit-
Ok, here it is (left is mine, right is the usual way):

Its a subtle difference but you can see there is more contrast in the left hand one. Its not much, but every little helps In case anyone is interested, the ship is the EVO Freight Courier which I am remaking along with the rest of the ships for the NOVA port. Its the first one thats nearing completion, so I still have a long way to go A better pic of it is here:

Im not overly pleased with how that render has turned out. Think it looks a bit odd... Still, I have to figure out glow domes and radiosity some day Suppose I should get back to adding the weapons for it and finish off the textures! Next, the shuttle!
-edit-

ewan

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- Harry Hill

(This message has been edited by Jules (edited 02-05-2004).)

Quote

Maybe it's just me, but that render made it look like a picture of a toy. And the "walls" in the background aren't particularly wonderful, but who really cares?

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Jules: Though i agree with Orca on the walls looking really really bad (its a space ship, not something you keep inside), i think the ship itself is f'in beautiful. Absolutely F'in beautiful.
Cunjo: I dont know about the glows. I would assume you put glows on the model, and then texture it jet-black, but the folks here prolly have a better way.
-Az

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Quote

Originally posted by Jules:
**

**

Looks sweet Jules, the freight courier was always my fave ship in override, I think you've done it justice here. Only one thing I dislike about it, I feel it's too silver. I liked the white paint scheme on the orignal. That might be just me though.

Btw, where are those huge turrets?

When I make my mask for my ships, using the mask that comes out of m2's never seems to work with the lasik technique, so I render the ship in a white glow, and use that, which works fine.

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Cunjo: Just make your ship with the glows, then, in the base render, hide the glows (Selection > Hide Selected in Strata 3.0.2). When you're done with that, hide your ship and show hidden objects (your glows). It pays to have things grouped here.

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