OK, I'm getting a late start, but I'm sure my entry will kick butt by the time I'm through! Especially since it involves 10 foot tall alien monsters that turned out not to really be fossilized remains--much to the regret of the human scientists. It will be based on H.P. Lovecraft's novel "At the Mountains of Madness".

Not much so far, but here is the bulk of the alien form. Creepy eye stalks, toothy mouth tubes, multi-tenticled arms, wing like structures, strange iradescent hair on the head, feet, and so on yet to be added. Even though this is an image contest, I'll be eager to animate this beast since five tenticle "legs" should make for some pretty alien looking locamotion. Imagine finding an impossibly old and very strange and massive city hidden in the mountains of Antarctica. Imagine finding fourteen of these creatures you think are just fossilized remains. Imagine most of them coming back to life while you are doing an autopsy of one of them...

Not sure whether I'll do an encounter at the main Antarctic campsite or the alien city...

Anyway here it is so far...

Gullermo Del Toro is making the movie based on this book! He might need your models!

Great choice of the subject btw... I love Lovecraft!

Cool! looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

Yes, I heard a movie was in the works. Del Toro is the right man for the job!



Do you mean Del Toro's movie or my contest entry?

Man I am sooooo jealous. This is the kind of project thats just fun to think about.

Can't wait to see how it goes.

C

An update. Matching numbers of splines from piece to piece has been and interesting challenge, so I've not progressed quite as fast as I expected. I'm trying to stay close to Lovecraft's description, but I'll take some artistic license where it can enhance the appearance. I imagined the mouth parts as similar to an octopus beak, but with five parts. I now need to add the limbs and "wing" parts. Then some textures.

BOTH!

Added the "arms". "Wings" and some other parts yet to be formed. Then I might tweak the design to get a more threatening look to it all.

Looking good there Bill,
I can't wait to see this creature textured.Also looking at this jogged my memory of seeing the film In the mouth of maddness by John Carpenter,can't remember if it was any good or not as my memory is starting to fade !!

Looking forward to this entry a lot.

Jay

I think I might divide my image between a panorama of the ancient city and an overlay image or vignette showing the revived Old Ones rampaging at the explorer's camp.

I'm wondering how I'm going to construct a massive ancient alien city. This will be quite a learning experience for me as I've not created any terrain or cityscapes before. I figure the use of forced perspective might save a lot of CPU cycles, not to mention carpal tunnel syndrom, building the panorama in layers using different methods as distance increases, constructing the view for one perspective. One trick will be to add the ice/snow to the ruins, since it is in the Antactic mountains.

Here is the Old One's temple. This will be repeated throughout the city in differenct sizes and at differing orientations. These are the most important structures and will be the most prominent. Between these with be "veins" or ridges which I'll cover with dense mix of various geometric shapes (mostly blocks, but also cylanders, pentogonal towers, pyramids, etc.). I hope I can get a high density without an overwhelming patch count.

One of the biggest challenges will be the ice/snow drifts. I think I can do this most economically by intersecting surfaces. If any of you have a better approach, I would love to hear it. Needs to be efficient in terms of labor as well as rendering resources.

Also if anyone has ideas on how to add errosion to these structures--like cracks and cuts of errosion through cliffs or mountain slopes would apear--I'd like to hear your suggestions.

Thanks!
Bill Gaylord

PS: Are you quaking in your boots yet fellow competitors?

I've never read the source material. Does "5" play a significant role in it?

Yes, indeed! The Old Ones have a five-way radial symmetry. In the story there are pentagram shaped structures of apparently special, temple-like significance. There are also pentagram shaped soapstone artifacts with writing in the form of patterns of dots (I suppose much like braile).

Here is the temple with snow drifts...

Any suggestions on how to get a more realistic lighting in V14?

Here's a hint of what I have in mind...minus a lot of details. Imagine an lot of smaller buildings, plus towers, plus bridges...basically the foreground covered in a cyclopean cityscape.

Scares me just thinking about it...the work I have left to do that is.

Bill G

Here is my impossibly massive stone wall texture. I'm pretty pleased with how well it works. The idea is to show enough recognizable detail to give the idea of how impossibly massive these city structures are. Next I'll add windows and balconies to the texture image. I don't have enough computing horsepower or time to make them stand out so shadows are accurate, but at the scale I'm shooting for, I think it will work just fine within the decal itself. I'm not even going to us bump maps with this fine a detail since I don't think it would make much visible difference. I'll show one of the "pentamids" relatively close up so this texture shows, with the explorer's plane flying by for even more sense of obsenely large scale. Buildings, ruins farther away may get more simple texturing based on filtering this one perhaps.

The white "mortar" gives just the right look of ice and snow I was looking for!

Anybody out there have a 1930's vintage plane model I could use?

Great start what you have so far, but as an extreme Lovecraft fan, i am really looking forward how you are going to make it look "lovecrafteque". Right now its a very exotic ruined city. Lovecraft is writing about impossible shapes and angles, which the eye refuses to focus on ... thats going to be tricky bit, to illustrate that whitout having the option to use this kind of geometry.
Anyway, dont take my criticism too serious, it is just, that i wanted to do allways something based on lovecraft, especialy on the last climatic scene of Call of Ctullhu, but i never was able to come up with an visual concept, which could live up to what the story conjures up in my imagination. And since i spent so much thought on this, i had the urge to share my thoughts.

Cheers,
Heiner

If only I had enough time! I'm trying to at least get the "cyclopean" proportions right.

Found a picture of Bryce Canyon in winter that actually has an eroded look I'd love to apply the city. The challenge is more in the snow drifts, getting them to look like drifts as gravity would dictate. Any of you landscape wizards (the human kind--not apps) that have figured out how to get this kind of snow dusted erosion look?

I thought my monster was scary...check this out!

LOL. Is that the face of Rowan Atkinson?

Edit: It's got to be him.

Indeed it is! Mondo creepy, isn't it?

I don't know if it will work, but I was thinking perhaps a number of platforms or plateaus with strange none related angles, with lots of small projecting building on them looking like a "rash" of blisters, and a number of towers and pyramids projecting up farther.

How to do this effectively in a short time is the real question. I plan to do one portion of the city and render it from different angles and then composite those to build up the whole city.

The snow drifts are what is likely to slow me down the most. Don't have clever way to do that yet. I think I'll have to build some of it into each little element and then do a lot of copy and pastes. (I love copy and paste!) larger snow drifts I can do with an intersecting surface I think.

I may have to turn down my perfectionist setting a few notches to get this done in time.

I don't know for sure that this would work, but I was wondering if streak snow would work. I was thinking make the streaks about basket ball size with all collisions turned on and a speed of nearly 0 apply it like a material and see what happens. I was thinking of doing windy sand dunes with a similar technique

Interesting idea.

Here is my latest idea for the city stucture. Sort of a hive type of pattern. I may need to make the web elements closer to the same level. I do plan to make each of these city clusters somewhat of a mound shape rather than this flat. Each and every cell will be filled with mostly small cubes, cylanders, and pyramids. The "veins" I hope to keep visible for the most part by with towers and turrets. Hope my PC holds out. It will be a lot of patches by the time I get this done. Once I finish this city cluster, I'll render it several times from different angles and composite the images to construct the whole city...hopefully before the deadline.

Working in the modeling view (isometric) I was getting a bit discouraged. Then I did a quick render in a choreography for a perspective view (just for the a quick test, no tweaking of the lighing even). I think my idea will work! I has the massive look to it and it has an oppressive prison like feel to it--like the aliens spend most of there time deep inside the dark halls and caverns of the city rather than outside in the sunlight. I think with ever so slight a curvature in the city cluster model I can overlap renders without having walls at the edges to connect. That would be way too much work to meet the deadline.

Heiner, how about these angles? Closer to what you imagined?

Here is a very crude composite to see if the general idea holds up. (Very crude indeed--but you get the idea.) I'll be adding an airplane in the foreground for scale in the final picture. The scene with the Old One will be a vignette in one corner--I think I'll show it ripping the tent open as the scientist is dissecting it's companion--caught red handed so to speak.

The snow looks good. what was your technique? If you could add some "sparkle" to the snow it would look better

The snow drifts on the model are just intersecting surfaces set to white...no texture. I might add a photo decal off a mountainside or arctic landscape to give it a more realistic look to it.

Given the limit of time I don't think I'll be able to age the city like I want to. Just not enough time for me to invest in the refinements.

Anybody out there remember how to select groups of patches by clicking on them? I want to use patch images to apply the masonry image to most of the patches in the city walls. I figure its the fastest way to get most of the look I want, without applying decals directly. If I can group patches of similar size and apply an image to match, I can make pretty quick work of most of the city superstructure. For items that are easier to copy and paste I'll do more detailed texturing.

Thanks!

This is looking really good Bill.I like the shape the city is taking,the only thing that worries me a bit is the brick detail isn't showing up too well.

As for selecting groups of patches i think this is what your after..

Press shift + p to go into patch group mode
Left click on the first patch you want,then press and hold the shift button while selecting the other patches you need.
Right click once to go into group select mode (i think i made that name up sorry).You should now ne able to name your patch group in the Pws.
Also pressing H before naming the group will hide everything bar the group you have selected.
I hope that was the info you were after.
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

Keep up the great work.

Jay

Thanks, Jay. That's most of what I was looking for.

What I'm trying to do with the stone masonry image is give the sense of huge size by the sheer number of stones in the wall plus an airplane to show it's even bigger. It works fine fairly close to one of the structures, but looks a bit muddy farther away. Perhaps I need larger features like ice clinging to the walls in large patches that would show up farther away even if the stones don't show farther away.

Holy Criminy.. thats looking awesome!

how about some fog and a slight blizzard? Sunset behind the scene?

I cant wait to see how this one pans out.

C

If I can but finish it! Not being very experienced with texturing and lighting, this is a painfully huge learning excercise. With so little time left, I won't be able to make it look old, but I think I can pull off the massive size and alien look to it. Need to get working on the vignette with the monster as well.

So are you going to be adding El Dorado to the mix?

Here I am creating a "lost world" while watching "Lost Worlds" on the History Channel. Who'd o' thought? This show is about Los Alimos and Oak Ridge.

El Dorado is looking unlikely, at least for now, do to the amount of work I'm crushed with right now. But I'll get to it eventually.

Just do some Ambient Occlusion and a few grunge maps and you'll be golden for texturing and rendering I think.. Try the techy textures in that app I told you about ... Filter forge.. They would be perfect for these shapes.

C

OK. Cranking up a notch this weekend. Need to make a lot more progress.

One thing I want to work out is how to get a somewhat ragged look to the tops of the building walls without much geometry. The basic idea is that the roofs (or is it rooves?...or ruffs?) have long ago collapsed and worn away, and the upper floor left behind has filled with ice and snow and the tops of the walls have erroded. I know I can't add the look of millions of years of age, so I'm looking for a compromise that looks at least like ruins of some sort. I'm hoping displacement mapping will do the trick.

I'll try it on the top edge of walls for sure, but it would be interesting if I could apply it to corners of walls as well. Any tips on how to do so will be appreciated. I'm thinking a displacement map applied to tops of walls and over corner edges, with a corresponding overlay decall with alpha channel to dust the ruffness (not roofness) with a look of clinging ice and snow.

If anybody has a good displacement map for rock wall errosion I could start with, that would be much appreciated!

OK, I'm learning about displacement maps today. Want to rough up the edges a bit with a look of errosion. This works pretty well. Just hope it doesn't creat too much of a render hit when all the edges of interest are so treated. This is very close to what I had hoped to achieve. Now I need to add ice and snow to the rough edge. Doesn't actually round the edge, but it looks enough like it does to work quite well for my purposes! The stone wall pattern is just a decal--no displacement or bump map at all.

Bill,

Whatever you do dont apply displacement maps to everything! You will take a huge render hit, and it isnt worth it placing them on far off objects since you wont even see the displacement. Use Normal maps for the far off stuff, the medium distance stuff and then use displacement for the foreground stuff.

That should save lots of time in rendering and possible crashes.

Its the hollywood rule. Only do it if its going to be noticed.

C

Thanks, Colin. I'll take your advice. Here is the same displacement map with a "snow" layer added. Any ideas on how I might get something similar to this inspite of very simple geometry? Even with the displacement, there is a "seam" at the edge.

If I could render this ragged edge and turn the image into a decal, that might be good enough, but when I try to render it head-on, A:M stalls.

Would a bump map be less computationally intense?

Looking good Bill,
I'm afraid i haven't got much good experience yet with Normal and Displacement maps to be able to help you too much.
Looking at the picture regarding the seam problem are you applying it on a 90 deg angle? because i think that may be your problem,the way around it might be to create a beveled edge and then apply the maps,this may get rid of the seam.(just thinking aloud on this)

Hope you can figure this out.

Good luck

Jay

Yep Bill,

just bevel the edge or unpeak the cps and the seam should go away. Check out the tutorial on Blending layers in photoshop on cgtextures.com to see a good way to add snow to your images ;-)

C

With so little time it might be a bit much work, especially on the supporting wall structure, but may be worth it. At least the basic building blocks are fairly simple. Want to save up for the moster scene.

Well, hi ho, hi ho, it's off to the Mountains of Madness I go!

Here's a thought: I could add small wall structure along most of the seams. That I could extrude quickly and have rounded edges.

I may not worry about the seams. If I had the time I'd age the city and add details like bas relief carvings, etc. I'll let the scale of the city be the main thing. Here is a sample of what the wall texture looks like for the relatively nearby portion of the city.

Looking good! Gotta step up my own work now, if I'm gonna have any hope to finnish myself x.x I doubt it'll be near the quality of this project, but it's still great fun ^^

Keep it up, I'm rooting for ya!

Hey Bill,

Are you going to add any grunge maps to that brick texture? It sure could use it for more realism.. and it would be relatively easy to add. Just stamp a good grungy wanter stain or drip type texture on top of what you have with some transparency or something and it'll look awesome!

Go for ambient Occlusion to.. That will add a ton of realism.

Looking awesome!

C

This is in the modeling window so the lighting isn't great, but here is an idea of what the Pentamid will look like. The pentagram windows don't show up very well, so I should probably change the color for more contrast.



I might try the grunge map. However, imagine that each stone in the wall is about the size of a Volkswagon Bus. Need grunge that would match that scale, which would be like huge, gigantic stains. If I give you the wall decal, perhaps you could show me an example.

Thanks for the encouragement! I'm mostly worried I'll run out of time.

Here's a Chor view with AO, etc. Looking more like I want it. I'll have to try the high dynamic range image render when I get down to creating the composites. Some day I may learn to be good at this. So much to learn...so little time.

Now I know where the madness comes in...What was I thinking!

Here is one of three city "cells" that will be cut and pasted to complete the city cluster I'll render to build the even humongously bigger city, assuming I have enough time to render all the views that go into the composite. This is the modeling view so there is no fancy lighting. I think my poor laptop will collapse under the weight of this city!



Jay, or anybody else, did you figure out how to do what Martin recommended above? I sure could use a workflow boost at this point!

Thanks!

Stunning image Bill,this is going to be hard to beat when finished.

As for the Action object route that Martin talked about,this is explained really well in the Tech reference manual.
I'm sorry i can't be much more help at the momement as i am at work and no access to my book at home.Also i have had to break my scene down to different projects due to an 'out of memory' problem.

Good luck Bill,and if you are still stuck by the time i get home in about 9hrs time i'll see what i can dig up for you.

Jay

Thanks, Jay. Once I started assembling it in the Choreography, it started looking a lot more manageable. Slow, but workable. Might actually get this thing done.

Your work is more esthetically pleasing. Hope you make the deadline as well. Mine will have a lot of annoying flaws, but the overall effect should be good. At any rate it is a good learning experience. Good luck!

Here is the city so far. Five more "cells" of the city to fill, then I start rendering different views of the same city model to use for compositing the final incredibly massive city.

Update: Yippee! Got all 15 cells of the city filled in. There are what appear to be MIP mapping errors (reported) that cause random blurred patches, but overall the affect will be worth putting up with them. Not enough time to worry about it now. Time to start rendering!...And compositing!....and later, sleep!

Now to work out the views...

Holy *beep*... It's just getting better and better! (I sense that's the point xP)

I just gotta ask, how many patches?

J