Project XR2 Ravenstar - Mk II

[Scarecrow]

I certainly have no objections to women on board. Though if I were designing jump suits, I wouldn't make them so skin tight. If that's what she wants to wear though, that's OK by me.

 

[Dman1410]

right back at you mate


i was looking back at some of the VC pictures and i noticed that the windows distort all the light making them look liquidy and wobbly
are they meant to look to look like that?

 

[Coolhand]

you're probably seeing some of the old renders which use raytraced reflections and refractions.

 

[Coolhand]

I certainly have no objections to women on board. Though if I were designing jump suits, I wouldn't make them so skin tight. If that's what she wants to wear though, that's OK by me.

They aren't 'jumpsuits', or simple flightsuits, they're mechanical-counterpressure suits, which have to be a tight fit.

 

[TSPenguin]

Fitting them with an active exo skeletton for high gravity situations would be great...

 

[Coolhand]

support for an internal skeleton/bones to animate them walking or whatever in any type of gravity would be great

 

[SlyCoopersButt]

Is that even remotely possible? It would be very good indeed if it is since Ummu look like they roller scate to their destinations!

 

[Coolhand]

it's possible, theres just no support in the code for it... i can't code these things so can't tell you if it's really possible or not within orbiter. the characters i've built have bone structures so i can pose them, i could use this to generate a walk cycle and other animated movements. in the VC for example the hands could be bound to the controls so when you're pushing your joystick to the left or whatever, the character would animate and move with it. currently they're just frozen in position.

 

[dbeachy1]

Fitting them with an active exo skeletton for high gravity situations would be great...

Well, define "high-gravity"...we don't land on any body in the solar system that has more than one G.

Plus adding an exoskeleton would ruin the nice lines of Kara's pressure suit.

 

[Lunar_Lander]

Nice progress you've made with the VC there!

Doug, do you remember our old thead at M6 (the one about the XR5)? I can remember how somebody compared the XR-Ships with Ford cars, the XR6 being a Ford Galaxy and the XR8 a Ford Mustang with V8 engine.

It's sad, that I can't find the thread anymore (the search only gives "Database error"). But can you remember our writings there :lol:?

These were also the days when every second post had included a demand for an ejection system. Glad to see, that it has reduced to one request per five pages xD!

Doug and Steve, keep up the good Work!!!

 

[TSPenguin]

Well, define "high-gravity"...we don't land on any body in the solar system that has more than one G.

Plus adding an exoskeleton would ruin the nice lines of Kara's pressure suit.

:blink:

:huh:

Oh.. Yeah. Right... :sorry:

Well then how about... no....

I'll just get back to the Furry Dice.

 

[jedidia]

Is that even remotely possible? It would be very good indeed if it is since Ummu look like they roller scate to their destinations!

Well, we'd have all the technical necesseties. It would be quite some work however, since there is no support for any animation-formats like they are used by poser or Max, so you'd be left to enter it all numerically. Tedious, but possible.

The whole support for the animation however would have to be coded into UMMU, so unless DanSteph is planning to enhance it we'll be stuck anyways.

 

[Coolhand]

Well, we'd have all the technical necesseties. It would be quite some work however, since there is no support for any animation-formats like they are used by poser or Max, so you'd be left to enter it all numerically. Tedious, but possible.

The whole support for the animation however would have to be coded into UMMU, so unless DanSteph is planning to enhance it we'll be stuck anyways.

something would have to written to take the animation data from max or whatever and convert that to something that orbiter could handle. otherwise you'd have to what.. hand code the position of each vertex on each 'frame'? A truely massive, tedious task.

About an exoskeleton... It's not really relevant to the ravenstar but these things are becoming a practical reality now for military, rescue and construction applications. An exoskeleton would certainly aid 0g space construction or whatever... our present day astronauts get very tired moving their bulky suits around, even with more flexible suits and new technology coming along like mechanical counter pressure suits, it would still be very useful.

 

[Lunar_Lander]

About an exoskeleton... It's not really relevant to the ravenstar but these things are becoming a practical reality now for military, rescue and construction applications. An exoskeleton would certainly aid 0g space construction or whatever... our present day astronauts get very tired moving their bulky suits around, even with more flexible suits and new technology coming along like mechanical counter pressure suits, it would still be very useful.

I once heard about small working/manipulator capsules which would have two manipulator arms, while the operator has a shirt-sleeve environment inside. Basically a machine smaller then XR0 without main engines. What do you think about this idea?

 

[dbeachy1]

These were also the days when every second post had included a demand for an ejection system. Glad to see, that it has reduced to one request per five pages xD!

On the interminable "bailing out/ejection system" topic, I added code to the XR codebase to auto-enable the astronaut's parachute when he bails out (i.e., EVAs) in an atmosphere. This is in the XR2 and it will be in the next XR1 and XR5 releases as well since they all share a common codebase. I'm hoping that will calm the restless natives.

Regarding animated EVA meshes, that would be huge amount of work since each individual "bone" (mesh group in the astronaut) would need to animated each frame. Also, it would be difficult to get the motion to look right when floating in space. And on top of all this, the way the astronaut would walk would change significantly depending the gravity of the planet or moon on which he is walking.

 

[C3PO]

Regarding animated EVA meshes, that would be huge amount of work since each individual "bone" (mesh group in the astronaut) would need to animated each frame. Also, it would be difficult to get the motion to look right when floating in space. And on top of all this, the way the astronaut would walk would change significantly depending the gravity of the planet or moon on which he is walking.

If you want to start walking animations, a pressurized version of the two-legged fork lift in "Alien" might be the way to go. Then a 'mechanic' walk would be OK.

 

[Coolhand]

On the interminable "bailing out/ejection system" topic, I added code to the XR codebase to auto-enable the astronaut's parachute when he bails out (i.e., EVAs) in an atmosphere. This is in the XR2 and it will be in the next XR1 and XR5 releases as well since they all share a common codebase. I'm hoping that will calm the restless natives.

Regarding animated EVA meshes, that would be huge amount of work since each individual "bone" (mesh group in the astronaut) would need to animated each frame. Also, it would be difficult to get the motion to look right when floating in space. And on top of all this, the way the astronaut would walk would change significantly depending the gravity of the planet or moon on which he is walking.

You're mixing terms slightly Doug, a 'bone', or a system of bones in 3d graphics terms is something that you would use to deform a more complex mesh. What you're describing as mesh groups is essentially just breaking the mesh up into peices and the parts would move in a similar way to a GI Joe doll. This is not a bone structure which is akin to an armature inside a deformable body, this means that you can have a simple base model that you can animate and the mesh or model itself will follow the bones. so you rotate the forearm bone and the 'skin' the model itself will stretch and deform in a (hopefully) convincing way... making the mesh work over a system of bones is called a 'rig'

If i animated a walkcycle using the rig then given the right tools the animation can be saved out to put into games like unreal tournament or countless others... from my point of view it's not a big deal, from the POV of creating the tools from scratch to get this to work in orbiter i'm sure it is.

Regarding the animation itself though, When youre in space i don't think you'd need to worry about it too much, at least if you're manuvering in a jetpack, our reallife astronauts don't seem to move much in the videos i've seen of their spacewalks in the MMU's, maybe just a little secondary animation to the head and limbs in reaction to thruster firings would be neat. moving around structures and things using handholds is a different matter though, i wouldn't really want to get into that, that would be hugely complicated... orbiter doesn't seem to support that in anyway, animated or not though so it's not really worth considering

Thats a good point about how people might move in different gravity, however i think an earth gravity walk cycle would be better than no walkcycle at all. And for worlds like mars, and often the moon, Hollywood seems to get away with just showing actors walking pretty much normally, maybe overcranking so the footage plays back slower.... so i don't think thats really a big deal but it's something that could be expanded upon.

 

[Lunar_Lander]

Hi Steve !

Your cockpit design is amazing!!! I liked it from the first glimpse on .

I showed it to two of my friends and they are also amazed by it. One of them asked in the ICQ talk:

"Do the dices smell like raspberries?"
"No, shall I ask Steve to implement that?"
"NO, THEY'RE AWFUL! It's like having a fox's tail hanging there!"

Well, everybody has his'/her's opinion

I liked the suggestion of having the dices stowed and when you click on them they are put up at the window bar, as suggested here:

Oh yes, and a fuzzy dice 'button' in the VC (actually a little shelf with the dice strapped down) would be nice - click on it, and you place the dice on the cocpit beam, click on the dice, they go back to the shelf.

THAT would be awesome

No cup holder ?

And please include that one !

 

[jedidia]

otherwise you'd have to what.. hand code the position of each vertex on each 'frame'? A truely massive, tedious task.

Nah, all animations would be handled by rotation (as they are in MAX, if I'm not totaly mistaken). You have different groups for legs, arms, torso, head etc, and the you just... well... rotate them.

Art actually did it, he created a walking model. It's just not UMMU compatible, of course...

 

[Coolhand]

i'm talking about something different, not breaking the models into separate peices, read my previous post. I'm pretty sure that when you export a walkcycle to something like unreal tournament, half life or doom3 or whatever, the position of each vertex is stored for each frame - 'baking' the animation into the model.

If you're not familiar with the concept you're essentially deforming a continous mesh around a system of bones, you animate the bones (i have motion capture files that allow me to make a mesh walk very easily) and then save out the animation by baking the position of each vertex in the mesh in every frame animation.