So I friend of mine over the internet has been trying to make this 3d animated series called Earth Link Zero, which takes place several thousand years in the future (at least according to the prelim scripts) and I have joined on in helping him (as has my brother, who is doing concept design.) Anyways, he's using 3Ds Max, but I'm still kicking a little butt with AM. Today in search of the theme song for the series, I came across a song entitled Pirate's Nest, which we have agreed to use as the theme. In a short demo, I whipped together a teaser for the music. Now I have some tweaking to do tomorrow as there a few glitches (like a slide in the camera and my lens flare which didn't appear) Anyways, I know how to fix these, but here is the rough draft if you will of the teaser, featuring Pirate's Nest as the music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB8sktxevns

Nice teaser Darkwing. Hope you guys post some of your work when you get going.

well, i can post some of the concept designs. This is going to be a very very large project, especially for two people, well more like three i suppose if you include the concept designer

good luck! sounds huge.

here's the re-rendered teaser

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEwReCMLUnc

That's lookin pretty nice!

thanks, i'll have at least one more with some more tweaks up in an hour

here's the latest tweaked one, unfortunately the timing is a bit off in my animation, so i'll have to hit the 4 hour render again tonight to fix it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s79Z02Aydg

and one more, i'll have to fix the lighting on the words, so hopefully one more render and it'll be fine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDHiZHqFlAI

Looking pretty cool! I keep wanting to see atmospheric glow on the edges of that planet though to give it a little more body. I asked on the forum how to do a glow on the outter edges of a object only, years ago but I'm not remembering how at the moment.

well, a bit of a cheat i found was to place a 2d version of the model behind the model and give the 2d model the glow. now the unfortunate thing is with something like a sphere is that when it moves or in this case the camera pans around, the 2d model would become visible. I've also neglected to add clouds to this earth ecause rendering already takes approx 4 hours and the clouds make things much longer.

there's a "Planet glow" plugin shader in A:M. Yves made it a while back.

would it be in the AM 2006 edition?

hmm, i found a tut from vern about making edge gkows, but it's not looking so good, i have too little control over the glows and shadows

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And you need to set plugin shaders ON in your render settings.

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hmmm,, it's not giving me terrific results, i'll keep playing with it though

This is the best I can come up with, but I still don't like it. It looks too much like faded chalk and less like a planet glow.

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well, here's what I came up with, but I still don't really like it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ezPU7IdR88

well, a short update. a bunch of stuff has been done in up, mostly teaser stuff and a lot of pre production. Several scripts have now been written and the pilot script is going through a re-write. Here's a sort of teaser credits sequence. It was animated by the creator of the project. Now I will say this, he is using 3ds max, so this project has been an interesting combination of 3DS max stuff and AM stuff, as I use AM. Anyways, here's the credit sequence, animated by Toa and edited by me:

Teaser Credits

And here is the final concept designs of the Spitfire, the main ship of the series. Designs are done by my brother:

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And now the model that I am building from those designs. My modeling is quite crude and I haven't attempted beveling or anything like that yet. It's mostly just the blocky shapes.

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Now I won't be doing in depth updates all the time here, but the official site for the project is:

Earth Link: The Official forum

So, check it out. Also, hopefully it's not too soon to ask, but any volunteers for the project would be awesome, especially character builders, I am frightened to see what our characters will end up looking like because Toa isn't a great modeler and neither am I!

and because i know you're all so eager for previews and updates, here's the spitfire now. not completed still, but i would appreciate some criticism and suggestions

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Nice designs and a good start to the modeling.

Steve

thanks. it's an all right job so far, definite learning experience for me though. I've always had pure rotoscopes to go by, but this time it's mostly eyeballing and a little improv

The planet is great!
Nice ships too, from one angle it reminds me of a viking ship.

Now that you mention it, it does. Hm, cool. I must say though, my bro is an excellent designer, I really like the style, well, i did ask for somethign naval looking. I actually think he loosely based it off a naval frigate of some sort, I forget what though, I'll have to ask. I have a more recent render with little details and things, but I'm sleepy, so I'll wait till tomorrow to get some more modeling done and then post a render.

well, i have more done to the ship. the new pieces added are still sort of WIP, they're mostly just the shapes filling in until i carve it out a little more:

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look, i got the earth glow working, i'm quite happy

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the spitfire model is almost complete though this picture is a little old as more has been closed off on the model and stuff.

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these pics however are up to date:

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and again i shall re-iterate for what its worth, anyone who's got some time to spare and would like to help, we'd be glad to have ya, help is wanted all across the board

i've begun texturing. just doing basic colours ATM:

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That's looking nice! I know it's pretty far along, but are you beveling?

not yet, i intend to though

Ship is looking great, Darkwing! I like it's profile.

thanks, i'm having some difficulty though creating a nice metallic material that kind of matches this ship. i'm looking for something like :



except perhaps not as detailed as that, a little more faded

or like this:

And is there some reason that you don't want to use those images as decals?

well, one is that they won't wrap around the ship nicely, two is tiling doesn't look so great either, and three is distortion due to scaling

I bet some of the darksim textures do things a bit like that.

If you're trying to make that it's going to take some combining of noise combiners.


But that irregular damage look will be way more likely to do as a painted texture.

look at the sample videos on this site

i'm sort of trying to avoid darksim due to crazy render times

I wouldn't try to wrap it around the entire model all at once - one would have to use different projection mappings based on the shapes in your model (cylindrical, planar, spherical) - you can always scale the decals by changing the repeats to get the right look, right amount and scale of noise - and you can always layer decals upon decals, stamps upon stamps, with varying percents, base colors, bumps, scale to get more variations. And then you could finish it off with some specifically targeted painted stress, grunge colorations using additional decal layers - easy to do with 3dpainter. Or could do with a 2d paint program (not as easy)

Someone else will have to suggest other ideas if you are wanting to use/create procedural textures - but either way you will have to isolate groups for having different surfaces, as I don't think you'd want to coat the whole thing in only 1 material/texture.

Decals render the fastest.

hmm, most of that was beyond me to be quite honest, but tiling the decals just didn't look right, i'm going for a more base look, sort of similar to how a naval battleships hull is in the fact that it's not entirely tiled, though it does have its rivets sections. now each section is a little different yes, some darker, lighter etc as can sort of be seen in my last pic of the spitfire.

Not sure which part of what I said was confusing - but here is simple example - I quickly created a cylindrical object and applied a new decal to it using the cylindrical application method. The surface color of the model is white, spec color white, spec size, intensity both 100%

These images show the differences on the same model between using the scratched steel image, the brushed steel, and a 50% brushed with 50% scratched and surface color changed to olive-ish

The image used for the color was also used as a bump set to 20%.

With layering color, bump images (like in the 50/50 example), you can add other images on top to get more variations. I did not vary repeats in this case - but that would introduce finer details (set the seamless property to ON or OFF depending on the texture). The object is to get enough random variations, and then to specifically paint darker, stressed areas around those parts that should show wear and tear more.

Try it for yourself changing the decal properties - appling as cylindrical, or spherical, or planar depending on the shape of the group that you are decaling.

whoa, that's cool. the thing mainly that is a little above me is this 3d painting. i've heard of it, but i have no idea what it is other then by what its title implies

3dpainter is a program - on sale at the hash store for $99? - it is for specifically painting on models made in A:M - You have to decal the models first in A:M (can use a blank white image) and then you bring your model into A:Mpaint (or 3dpainter - not sure what it's being called officially), and paint "directly" on the model, then go back into A:M with the new textures.

It's a wonderful program, when you want to target specific areas, especially faces - but is not absolutely necessary - as you can also use photoshop, or any other paint program to create the images - it's just harder sometimes... sometimes not

Here is what I mean about layering & adding noise, grunge - I grabbed any old image (a stylized cloud that had alpha channels, that I did a long time ago) and applied it to the 50/50 cylindar as diffuse type - more variation - could have used it as a bump,

For more variations - could change the spec color, play with adding some reflectivity

(3rd image is what the alpha channel looks like for the cloud image)

Just got home and logged on. Nancy, I'm sure your are transmitting clearly, but for me, at least, the reception isn't quite clear. When you say layering you mean add an image once as a decal, and again as a diffuse map, and again as a bump map, that sort of thing? All in AM? You just make the images in your separate photopaint program?

thanks, i'm gonna try that decaling method as soon as i can.

well, i did one section, but it looks too much like i just slapped decals on it, as you can see where each one begins and ends and when it overlaps another it brightens the area.

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and the significantly longer to render Darksim texture:

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Sorta -

Yes the 2D images are usually obtained from some other source (eg a photo) or created in some other "paint-type" program

In general, when I said "layering" - I was talking about layering decals/stamps in A:M..

But I was also talking about the concept of building up detail - just as one would do when painting. Lay down a broad wash first, or background, then build up and refine the details, foreground, areas of interest

So from an A:M perspective - one does this by knowing that the last decal/stamp is applied "on top" of any previously applied decal(s)/stamp(s). The strength of any image (within the decal) is determined by the "percentage".

Images of 1 TYPE (color, bump, etc) can only effect the layering or strength of other previously applied decals/images of the same type, on the same surface

So for example - if I have 1 decal applied with cylindrical mapping - and it contains 2 images, BOTH used as color type - then the 2nd image in the decal container completely overlays the first image if its set to 100%. If set=50%, then the first image will show thru. If I set the 1st image to 50%, then the surface color of the group will show thru.

However if 1 image is used as color type, and the 2nd image is used as bump type - then the 2nd image will have no effect on modifying the color, but will effect the resultant imagery (give it bumps). I could add another image to this decal, and make it a bump type, and it would add another layer of bump pattern for more variation.

I can choose to use the same image for both the color as well as the bump pattern- or I could use different images. eg I could use a plain blue image for the color, and then choose a random image, or pattern image, or any ol' image for the bump pattern.

Uh yah..To go the decal route - you have to keep building on what you've started in order to get what you want. Play with surface colors, percentages, types (diffuse, bump, spec size, intensity, etc). Layering of images, different mapping types. It takes some work. One decal don't do it.

Just off the top of my head - I would probably wrap the entire ship with a cylindrical mapped decal to coat the entire model with a broad wash. set the repeat count to something (can always change it, can always change the image that you've used as well)

To then build up detail, variation, I would then probably isolate groups (hide the rest) and start decaling with planar maps from top and side views, using different images, different percentages. Again you can always change the image you've applied.

I would then get down to smaller and smaller groups for detailing even more (eg rivet patterns, painted signs, etc)

And at each stage I would be playing with the repeat counts as well to get the scaling of the bump patterns to be appropriate.

To go the material route - you can try coating the model in your darksim material - baking the material (which makes it a decal) - and then building up with more decals for more detail from there - thus only incurring the render hit once. I haven't used baking all that much - as I encountered some problems - but perhaps it would be good enough for a starting base coat.

well, I've done a little more playing with the decals on the main hull itself. I lowered the colour down to 20% and bump at 20%. It looks nicer. Now to fix up that command section:

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well, thanks for the texturing help, but it seems it was of no use, as texturing the model really screws it up for the 3ds export so I'm just modeling and then leaving the textures for Toa

Here's some of the music in EL0. Most of it is original music, not made by me, but by the other fellow working on the project.

Earth Link: The Official Soundtrack