Space battleship animation WIP

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p03QxE1TJjg

OK thought I'd make a new thread to cover this one since it uses ships from two different threads. Above is a quick animation where I tried to make a firing effect for Grahfs rail gun plasma shooter bits. You'll notice at frame 91 that some silver bits suddenly turn black, as the PC was accidentally shut down at that point, and when I restarted the animation the object hadn't saved correctly. Not that it matters, it's more the effect I was looking at. Now I know I need to make a shot effect, whereas I was originally hoping I could just use a light as the shot. When I get a moment I'll redo it and try to get one done for the other ships guns as well.

[Grahf: Seeker Of Power]

Wow, thats really bitchin. I totally dig it.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

I dont, but I can fix it. It would have been more impressive with a good sound effect, but I still need an actual 'shell' for it to fire.

[Grahf: Seeker Of Power]

Well, its not actually a KEW, it is a charged particle cannon. You know, death ray machine and all that jazz.

[Imperial528]

It looks great to me, although, I don't know a darn about effects.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

In the meantime, here's a quick rendition of how I see the missiles being launched from the ships as well...

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

[Enigma]

In the meantime, here's a quick rendition of how I see the missiles being launched from the ships as well...

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

It looks good, but to me the missile didn't seem to stable, at least in the beginning.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

Yeah, that was deliberate. It's meant to look like it has been ejected, is locking on, sorting itself out and then speeding off to the target. Just shooting something straight at the target out of a torpedo tube doesn't really have any life to it.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvEO09ZDnJw

OK, this time I've done a flyby of the Warlord. I wanted an interesting backdrop for the battle, but not the usual highly colourful and completely out of place nebula. I therefore thought a planetary system might be fun, so I have tried out Jupiter and its moon Ganymede. I rendered it in 720-HD so you probably wont even see the stars in the background unless you view it at that level. It runs pretty jerky here at work on my very slow PC, but I assume it should run smooth on PCs not 8 years old.

[Imperial528]

Wow, that's just like I imagined it. I can see the stars and it runs smoothly on my netbook. Do you think you could add engine glow? Or increase the existing glow? Since I can't see it. But otherwise it's spot on to what I would expect the ship to move like.

[Kenny_10_Bellys]

It was just a test of how the background looked, and sorting the flares on the lights. I have to try and scale everything so i can work with it yet still look like really big planets in the distance, and it fouls up the lighting settings. I've got to add the engine lights and a couple of other nav lights to your ship, then light Grahfs one again as well as I lost the bloody scene file for it. Once that's done I'll begin animating the battle.

Just so you know I've asked the guys at the Trek BBS for scene ideas and which should ultimately win!