Serenity model / mesh anyone?

POSTED BY: foffilms
UPDATED: Thursday, August 26, 2004 07:46
VIEWED: 6790
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FOFFILMS

Wednesday, December 31, 2003 7:50 PM

Has anyone done a serenity model / mesh in any 3d platform - lightwave, 3ds etc... that they would be willing to share?

I am working on a Firefly Fan Film, one that is based in the Firefly verse but takes place on a different ship with different crew.

Also, any modelers out there willing to work on it, it's going to be a 3d tech heavy fan film, so any volunteers for helping?

Thanks much.

Michael

DORAN

Saturday, January 17, 2004 11:19 PM

I've been working on a Serenity model for about a week. I'm a long time Lightwave user. I have the port and starboard engine detail completed and I'm now working on the aft/main engine.

Doran

Quote:
Originally posted by foffilms:
Has anyone done a serenity model / mesh in any 3d platform - lightwave, 3ds etc... that they would be willing to share?

I am working on a Firefly Fan Film, one that is based in the Firefly verse but takes place on a different ship with different crew.

Also, any modelers out there willing to work on it, it's going to be a 3d tech heavy fan film, so any volunteers for helping?

Thanks much.

Michael

FOFFILMS

Sunday, January 18, 2004 12:02 AM

Doran - I got a really nice model from Fireflyfans.net user Biotech it was a 3ds model and was really nice, I did a retexture on it. There's a snap shot over in my current blog if you want to take a look.

Now what I am trying to work on, as I am a novice 3ds and lightwave user, is getting the nacels as seperate structures so I can pivot them, and getting the ring and shuttles as seperate pieces.

We'll see if I can figure that all out.

I'd love to see your model as you progress.

www.fof-films.com
Firefly Fan Film - Coming SOON

DORAN

Sunday, February 1, 2004 10:03 PM

http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=130480#post130480

Here's what I've got so far. It's going a bit slow because I have other things happening. :O)

FOFFILMS

Sunday, February 1, 2004 11:23 PM

Wow! Looking really great thus far, I can't wait to see it as it progresses. As you're doing it, and keeping in mind that the firefly fan film would greatly appreciate your modeling help as we progress - my one request for you, as you model would be to make the shuttles seperate entities that can berth in their spots as they did on the show.

I know it's a lot, but that would make the model seriously kick some a**. :)

Anyway, the detail is really amazing so far, keep up the nice work.

www.fof-films.com
Firefly Fan Film - Coming SOON

LINDLEY

Sunday, February 1, 2004 11:48 PM

I can't help you, but its possible that you might be able to help me.

I'm working on a Firefly total-conversion plugin for Escape Velocity: Nova (primarily a Mac game, but a Windows version is out now too: www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn ).

One of the major sticking points I'm going to have with my project is ship sprites. A sprite consists of 36 top-down images of a ship, at 36 different orientations (seperated by 10 degrees, of course).

While one could simply take a top-down screenshot of a ship and rotate it in photoshop, that doesn't look nearly as good as snapshots of a 3D model. (I know. I tried doing Serenity this way.)

If you're making/aquiring models for your fanfilm, perhaps you could take a few minutes to help me out as well, by sending over images that I could compile into sprites for the game. :)

Anyway, let me know if that's something you'd be interested in helping with. There's no real timetable, so that's not a constraint of any kind.

LINDLEY

Monday, February 2, 2004 5:55 AM

Thanks for your reply, but I wasn't able to figure out how to respond privately, so I'm posting here.

Your current blog in your profile indicates some issues---did that happen before or after you offered to help?

In any case, regarding which angles, that's kind of tricky. I'm going to have to get back to you on that. In general, I'm going to need 36 shots of the ship, and possibly 36 more for a "mask"---an image which is all black except where the ship is, which is all white. Its possible I can generate the masks with another program; I don't know.

The tricky part is, I'd rather not make the view be directly overhead, but I'm not certain exactly what angle it should be from, and whether that affects the degree turn between snapshots. I'm going to consult with some people who have done far more of this than I have.

LINDLEY

Tuesday, February 3, 2004 1:37 AM

Assuming you've still got something to work with---which is unclear from your profile---here's an example of the snapshots I need.

(To avoid the board software actually displaying them, I'm leaving off the .jpg. Just add that to each link.)

http://img11.photobucket.com/albums/v34/Lindley/Example
http://img11.photobucket.com/albums/v34/Lindley/Mask

The second one is the "masks". The easiest way to produce them is to render the model with an all-white texture, but there are other ways as well.

In other words, snapshot 1 should be 45 degrees above the x-y plane *behind* the ship, with the ship pointing straight up; snapshot 10 should show the ship pointing to the right (the camera doesn't move at all, the ship rotates in the x-y plane); snapshot 19, the ship points straight down; snapshot 28, to the left.

Someone on the EVN developer's board said that you get a better result if you eliminate all "depth of field"----things closer to you shouldn't appear a whole lot bigger. The explanation he gave:

Quote:
What you need to do is get rid of the depth of field. This can be done one of two ways depending on your program. The first and most straight forward way is to find the check box that takes your perspective view and makes it orthographic. I don't mean it makes it a top or side view, I mean that it gets rid of all perspective (the definition of orthographic). The other way is to find the zoom of your camera, and zoom it in several thousand percent which will do the same thing. Generally, however, you have to reposition your camera, which can be a pain.

FOFFILMS

Tuesday, February 3, 2004 7:52 PM

your image links directed me to blank pages - but I get the idea. As I will be re-doing textures at a fevered pitch here I will snap off some shots for you and post them so you can grab them asap.

Thanks.

www.fof-films.com
Firefly Fan Film - Coming SOON

LINDLEY

Thursday, February 5, 2004 7:57 AM

Make sure you add ".jpg" to the end of the links.

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