'Ultimate' Orbiter Vid...

[Gunny1]

Hello, all...

I'm an artist/illustrator/animator (amongst other things), and I've been doing some 'Second Unit' CGI work. On a lark, I decided to try and throw 'something else' into one of the scenes I was doing, so I almost randomly chose to use an Orbiter mesh... and the end results were rather surprising. So much so, in fact, that in what little spare time I can claim, I've decided to run up an Orbiter-based CGI sequence.

Any suggestions, comments, reccomendations - you see, I don't really 'use' Orbiter, myself, some I'm hoping to steal some of your expertise...

Rest assured, this is a project purely for personal pleasure; I'm not 'stealing' anything for commercial usage. The finished animation will perhaps be posted on YouTube; that will be the extent of the 'distribution'...

 

[Donamy]

That's a loaded question, it all depends on what your intrests are, real space, space history(manned or unmanned), Sci-Fi or whatever.

 

[Gunny1]

That's a loaded question, it all depends on what your intrests are, real space, space history(manned or unmanned), Sci-Fi or whatever.

Well, let me put it this way... what would YOU like to see?

It could be a third-person view of a specific historic launch... or a first-person view from 'inside the helmet' of the same thing. (Historic launches are easier, as there is data to 'mine', including the audio logs)

For instance - YOU are John Glenn, theoretically seeing and hearing what he did... or you are present at his launch, watching it (and listening to it) from perspective "X". What perspective would you have liked? The all-over 'GOD' perspective? From the bleachers? As TV would have shown it, had they been as technically capable then as they are now...?

 

[Tex]

Anything Orbiter related is cool to see in a vid. Do you have any work posted on You Tube currently? I'm keen to see your work, I make videos too.

 

[Gunny1]

Anything Orbiter related is cool to see in a vid. Do you have any work posted on You Tube currently? I'm keen to see your work, I make videos too.

Hmm... not too much, as most everything I do is for profit, which precludes 'sharing'. (Creative people - artists, writers, animators - don't get paid for their work. They get paid for the RIGHTS to use their work; it's a completely different 'ballpark', and oft-misunderstood...)

In any case, here's a quick and dirty 'pan' doneo f a standard Orbiter interior mesh for the shuttle - Youtube isn't the best resource for this, though. Kills too much quality...

In a 'final product', I'd add bump/spec/reflection maps; that one's straight output. To see what it looks like, still 'raw' without youtube's bandwidth-saving 'crushing'...

http://www.mediafire.com/?b9gdbsgmywh


About the only other thing I'm free to share with you would be a 'teaser trailer' I'm working on... I'm hoping to sell a script, this is a 'marketing ploy' I'm playing with:

 

[Tex]

Right on, the blackstone thing was cool. What do you use to edit your vids?

 

[Donamy]

I've always been a first person perpective kinda guy, but with some interesting God views thrown in to get a disconnected point of view. Say a Shuttle Launch, with
satallite deploy and a space walk, finally a nice reentry and landing. I would have loved to have been Joe Allen on 51-A, he is one of my favorite astronauts, particulaly when he muscled the Palapa into the bay of Discovery, that was launched on 41-B.

 

[Gunny1]

Right on, the blackstone thing was cool. What do you use to edit your vids?

In that case, MovieMaker 2. Generally, on my finished work, I 'pre-edit' with Vdub and RAD videotools - despite being freeware, they actually have more functionality, just not as 'slick'. So, I almost always use MM2 as the final stage, just to 'clean up' the final cut, and synch the audio.

(Now, if MM2 would just allow more than one Audio track... *Grin*)

Here's a 'quick and dirty' example of how a bump-map effects the final image.

This is a 'cheater' render. I've made NO effort to be accurate - in fact, all I've done is re-applied the color-texture as a bump map. Here's the result...

 

[Donamy]

Where did you apply the bump map, to the game texture or the video ?

 

[Gunny1]

I simply imported into Carrara (with existing textures), then assigned existing color-mapping as the bump - took all of, oh, may six seconds to assign, about ten-fiftee minutes to render...

(...which makes it obvious why they don't use it in-game!)

Normal-mapping would actually be a faster render, but most 'straight' 3D engines don't utilize it... it's consider a game-engine 'cheat'. ToMAYto, toMAHto... (*Grin*)

An actual depth-map would not only correctly indicate relative heights of geometry, but render them out with correct shadows/extrusion... and take longer. That, plus matching specular and reflection maps, is what I would consider 'basic necessity' for final renders; the rest being smoothed geometry, lighting, and 'real world' camera/environment interaction.

 

[Gunny1]

Here we are - just a quick little 'fun' bit of animation done, using orbiter meshes/textures...

As a note - it looks 'okay' in standard, but better in high quality, if you choose that format...

 

[Donamy]

:lol::speakcool:

 

[Tex]

Hey that was pretty good! LOL, Capt Buck Rodgers.. :rofl: