3D types - Call to Arms

Post by **AndyThomas** » Fri Feb 22, 2002 11:12 am

Those who are interested in the 3D side of things may like to contribute/display your wares on this thread whic I've been cultivating on another forum:http://kier.3dfrontier.com/forums/showt ... id=22718It looks like a big ol' pool of talent and I think you'd enjoy chatting to those who hang around there anyway.I'd also like to get a little organised if we're doing this seriously - just so that people aren't duplicating effort, really. Does this seem sensible? Perhaps it would also be a good idea to discuss what format models should be in etc if they're going to get combined for purposes of animation etc somewhere down the line?

Shane · Post by **Shane** » Fri Feb 22, 2002 4:57 pm

Woah, you've been busy man! Seems like there's a fair bit of interest too.I'm going to be producing a few poser models for my liddle project, these would be:MakaraLamia/F01And maybe the Dai X (although this will take a long time to do)I'll also be using poser to make the brand new characters that I have created for my story, such as Captain Arkama and the Delta Z (If I don't have a nervous breakdown with the Dai X)I guess looking at your list you are after ships rather than characters. But the above models would be available if you needed them.There is also another which I am working on at the moment which I will post up on here in a few days time.

Shane.

Post by **AndyThomas** » Fri Feb 22, 2002 5:50 pm

Ships is what those guys do best - so yes, that's where my focus was, and my demo reel doesn't call for characters, really, so...

NC · Post by NC » Fri Feb 22, 2002 7:51 pm

Andy,Nice idea, it would be nice to get something solid off the ground, the only problem as you say is the package, or format we use, lets face it the rendered output from Lightwave is going to look a lot different from say blender, or Max.A file format is easier well a bit, *.3ds is a common format but there is no point modeling something flash in Lightwave that uses SubDivision surfaces, and export it in .3ds because all the good stuff is lost.If we could get everyone on LW great, or Maya my favourite at the moment is XSI, but I can't afford that for my own use You mention loads of ships on the site, are they all hiding in the current Story Board or are we now going for something a little bit more grand.How about Moon Base, and characters.Nigel

Shane · Post by **Shane** » Sat Feb 23, 2002 8:03 am

ah well, the offer was there. Shane.

Post by **AndyThomas** » Sat Feb 23, 2002 11:19 am

Well, it was never going to be straightforward! That's sort of what I'd grasped - that all the products can do a couple of basic model types so that you can preserve a 3D mesh, and probably even textures etc between applications - but the more dedicated, exciting features differ from package to package and so the only way to do it would be for people to design the bare-bones and have one person responsible for rendering and the actual visualisation.Nigel, you're right, there are more ships on that post than I've got in my demo storyboards - I thought I'd try my luck! Of course the only ones for the demo are Dai X, X Bomber, EDF Freighter, Imperial Fighter Carrier and Imperial Fighters. So that's OK then

NC · Post by NC » Sat Feb 23, 2002 1:48 pm

3D Meshes are the easy bit, and LW can cope with import and export of 3ds models with UV textures etc. what you don't see much of, not without expensive programs is tranfering animations between programs.I've got an old script from Lost in Space that exports the anim path from Max to LW but that was an old version of Max and LW and the newer versions have so many cool new features that I don't think its the best way, it basically took a snapshot of the object it's X,Y,Z,H,P,B and stuck it on as a LW keyframe, so a 100 frame anim has 100 keyframes in LW, so its impossible to do anything with it...A newer script could be written in, Max, Maya, LW, XSI that exports anims between programes using the proper spline information but I'm not the man for the job, I hate creating scripts and only do it when I really have to Nigel

NC · Post by NC » Tue Feb 26, 2002 9:09 pm

Andy,What sort of response have you had to this on SpaceBattles?Nigel

Post by **AndyThomas** » Tue Feb 26, 2002 11:56 pm

Well, some people definitely remembered the show and found the shots I'd done interesting - and the latest member here is from Space Battles. I think there's some action on me now, really, to come up with a sort of reference pack - I could then outright ask people to render stuff...