StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Hi guys, new here so I thought I'd start off with a little video and a new design I'm doing for a fan film being made at Manchester Uni. The guys advertised for someone to do the space scenes on another forum and I was the mug who replied, so now I have a mass of animating and modelling to do. Thought you guys might appreciate this, lots of Star Destroyers on there way once I get further in...

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/kenny7/V38testsmall.avi

This link is to an 890k DivX animation of part of a chase sequence, where an Interdictor has pulled a YT2000 transport out of hyperspace and sends some V38 fighters after it. The models are from scifi-3D.com, and I kitbashed the V38 together from a TIE Phantom and a TIE Defender, following the blurb from the SWTC section on V38s. Don't know why the director wanted V38s, but he got them.

Below you'll find a new air-speeder I'm starting on, a bit Episode II looking at the moment, but it may get used in the film or it may not, we'll see. Comments and crits welcomed of course, you're the guys in the know.

Looks good to me.

I concur with Darth Wong.

Master of Ossus wrote:I concur with Darth Wong.

*Looks around, doesn't see Wongs post in the thread.*

Oh well. I concur with AdmiralKanos. I hope the film is good.

Looks cool. Keep up the good work!

Master of Ossus wrote:I concur with Darth Wong.

What?? How are you agreeing with a non-existant opinion? lol

For those who don't know, AdmiralKanos is Wong's admin account. Read the posts in the announcements fourm.

Oh, that explains a lot of things. lol

Well I'm glad someone knew what the hell was going on!

Kenny_10_Bellys wrote:Hi guys, new here so I thought I'd start off with a little video and a new design I'm doing for a fan film being made at Manchester Uni. The guys advertised for someone to do the space scenes on another forum and I was the mug who replied, so now I have a mass of animating and modelling to do. Thought you guys might appreciate this, lots of Star Destroyers on there way once I get further in...

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/kenny7/V38_testsmall.avi

That's really good, keep at it.

OK gang, here's a quick test of the Star Destroyer model I'm planning on using in the movie. It's one I downloaded from sci-fi3D and then spent a while retexturing and brightening up. For some reason all the Star Destroyer models out there are primer grey, despite the fact that in the films they're always lit so that they are almost white! My non-fanboy friends pointed this out when they saw the test footage and damn, they were right. It's all well and good being 'realistic' with colours and lighting, but it doesn't match up to the studio lighting and models used in the first films. What do you guys think, does it look reasonably large and well lit, or is it still too dark?

Look good? That looks professional!

Kenny_10_Bellys wrote:OK gang, here's a quick test of the Star Destroyer model I'm planning on using in the movie. It's one I downloaded from sci-fi3D and then spent a while retexturing and brightening up. For some reason all the Star Destroyer models out there are primer grey, despite the fact that in the films they're always lit so that they are almost white! My non-fanboy friends pointed this out when they saw the test footage and damn, they were right. It's all well and good being 'realistic' with colours and lighting, but it doesn't match up to the studio lighting and models used in the first films. What do you guys think, does it look reasonably large and well lit, or is it still too dark?

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/kenny7/SDtest.jpg

Your right about the Film ships being well lit, but tht's because they are nearly always seen next to a planet with abundant sunlight. Anyway, it looks excellent, but the superstructure appears wrong due to the stark lighting, it needs shadows for delineation of the details, other than that good work.

Rob Wilson wrote: Your right about the Film ships being well lit, but tht's because they are nearly always seen next to a planet with abundant sunlight. Anyway, it looks excellent, but the superstructure appears wrong due to the stark lighting, it needs shadows for delineation of the details, other than that good work.

I concur. I think the shading would work best of treated as either coming from forward ventral or port ventral. Of course, I'm no artist (barely out of stick figures ), so that's just my $0.02

Kenny_10_Bellys wrote:OK gang, here's a quick test of the Star Destroyer model I'm planning on using in the movie. It's one I downloaded from sci-fi3D and then spent a while retexturing and brightening up. For some reason all the Star Destroyer models out there are primer grey, despite the fact that in the films they're always lit so that they are almost white! My non-fanboy friends pointed this out when they saw the test footage and damn, they were right. It's all well and good being 'realistic' with colours and lighting, but it doesn't match up to the studio lighting and models used in the first films. What do you guys think, does it look reasonably large and well lit, or is it still too dark?

Looks good. It may be just me, but the bridge looks a little out-of-perspective and off-center. And it also looks a little too small for an ISD.

Actually I thought there might be a little too much shadow on the superstructure, i was going to bleach it out slightly to try and get the full-on film look.

Sorry, but i can't change the angle of the light any more, you see this is part of the very start of the film, and I did a classic star wars start with the title, rolling blub fading into the distance and then panning down to the planet below. As you look at this destroyer the planet is behind your right shoulder and the lighting is somewhat fixed because ot how that was lit. If I change it too much it'll be noticed. Anyway, I'm rendering this little 250 frame sequence overnight, so you can judge the results tomorrow.

Can I just say for the record that I giggle like a schoolgirl every time I play the start sequence complete with the SW theme music! It's that tinkly part just after the crawl has died away and it starts to pan down to the planet, and you know the film is really starting now. Shame it's 9 meg long or I'd post it for a laugh.

Kenny_10_Bellys wrote:Actually I thought there might be a little too much shadow on the superstructure, i was going to bleach it out slightly to try and get the full-on film look.

On the side facing us, the different levels of the superstructure cannot be seen and the angle of the corner is completely washed out so that it appears to be the wrong shape, that makes the Conning tower appear to be at a slightly wrong angle. I know that with the lighting tools, this is how it would look (in fact i suspect it should be even more bleached than it is), but sometimes you have to fudge reality to give people the image they expect to see. Having said all that, this is only a static image, I think the moving version would sort out the problem by giving the veiwer some perspective due to changes in relation to the camera angle and distance.

Kenny_10_Bellys wrote:Can I just say for the record that I giggle like a schoolgirl every time I play the start sequence complete with the SW theme music! It's that tinkly part just after the crawl has died away and it starts to pan down to the planet, and you know the film is really starting now. Shame it's 9 meg long or I'd post it for a laugh.

Well put up a warning on the filesize for the Dail-ups and then post the url, unless there are size restrictions on your ISP for uploads.

I'll post the moving image in an hour or so and then we'll see how it looks. I think if i increase the bump maps it'll help the detail levels stand out from the bleaching effects of the lighting, but maybe not. I don't see a problem with the apparent shape of the bridge structure, but then again I know the camera angles and zoom I programmed in. We'll see...

Oh, and as for the 9 meg thing, I'll hopefully have ADSL in a month or so and 9 meg will present no problem However, I don't have 9 meg spare right now, and once I add this bit and the other little finishing touches it'll probably hit 13 meg or more. But it is fun

OK chaps and chappesses, we have two tiny animations for you, both of which are near the very start of the fanflic. The first is the Star Destroyer decelerating and the second is the shuttle dropping out of the bay and heading off to the planet. Both are divx codec, the first about 400k and the second about 530k, both ridiculously compressed from the original 4 meg and 12 meg they really are. You might have to right click on them and save them directly to your drive, I think it's something i did in DivX that's a problem, but they play fine. Quality is crap, it's more animation and looks I'm after comments on. Feel free...

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/kenny7/Comp1_7.avi
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/kenny7/Comp2.avi

Impressive. Most impressive.

I especially liked the running lights on the shuttle.

Kenny_10_Bellys wrote:OK chaps and chappesses, we have two tiny animations for you, both of which are near the very start of the fanflic. The first is the Star Destroyer decelerating and the second is the shuttle dropping out of the bay and heading off to the planet. Both are divx codec, the first about 400k and the second about 530k, both ridiculously compressed from the original 4 meg and 12 meg they really are. You might have to right click on them and save them directly to your drive, I think it's something i did in DivX that's a problem, but they play fine. Quality is crap, it's more animation and looks I'm after comments on. Feel free...

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/kenny7/Comp1_7.avi

As I thought, the change in camera angles as the ship passes sorts out the Superstructure problem, in fact you can't really see it throughout the entire flypast unless you pause it at the right moment. Very nice. Did you remove the music?

Kenny_10_Bellys wrote: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/kenny7/Comp2.avi

Very nice, interesting emblem on the Tailfin, and a very smooth decent, maybe a small pulse from the engines as it starts forwards would add to the atmosphere?

No music with this one, only with the full-on start sequence (12 meg I'm afraid) and I've still one little scene to do for it. These are compressed as far as I can go so that the quality doesn't suffer too much, but it's easily downloadable. As for the pulse from the engines, there is one and it's a bit difficult to see in this compressed version, and it took me 2 or 3 goes to get it to do it at all. I may enhance it in After Effects to save rerendering later, we'll see how I feel.

The symbol on the shuttle (all models sci-fi 3D again) is the symbol of the Jedi Sect in the movie, the director wants it on various craft so I've been retexturing to suit.

Kenny_10_Bellys wrote: These are compressed as far as I can go so that the quality doesn't suffer too much, but it's easily downloadable. As for the pulse from the engines, there is one and it's a bit difficult to see in this compressed version, and it took me 2 or 3 goes to get it to do it at all. I may enhance it in After Effects to save rerendering later, we'll see how I feel.

I can't see it in Divx, but when I run it in Movie Player the jerk-o-vision speed of play means that the Pulse is visible, so I doubt you'll need to enhance it in the finished product, the compressed version just runs it too fast to be immediately noticable.
I was going to suggest having the engines a dimmer blue before the pulse (for better contrast), but it probably wouldn't be neccesary in the uncompressed form.

Wow, these are excellent. Kudos.

For these animations, I'd recommend 320x240 res, by the way. You might also want to give 3ivx a shot for your video compression. It does much better at lower bitrates than DivX does.

One question: On the clip with the beauty shot of the ISD, do you deliberately have it slow down? It looks like it's approaching rather rapidly, but just as the camera starts to pan, it slows down. Is this just a trick of compression, or deliberate?

In either case, excellent work.

Hi guys...

The format has been chosen to fit in with the live action filming, which is D1 NTSC 720 x 486 at 29.97 frames a second, I had no choice in that if the film is to edit together properly. It's also to be in DivX, a codec I really like, it's just as a 56k guy myself I know what a pain in the sphincter it is to download animations from the net. I deliberately compressed them far more than usual because I wanted to show the action and the 'look' rather than details, as well as get a 56k friendly size.

The Star Destroyer is slowing down and going into orbit of the planet, hence the deliberate braking manouever and the slow turn to parallel the planet in the shuttle shot.