2004 Calendar Candidates

Thomas P · October 8th, 2003, 09:14 AM

I'm digging through the old UESN stuff and working on new as well. The 'old' stuff, as stated before, would get some updating before consideration to a calendar.

Here is candidate 1 (month=?) in 640x480 format. No post processing in PS yet as it is too small for it to matter.

Comments? Yes / No? Stars or no Stars? (etc...)

Thomas P · October 8th, 2003, 04:57 PM

Here is candidate 1 (month=?) version 2 in 800x600 format. Larger though with some compression to try and show 'press' quality. Note a background nebula to try and 'un-earth' the NASA pic.

October 8th, 2003, 06:44 PM

That's good. I was wondering, though, if we might try some unusual compositions this year. As I said, this is a good shot, but it has the standard planet in the background. I don't have any concrete suggestions at this point.

Thomas P · October 8th, 2003, 09:05 PM

Geezzzzzzzzzz

Sure, I have a few ideas and would likely use them. This is a candidate only, hopefully enough will get done to 'decide' on 12.

October 9th, 2003, 12:17 AM

Just pushing you to do your best, Thomas! Of course, since I don't do any of this 3-D stuff, it's too easy for me criticize. No offense intended!

skyhawk223 · October 9th, 2003, 05:28 AM

What might be a neat idea for a planet scene is to have the day/night terminator (like that little reference to your soon to be governor?) visible in the image. Might add a bit more to the image. Just a thought...

Thomas P · October 9th, 2003, 09:28 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Masao
No offense intended!

None taken

! I don't mind advice.

Thomas P · October 9th, 2003, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by skyhawk223
What might be a neat idea for a planet scene is to have the day/night terminator...

It's hard to find good earth pics that have the terminator. I've found a few nice ones on some stock photo sites but I am not willing to pay $150.00 for them. The NASA archives are hard to use as they updated their database about a year ago and don't let you have the hi-rez stuff unless you formally request it. I have done that but it takes them forever to reply (if they do at all).

Quote:

..like that little reference to your soon to be governor?

politics as usual (looking forward to his governship)

October 9th, 2003, 04:46 PM

This might be a dopey question coming from some one with ignorance about all things 3-D, but is there some way to model a planet with slightly topographic landforms and water then light it like any other 3-D object?

Thomas P · October 9th, 2003, 05:57 PM

Yes, absolutely. There are a few daring folks that have done such a thing but most just use very hi-resolution image maps (separate for land, sea, relief, specular) to achieve the basic effect. The waste of meshing a planet is that, at any near orbit or higher altitude, in actual space photos you don't see much in the way of relief unless you had looked straight down.

The maps (whether meshed planet or not) have to be so big that you need a more powerful computer than I have available to me (mainly memory and big a#@ video card). I had made a few planets a while back using big maps but the planets would lose definition at the scales needed for near or low orbit images.

I once actually saw a meshed planet for sale, I think at Viewpoint, but it was mucho denaro!

Thomas P · October 10th, 2003, 11:13 AM

Here is about 7 hours worth of work. I plan on using this in one of the scenes. Not this image but the model in it, yes the link below is a model and I made 6 of them. This is the largest and you can get pretty close to it.

The mesh is huge and the texture is a mix of two different procedural plug-ins from Simbiont. The darn thing, all by itself, takes about 8 minutes to render without any lights or other effects.

Um... what am I talking about - this rock

It looks even better when there are proper scene lights in it.

October 10th, 2003, 05:21 PM

How large a body is this supposed to be? Are we talking Phobos/Deimos size (10 miles or less) or bigger or smaller?

Thomas P · October 10th, 2003, 05:58 PM

I made them in various sizes from small (less than a kilometer) to large on the Phobos / Ceres size. Tham mesh has dynamic paramters that allow me to alter the detail to make it smooth or rough. This one is large and rough (about 100km).

Thomas P · October 17th, 2003, 09:57 AM

The attached image is an updated Archer Class fighter. This is the old mesh but with vastly improved textures. The image is with the diffuse map only and I am still working on bump and specular maps. The new photoshop base image allows me to easily change the registry number and name.

I also fixed a long standing mesh smoothing error the original model had that made it look bulged in the middle. I will also be changing the phaser/laser cannon some before using this mod.

This will be (hopefully) in the calendar.

Archer Diffuse

October 18th, 2003, 10:08 PM

I never noticed the original smoothing error.

Go UESN!

Thomas P · November 21st, 2003, 10:49 AM

Here is another possible picture - Lancaster class with shuttles near a gas giant with a gas giant companion (speculative based on current planetary 'finds')

candidate 3

This image is 800x600 or just under 50% of the original and with some compression.

Thomas P · November 22nd, 2003, 09:15 AM

Same drill, smaller and poorer quality than the finished product.

Candidate 4

Three Archer class ships on patrol.

Thomas P · November 22nd, 2003, 03:23 PM

And one more....

candidate 5

Same notes - lower quality proof at 800x600 and compressed.

BTW - my backgrounds are now going the way of Kelly Freas and Greg Martin, hope you like. I got tired of fixing NASA pics to make them useful. Anyway, the backgrounds are more 'artsy' now.

November 23rd, 2003, 07:07 PM

I like the planet in that last one. It's more impressionistic than realistic, but looks nicely painterly.

skyhawk223 · November 24th, 2003, 05:48 AM

I agree with Masao on that last one. I like the patchiness of the stars as well. My monitor must be going bad because they all look pretty dark.

Thomas P · November 24th, 2003, 10:38 AM

Thanks, again it is that Kelly Freas look that I was going for. I don't know how familiar you may be Kelly's work. He was very popular on paperbacks years ago and TOR publishing did a series of books where he did all the covers.

As to GAMMA (screen color/brightness) - sorry but I have been trying to get it looking right for some time. I recently upgraded to Photoshop 7.0 and it has a GAMMA driver optimizer that installs. Since that happend my video card has been 'dicey'. Images in Photoshop look VERY BRIGHT and in PSP they look VERY DARK. I play with the gamma intensity and then look at them with my browser (as JPG's). The finished images compare with other work I see on 3DG in the WIP and finished work sections.

skyhawk223 · November 24th, 2003, 12:17 PM

THe monitors here at work are around 10 years old.