 February 19, 2012 - 1:22am | Here is a link to one of my animation projects for my Titan Rising Universe. It's a quick test video I made to see what I can out of my software. I will do some more porjects later but animation projects are very time consuming so I don't know how much time I will have to work on them. Hope you enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQh-lgEyEfE&feature=youtu.be |
 February 19, 2012 - 3:35am | Very cool!  One suggestion, the 2d images could be made more like a blueprint with lines, circles and writing highlighting certain areas, as opposed to flat images. |
 February 19, 2012 - 9:31am | Very nice. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
 February 19, 2012 - 4:35pm | very nice!!!  May I ask what is your CAD preference? Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
February 19, 2012 - 5:02pm | I exclusively use DAZ Studio versions 3 & 4 with finishing work done in GIMP. There is a thread on the board here about where you can get their pro software suite for free |
February 19, 2012 - 5:18pm | Ok, free is good Blender, Sketchup, Gimp... and several versions of game-programing IDEs recommissioned to the task. A free DAZ is definitely something to check on! The vid deserves to be "liked" Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
 February 19, 2012 - 5:49pm | Nicely Done. Notice how all the other stupid "my Movie" up loads turns up on the right hand side with your movie? Consider a different name in the future that will cause your movie to turn up with similar videos so that people who find videos of space ship content also find yours. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 19, 2012 - 11:11pm | actually the video is not set to be found without invitation link on you tube. While someday I may make my work easily found by the public I am not ready to release it to the general public yet. I am not overly concerned with the fact that other peoples "my video" tags show up. So no worries |
February 19, 2012 - 11:25pm | Ok, free is good
Blender, Sketchup, Gimp... and several versions of game-programing IDEs recommissioned to the task. A free DAZ is definitely something to check on! The vid deserves to be "liked" Thanks I have used blender and its a decent modeling engine however in the DAZ suite you get Hexagon which I find produces much more professional looking results which also interface directly with DAZ and Bryce. The problem with Blender is that it is not well supported. DAZ will import any obj. format so it will accept anything developed on poser and a lot of things developed for 3DS Max as well. There are a few jems out there built for blender but too few to bother with. The DAZ interface in version 3 is much better. I am still learning daz version 4 interface, not because it is more difficult just because I have been using version 3 for two years so I have to learn the new interface options. Sketch up - dont care for it at all. I know some people can produce good stuff on there, however in general the textures look painted on and it really doesn't give you the lighting illusions of 3D. The positive and negative bump mat features in poser and DAZ also give a layer apperance to surfaces creating the illusion of raised or depressed surfaces. So Sketch Up is just not worth it for me, I dont care for it. GIMP is awesome. The only downside is that the interface is not particuarly user friendly but is easy to learn. Since it is freeware the software requires outside sources for tutorials. With these small downsides, it is FREE and does almost everything that Photoshop can do. In addition to GIMP I suggest Inkscape for finishing work, its easy to use, and gives a lot of cool effect image manipulation tools. |
 February 21, 2012 - 11:33am | Great work AZ! :) I'm no artist, nor am I very computer/tech savy so I can't judge it with any kind of critical eye in that regard - still, this looks pretty darn good to me! :) I don't have to outrun that nasty beast my friend...I just have to outrun you!  |
February 21, 2012 - 1:04pm | I know... the Blender community seems to have tapered of over the years... and with Sketch-up ... and now Daz... it may be a while before the programmers get back to the open-source free time in significant numbers to call it a project. I can wip something in Sketch-up... port it to Blender... and use Game-graphics packages to spit out a high-quality rendering... and yeah, it does take awhile...  Simple things are really easy-peasy in Sketch-up (like layout of deck plans and dungeons) but what you done did, goes past that for sure. I am not professional in this by any means... hobby enthusiast four times a year... and then I remember how it takes four days to crank out 10min of video... Oh yeah, that is why I don't do this more often... Oh give me a Farm... where no CPU's are harmed... and the digital illusions are Yaf-rayed... Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
 March 5, 2012 - 6:11pm | I think that was an awesome peice of work you have there, AZ. I just hope I can do about the same with what I am working on for a game. I do have some cylinders for size comparisons to see how well things look, feel, and work together. I have part of the game working but no HUD to display currently. The programming is all in C++; however, I am looking into moving to JAVA, maybe. None of the ships have any skins on them yet just plain white for now so I can find them on the screen. Here is where I am with it so far, the planets are behaving themselves for the most part, meaning they are where I expect them to be. Sometimes when I load a ship, it is not pointing the front in the right direction because I have t hem in the wrong position when saved? The skins don't fit properly, not sure why. I am no graphics artist. When flying the fighter near the other ships, the screen tends to totally white out because of the proximity to the larger ship. Over all, things are going slow but nicely. The combat part has been disabled currently because missiles behaving badly. They do not follow there targeting track to the target correctly. Oh yeah, there is no collision so running into another ship doesn't do anything, yet. Still a work in progress but fun for me. Any ideas or pointers are welcome from anyone. If this is the wrong place for this, sorry. |
March 5, 2012 - 8:55pm | I am not a programmer so I dont know what is happening with the game mechanics. The problem with the skin sounds a little like a UV mapping problem. Like the mesh model and the map are not fitting correctly. You may want to look at the ship models again in your modeling engine to see if the texture uv maps fit the model correctly. Poke through is a common problem with modeling, sometimes you can fix it sometimes you can't it depens on if the problem is with the model or the UV mapping. I am not at the stage where I am making my own UV mapps yet. I am making textures for models which are already UV mapped - which is what tells the rendering program where the skin fits on the model. But I am improving and getting better every year. I was just recently doing some restoration work on one of the first comics I did five years ago and it is amazing to see the difference in the renders I did five years ago compared to now. I did help that I got a faster and more powerful computer with win7. All the skill in the world wont help if the computer can only handle rendering one object at a time with the 3d engine set at its lowest setting. Animation is challenging, its fun to see the results but so very painfully tedious to build it frame by frame. I doubt I will ever get into doing a lot of 3d animation without gettin my hands on some motion capture software and hardware. Maybe in another five years my animations will look really good too. Still a lot of artifacting and a little jerkyness in the movement now. |
March 6, 2012 - 3:26pm | Thanks for the possible problem that may be going on. I only have gimp and anim8tor intalled so far. I just downloaded the free DAZ 3D studio Pro for free and plan on getting it installed. I think that DAZ will let me do more with the graphics than the first two. I have also looked into Blender but the last time I tried to use it, I found it difficult to learn, no patients. Thanks again. |
