Animating the Heracles

[evil_genius_180]

This might be the beginning of a long project. On the other hand, I might get bored with it by the conclusion of this week (you never know.) Anywho, I've decided to start animating my TOS Constitution-class starship, the USS Heracles (AKA, the Enterprise rebadged. )

First thing with a project like this was to make sure I could do certain things. One of those things was the bussard collectors. As most TOS fans know, the bussards on the original studio model were fairly complex. The consisted of 10 Christmas lights arranged in a circle surrounded by bits of broken mirrored glass with spinning aluminum blades and a frosted glass dome covering them. And, as most people who attempt to recreate this effect know, this is no small task. Just attempting to create the light, blade and dome look for still shots can be grueling, most modelers achieve this using textures. Animating it is a whole other animal. The lights blink in an irregular pattern, as Christmas lights tend to do. There is no set pattern because the lights blink at different rates in different effects shots (recycled effects shots don't count. ) So, rather than going insane attempting to recreate the blink pattern, I simply created my own.

I used spot lights projected onto a plane in trueSpace 7.6 to achieve the desired effect. I animated the lights with an irregular blink pattern, each one has its own pattern, I copied none of the animations from one light to another. If any are the same, it's simply because I created the same pattern more than once. Then I rendered 480 frames at 30 fps (roughly 16 seconds of video) to a .avi file using the HuffyUV lossless codec (after I Googled how to install the codec in Win7 64-bit because the fools at MS changed everything again.) I then applied the .avi file as an animated texture to my modeled lights in trueSpace. And now the lights blink.

The spinning blades were much less involved. I simply rotated them 90 degrees every 20 frames to come up with a look that I liked. What you see here is actually attempt 2. Attempt 1 had the blades rotating 90 degrees every 40 frames, which was too slow and the light blinking was also too slow, so I redid everything. Still, I'm calling this attempt 1 because this is my first time ever attempting to create this effect and I didn't know what I was doing. So, here it is on my newly created Vimeo account:

http://vimeo.com/25933467

Up next are the navigation lights. Like the bussards, these have different patterns. The white lights typically blink faster than the red and green and they're different from effects shot to effects shot also. However, this should still be an easy effect to create, I'll render a flyby showing everything working once I'm done.

[evil_genius_180]

Following my successful bussard collector test, I animated the running lights. After that, I set up a simple flyby to show everything in action:

http://vimeo.com/25993775

Now that all of this is done, I think the Heracles is ready for some real animation.

[Crusader]

lookin good EG

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks a lot.

[Auditor]

Very nice. Really got the TOS look. Love it. The animation tests look great.

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks.

[evil_genius_180]

This one did not turn out the way I'd hoped it would. In fact, I stopped the render 10 frames short of when it would have been done because I don't like how it turned out. I went a bit overzealous with the indirect lighting, I'll most likely wind up flipping the lights and planet. Also, I want to modify when the ship intercepts the camera, I don't like the timing in that. So, there is work to be done, but this is a step forward.

http://vimeo.com/26217572

[evil_genius_180]

Just in case anybody actually cares, the latest clip is up:

http://vimeo.com/26305143

I'm taking a break from this for a bit and working on some other stuff but I hope to be back at it soon.

[mikala]

Took a look at some of this over on your blog.
Excellent blog by the way. Anyone wanting a look at what TrueSpace can do should really drop in on it.
Glad to see you animating some of your builds! They deserve to fly!

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks. Though, anybody actually considering starting with trueSpace might want to consider trying something else first.

I was actually trying to learn Blender last year but then I got started on a project that required some actual modeling and rendering skills, so I had to drop it and now they've gone and changed it. I haven't talked myself into picking it back up again.

[gmd3d]

It does look great Chris. great work getting into the animations ...

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks a lot Ger.

[evil_genius_180]

OK, switching tracks (and models) here. This is all going to be part of the same project, plus it's dumb to start a new thread for what's basically the same stuff, so I'm using this one. I switched to my "Phase II" Constitution-class model, now christened the USS Endeavour NCC-1895 (the name and registry are canon, though the design is not.)

I decided (after watching some TNG and DS9 episodes) to go back to the indirect lighting on this one. I upped the ambient light and also the ship's own light rig helps illuminate the "dark" side. The nav lights are the same lights and animations that I used for the Heracles, there was no point in doing new ones. Anywho, this is the first clip of several that I have planned for this model. It was a long render, more than 24 hours, but I think it was worth it to have my first HD clip of this model.

http://vimeo.com/27120177

Make sure the "HD" thing is blue before watching, it should be worth it. Also, don't be afraid to put it in Fullscreen mode, it works quite well on my 1600 X 900 monitor.

[gmd3d]

nice work .... hell of a long render for you.

[evil_genius_180]

That's how animation is. You spend hours, sometimes days rendering for a few seconds of animation.

Here's a sneak peek at the next clip, still several hours away:

[gmd3d]

oh I like the look of that . model looks awesome too...

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks. It's an orbiting shot. The rigging was a bit tricky, but I think I wound up with something that will work. It looked decent in a wireframe test, anyway (everything else looked like poop. )

[evil_genius_180]

Ugh, this one didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. I think I went for too much with the motion, particularly the turn. I think I need to go more TOS-style (with a few improvements) for this one. Plus, the the main light isn't as strong as it should be because I messed that up and there's a fairly major error between this clip and the last one that I noticed while rendering, I'll see if anybody else notices what it is. So, this will have to be redone, but I'm posting it anyway because it's all part of the process.

http://vimeo.com/27182660

[gmd3d]

I liked it.....
error wise ..... Perhaps the texture on the 2 and 3 decks for the first animation.
But I did not catch anything yet. but then I not had any coffee yet

[evil_genius_180]

I can tell you that the error isn't in the mesh or the background, but rather the setup. It's only an error because of the first animation. You need to watch them both and see what looks "off" about the 2nd one.

[gmd3d]

Nav lights ??

[evil_genius_180]

Not the ship. Or the background. It has to do with the composition.

(hm, maybe I shouldn't be sweating this, since nobody else seems to notice it )

[evil_genius_180]

Here, these should help.

[gmd3d]

how the star light is hitting the planet

[evil_genius_180]

Actually, the big deal here is what side of the ship the planet is on. In the approach shot, the Endeavour is clearly about to enter orbit with the planet to its port side unless it does a hard left turn, which makes no sense. In the orbital shot, the planet is off of the ship's starboard side. I realized I'd done that backwards while I was rendering the 2nd image but decided that, if I liked the animation in that one, I was going to redo the first one. It turned out to be a moot point.

[gmd3d]

I should have said the side the light is hitting the planet ...... what would I have won ??

[evil_genius_180]

Nothing. Besides, you're the only person who even bothered to try and figure out what the mistake was. 4 forums and my blog and nobody else tried to find it. (if they did, they didn't bother telling me )

When I redo the shot, both the lights and planet will be on the correct sides of the ship. I don't know when that will be, though. I'm waiting to hear back on if I'll be doing some paid work. It's looking promising that I will be, so this project will have to take a seat on the back burner while I do that, but the render they want should only take a few days (it's a 1920 x 1080p.)

[gmd3d]

hey that sounds good Chris on the paid work...... best of luck with it

[evil_genius_180]

So far, it's been an exercise in frustration (animating for people who don't really understand 3D animation.) But it's all good.

I didn't hear from the woman who's been contacting me today, so I'm rendering the revised orbit animation. I did a lower quality test earlier and I like the rotation and lighting much better (and the planet is on the correct side.) After I do this one, I have to redo the first on and then I can finally move onto the 3rd and final animation in this sequence.

[gmd3d]

looking forward to the next installment