Star Trek Builders Unite 7: The Continuing Mission

patience55 · December 2015

ashe5k said:

I realized it's been awhile since I shared any of what I've been working on, and while it's mostly been typing up my hand-written script and editing the hell out of it because I was writing it out on my work breaks and wow some of it worked and some didn't.

Anyway, I played with the lighting on the Bridge 8 set and upped it quite a bit from where I had set it originally and made the consoles actually illuminate now. Might be too bright. The other render is the Yamato Bridge I converted over to iray using the Republic's color scheme. These are both rendered in Daz Studio 4.8. I downloaded 4.9 to try it out with some profile renders I've been doing for personnel files that are really only going to show up in the background, well mostly anyway. I'm not thrilled with 4.9's layout at all and while it hasn't had that nvidia error that 4.8's been having, it's back to doing the spotty light spot rendering thing in iray I'd mostly solved with 4.8 which is highly annoying.

Either way, here's my main bridge crew on the Republic bridge at the start of my comic and same crew on the refit Repblic bridge which really won't make an appearance until after the first comic.

EDIT: And the program I used to resize these off my work PC left some weird artifacts all over the place. Fantastic. You get the general idea though.

I like the refit Republic image. Everything seems to be balancing out right there.

The Blurst of Times · December 2015

ashe5k said:

Either way, here's my main bridge crew on the Republic bridge at the start of my comic and same crew on the refit Repblic bridge which really won't make an appearance until after the first comic.

EDIT: And the program I used to resize these off my work PC left some weird artifacts all over the place. Fantastic. You get the general idea though.

The Republic bridge looks good! Making the LCARS consoles into emitters is a good thing IMO. I might throw some reflectivity onto the panels on my scenes (to add the glass-like appearance of the dark parts)... but that's a comment for me, I guess, even if you might try it.

I see you're using the New Adventures there for the uniforms, and I see the same thing that bugs me about the M4 shirt. Are you using Genesis 2 or 3 for your figures? I am thinking the conversion for either is the main issue that I have with it... and that's in the Shoulder Stripe. It gets really wide compared to the V4 outfit. I tried autofitting the V4 to G3M, and the stripe looks much less wide.

I didn't really intend this next image except as a test render (lighting is all screwy & a lot of grain), but it does show the V4 outfit on G3M in the back. The shoulder stripe is still not quite right, but I like the V4 shirt better than the M4 shirt on G3M (assuming you have all the stuff to convert from V4 to your model of choice).

Materials Test 2

If I do stick with Excelsior, I do want to change the panels to the LCARS look. I'm worried that the Genesis 2 outfits for Wrath of Khan would have the same distortion issues in the shoulder stripe if I ported to Genesis 3.

I wonder if the Yamato panels would port easily to Excelsior. That would save a LOT of time. Then I can mainly do a pallette swap on the Excelsior panel, and clean it up from there...

AshleyTinger · December 2015

patience55 said:

ashe5k said:

I realized it's been awhile since I shared any of what I've been working on, and while it's mostly been typing up my hand-written script and editing the hell out of it because I was writing it out on my work breaks and wow some of it worked and some didn't.

Anyway, I played with the lighting on the Bridge 8 set and upped it quite a bit from where I had set it originally and made the consoles actually illuminate now. Might be too bright. The other render is the Yamato Bridge I converted over to iray using the Republic's color scheme. These are both rendered in Daz Studio 4.8. I downloaded 4.9 to try it out with some profile renders I've been doing for personnel files that are really only going to show up in the background, well mostly anyway. I'm not thrilled with 4.9's layout at all and while it hasn't had that nvidia error that 4.8's been having, it's back to doing the spotty light spot rendering thing in iray I'd mostly solved with 4.8 which is highly annoying.

Either way, here's my main bridge crew on the Republic bridge at the start of my comic and same crew on the refit Repblic bridge which really won't make an appearance until after the first comic.

EDIT: And the program I used to resize these off my work PC left some weird artifacts all over the place. Fantastic. You get the general idea though.

I like the refit Republic image. Everything seems to be balancing out right there.

Thanks!

The Blurst of Times said:

ashe5k said:

Either way, here's my main bridge crew on the Republic bridge at the start of my comic and same crew on the refit Repblic bridge which really won't make an appearance until after the first comic.

EDIT: And the program I used to resize these off my work PC left some weird artifacts all over the place. Fantastic. You get the general idea though.

The Republic bridge looks good! Making the LCARS consoles into emitters is a good thing IMO. I might throw some reflectivity onto the panels on my scenes (to add the glass-like appearance of the dark parts)... but that's a comment for me, I guess, even if you might try it.

I see you're using the New Adventures there for the uniforms, and I see the same thing that bugs me about the M4 shirt. Are you using Genesis 2 or 3 for your figures? I am thinking the conversion for either is the main issue that I have with it... and that's in the Shoulder Stripe. It gets really wide compared to the V4 outfit. I tried autofitting the V4 to G3M, and the stripe looks much less wide.

I didn't really intend this next image except as a test render (lighting is all screwy & a lot of grain), but it does show the V4 outfit on G3M in the back. The shoulder stripe is still not quite right, but I like the V4 shirt better than the M4 shirt on G3M (assuming you have all the stuff to convert from V4 to your model of choice).

If I do stick with Excelsior, I do want to change the panels to the LCARS look. I'm worried that the Genesis 2 outfits for Wrath of Khan would have the same distortion issues in the shoulder stripe if I ported to Genesis 3.

I wonder if the Yamato panels would port easily to Excelsior. That would save a LOT of time. Then I can mainly do a pallette swap on the Excelsior panel, and clean it up from there...

Well I've got a mix of Genesis 1 and M4 on that bridge set there. The alien chief engineer in the back with the head fringe is a Genesis with some arm and head morphing. I have noticedthe wider band on him and that's using the M4 version of the shirt on them. I haven't tried using the V4 version of Uzilite on the Genesis body yet but I might try it and see. My navigator is also a Genesis 1 figure. My only Michael 4 is my CO. The band width hasn't been as bad on him but I've seen it get unusually large a few tiems depending on the pose I put him in. I have the Genesis 2 figures but I haven't tried porting the Uzilite outfit over to them yet.

And yes, definitely like the consoles actually giving off light. They're reflective on mine but not nearly as reflective so there's light glare in distance shots. I figured that'd not be too useful for people trying to use the consoles but on close-ups you'll see a bit of reflection like you'd get in the show.

As far as porting them over, you may have to do a copy and paste on the LCARS and do some futzing with textures in photoshop. I vaguely remember them wrapping weird on the Excelsior bridge when I was playing.

The Blurst of Times · December 2015

ashe5k said:

The Blurst of Times said:

So here's gruaro's Excelsior from sharecg. Converted to Iray.

I changed some stuff to make it look how I wanted. The right nacelle isn't working properly. *grr*

Does anyone do the thing where you throw light onto the ship's name/registry number? Is there a trick to that?

I usually do it the way the model makers in the motion picture did it and literally have a light hovering over the model where you want the extra light to be. It's a mess while you're working on it, but it ends up looking just like they did in the films/shows.

Thanks for that tip. I was trying to project a light from some point near the hull, and that does not work.

Here's USS Excelsior again.

Other changes:

I fixed the starboard nacelle, which was not emitting light. I reset two entire parts of the Surfaces tab (clicked on a whole different Iray surface) in order to clear out whatever tomfoolery was going on, and then reapplied the Texture to the Emission map & set up my blue light settings underneath it.
I noticed gruaro's texture maps had some sort of strange blue thing on the front & rear faces of the pylons supporting the warp nacelles. I got rid of the blue surfaces by copying some of the grey panelling & pasting onto the blue parts that I didn't like. (I see blue in some images of Excelsior, and I see grey in others. So I choose grey.)

I need to improve the quality of the light, but she's getting there.

I always liked the Excelsior. We're not supposed to like it as much. It's not the Enterprise. It creates a lot of warp pollution (or whatever ). If the LCARS refit for the bridge is too annoying, though, I'll try to swap it out for a Nebula-class ship instead. I'm sure I can find something to plaster over that part of the Yamato consoles...

EDIT: Grr. Ok, should have thought of this, but I don't want to just steal other people's LCARS. I need to stick to what I've paid for, what I create myself, or what is freely use-able without having to explain to a 2D artist how their LCARS design is only a small piece of the overall render. So making Excelsior's bridge into a more "modern" LCARS system is technically easy, but time consuming due to the non-technical aspects of it.

So time to work on the Galaxy-class, I guess. Or pay up for the Yorktown outfit & the male version over on Renderosity...

USS Excelsior take 2

AshleyTinger · December 2015

The Blurst of Times said:

ashe5k said:

The Blurst of Times said:

So here's gruaro's Excelsior from sharecg. Converted to Iray.

I changed some stuff to make it look how I wanted. The right nacelle isn't working properly. *grr*

Does anyone do the thing where you throw light onto the ship's name/registry number? Is there a trick to that?

I usually do it the way the model makers in the motion picture did it and literally have a light hovering over the model where you want the extra light to be. It's a mess while you're working on it, but it ends up looking just like they did in the films/shows.

Thanks for that tip. I was trying to project a light from some point near the hull, and that does not work.

Here's USS Excelsior again.

Other changes:

I fixed the starboard nacelle, which was not emitting light. I reset two entire parts of the Surfaces tab (clicked on a whole different Iray surface) in order to clear out whatever tomfoolery was going on, and then reapplied the Texture to the Emission map & set up my blue light settings underneath it.

I noticed gruaro's texture maps had some sort of strange blue thing on the front & rear faces of the pylons supporting the warp nacelles. I got rid of the blue surfaces by copying some of the grey panelling & pasting onto the blue parts that I didn't like. (I see blue in some images of Excelsior, and I see grey in others. So I choose grey.)

I need to improve the quality of the light, but she's getting there.

I always liked the Excelsior. We're not supposed to like it as much. It's not the Enterprise. It creates a lot of warp pollution (or whatever ). If the LCARS refit for the bridge is too annoying, though, I'll try to swap it out for a Nebula-class ship instead. I'm sure I can find something to plaster over that part of the Yamato consoles...

EDIT: Grr. Ok, should have thought of this, but I don't want to just steal other people's LCARS. I need to stick to what I've paid for, what I create myself, or what is freely use-able without having to explain to a 2D artist how their LCARS design is only a small piece of the overall render. So making Excelsior's bridge into a more "modern" LCARS system is technically easy, but time consuming due to the non-technical aspects of it.

So time to work on the Galaxy-class, I guess. Or pay up for the Yorktown outfit & the male version over on Renderosity...

I feel your pain. I was converting a shuttle interior over to the ST VI era consoles and it was a pain. It was coming along but I ended up shelving it. I can take a look for you and see about swapping out the VI era Excelsior LCARS with TNG eraones if you'd like again to see how long it might take me. I work a bit slow due to work schedules and my own project though.

I did try what you were talking about and tried the V4 outfit on my Genesis model. It doesn't look too bad, but the sagginess around the chest is a bit alarming. The strap doesn't get insanely fat though. I included the M4 to show you what it looks like on him. I imagine the jacket version looks a bit better so I'll have to play with that.

Before you buy another outfit, the second image set I attached has the Uzilite done up as the Wrath of Khan uniform. I used an alpha channel to lower the neck collar on the jacket. It's on a Vicky 4, but it givesyou an idea of what it might look like set-up that way. Sorry it's not more showy, but I cropped some images I'd test rendered and didn't have time to do another one this morning with just that outfit.

The Blurst of Times · December 2015

Thanks for the offer to help. I'll have a go at it over the holiday since I don't intend to bring my laptop. I can run GIMP on my tablet, so I can be productive without dealing with the airport security thing.

I found some wireframe blueprint type images (scans) of Excelsior that I can colorize and modify for LCARS. The Excelsior on the rear panel of the bridge is still good to drop into Yamato panels (tac/ops shield status or something).

All the old Excelsior panels need to be 2x the resolution IMO. That's easily done. The skew is easy to do (so that they fit the 3d layout). Cut/paste, apply skew. There's also a bit of rotation in the skew for some bits. It's kind of odd. I can mock up the base panels over the holiday and then do the skew later.

Good idea with the Wrath of Khan outfits on Uzilite! I'll have to mess around with that as well.

Anyone know of good Cardassian Galor-class or Romulan D'deridex warbirds in Obj format? I don't think I can use the ones that I see since they aren't Obj.

patience55 · December 2015

:-) The Texture Transformer to bring V4's textures forward to G2F and G3F works very well for the main texture images. I plan on converting those and IF Mylochka grants permission here then I will post just the main converted images. These can then be used in either program and with whichever renderer being applied so everybody gets to make their special mats ;-) However Mylochka if you also have made the purchase and are doing this I'll step back.

patience55 · December 2015

I gather ebots are again sleeping ...

I have the first set ready ... just waiting ...

GRFK DSGN Unlimited · December 2015

How does that work? Isnt it just taking the pose file and changing the material names to the G2F/G3F versions? Just curious cause I'm considering purchasing the product.

scatha · December 2015

patience55 said:

I gather ebots are again sleeping ...

I have the first set ready ... just waiting ...

Waiting for the forum to start working as it should, or until we actually get forums that do not aggravate people to no end?

No mails for new posts, still no dark theme, plus I am getting real fed up with continually having to re-login due to the site's malfunctioning ...

mdbruffy · December 2015

What he said!

scatha said:

patience55 said:

I gather ebots are again sleeping ...

I have the first set ready ... just waiting ...

Waiting for the forum to start working as it should, or until we actually get forums that do not aggravate people to no end?

No mails for new posts, still no dark theme, plus I am getting real fed up with continually having to re-login due to the site's malfunctioning ...

patience55 · December 2015

mdbruffy said:

What he said!

scatha said:

patience55 said:

I gather ebots are again sleeping ...

I have the first set ready ... just waiting ...

Waiting for the forum to start working as it should, or until we actually get forums that do not aggravate people to no end?

No mails for new posts, still no dark theme, plus I am getting real fed up with continually having to re-login due to the site's malfunctioning ...

Me too! Even happened inbetween posts, must be rather busy today.

patience55 · December 2015

GRFK DSGN Unlimited said:

How does that work? Isnt it just taking the pose file and changing the material names to the G2F/G3F versions? Just curious cause I'm considering purchasing the product.

Absolutely not. Blacksmith's Texture Transformer [excellent product IMHO] actually cuts up/stretches/whatever V4 "texture" to match it on the chosen figure's uvmap. While not perfect for the 'eyes' and lips it's also really not necessary to actually convert everything of V4's to any other figure as they all come with "eyes" and the actual eye textures [for example] can be easily re-arranged for perfection in an image editor and a copy saved out.

While it makes "pose" files to load, I'll say for testing purposes, they are not useable for keepsies as all the textures and pose file land in the same folder. Which is actually fine because they still need a little TLC to put together the full character set one might want.

There is a product in the store to provide a V4 uvset to G2.

It is not AFAIK and I too tried, to make a full V4 uvset for G3. Blacksmith's program must be flying off the shelves lol ...

Edit to add image: This is one of the sets.

The Blurst of Times · December 2015

Ok... just a quick screengrab of my viewport to show the initial work here.

The rear display is from the Yamato pack, except that I took a screenshot of Excelsior (exterior) from my viewport. The viewport look of Excelsior (flat, no lighting) matches what they used for the Yamato shot in the Yamato panel. Then I replaced U.S.S. Yamato with Excelsior on that rear panel. Then I overlayed some stupid columns with alpha/transparency to kind of match the Yamato display.

The other panel has stuff from Yamato, a colorized wireframe of Excelsior (inverted black & white, converted white into transparent, put color underneath to show through the transparent lines), and so on. I don't think LCARS should look that busy, though. I will probably cut back on all the gizmos and doo-dads.

The skew was a challenge, and will be a challenge for some of the control panels later.

Also, I need to put down some carpeting on the bridge floor instead of whatever metal plate is down there because that's how fancy new ships look.

Excelsior Refit

patience55 · December 2015

Is Mylochka around?

I have the next lot ready except I have to split up the folder because of size regs at DA.

AshleyTinger · December 2015

The Blurst of Times said:

Ok... just a quick screengrab of my viewport to show the initial work here.

The rear display is from the Yamato pack, except that I took a screenshot of Excelsior (exterior) from my viewport. The viewport look of Excelsior (flat, no lighting) matches what they used for the Yamato shot in the Yamato panel. Then I replaced U.S.S. Yamato with Excelsior on that rear panel. Then I overlayed some stupid columns with alpha/transparency to kind of match the Yamato display.

The other panel has stuff from Yamato, a colorized wireframe of Excelsior (inverted black & white, converted white into transparent, put color underneath to show through the transparent lines), and so on. I don't think LCARS should look that busy, though. I will probably cut back on all the gizmos and doo-dads.

The skew was a challenge, and will be a challenge for some of the control panels later.

Also, I need to put down some carpeting on the bridge floor instead of whatever metal plate is down there because that's how fancy new ships look.

Nice. I like it. One thought I had, if you dind't want to drop all those textures in and have to skew them, was to make simple flat panels and drop the textures on them and line them up just over the existing bridge panels. Granted it's a bit of work that way too, but it might be less frustrating than trying to skew the images just right on the texture file.

mylochka · December 2015

patience55 said:

Is Mylochka around?

I have the next lot ready except I have to split up the folder because of size regs at DA

I'm here! These look great! Good work! Hope you can post them soon!

The Blurst of Times · December 2015

ashe5k said:

Nice. I like it. One thought I had, if you dind't want to drop all those textures in and have to skew them, was to make simple flat panels and drop the textures on them and line them up just over the existing bridge panels. Granted it's a bit of work that way too, but it might be less frustrating than trying to skew the images just right on the texture file.

Thanks.

I think I will try to drop some of the panels onto primitive planes. Some of the geometry gets a bit ridiculous, so wrapping the textures around the curved stations takes a lot of trial and error.

Anyway, here's a render. I added some more LCARS planels, but these aren't as busy as the other ones... so it kind of clashes, I think.

I did add brown carpet and wood panelling to bring the Excelsior into the TNG era. John Luck Pickerd would probably feel right at home on this Excelsior.

Excelsior Refit Bridge

AshleyTinger · December 2015

The Blurst of Times said:

ashe5k said:

Nice. I like it. One thought I had, if you dind't want to drop all those textures in and have to skew them, was to make simple flat panels and drop the textures on them and line them up just over the existing bridge panels. Granted it's a bit of work that way too, but it might be less frustrating than trying to skew the images just right on the texture file.

Thanks.

I think I will try to drop some of the panels onto primitive planes. Some of the geometry gets a bit ridiculous, so wrapping the textures around the curved stations takes a lot of trial and error.

Anyway, here's a render. I added some more LCARS planels, but these aren't as busy as the other ones... so it kind of clashes, I think.

I did add brown carpet and wood panelling to bring the Excelsior into the TNG era. John Luck Pickerd would probably feel right at home on this Excelsior.

That color scheme definitely feels like Next Gen to me. With how spaced out the consoles are on the Excelsior you could probably get away with having fewer screens crammed into a tiny space with the LCARS. There's a lot more stations too so that'd make sense. Guess it depends on how busy you want the stations to look.

I remember reading something this week where Berman basically banned the color purple from the Next Gen sets because he didn't want it to be compared to the Original Series, so obviously tan would be the next thing to use. ;) Course here I am using purple as my base for everything on the Republic.

I really do like the look for that though. Brings out a warmer feel. Both the Excelsior and the Enterprise A bridge in Star Trek VI felt kind of cold where the bridge felt a lot more welcoming in Star Trek V and a lot of that is simply color scheme and lighting.

patience55 · December 2015

mylochka said:

patience55 said:

Is Mylochka around?

I have the next lot ready except I have to split up the folder because of size regs at DA.

I'm here! These look great! Good work! Hope you can post them soon!

Can do! Thank you :-)

The Tpol and Vulcan set are in pre-launch, should be out in a little bit too.

My Star Trek Folder in which the set is stored at DA.

The T'pol and Vulcan sets had to be split too; G2F in one and G3F in the other. Now uploaded.

galatt · December 2015

A simple question;

When I made this http://orig00.deviantart.net/7e20/f/2015/340/2/d/cooking_up_trouble_by_gx_9901-d9jb5bn.png I attempted to give the one figure a short sleeved uniform by just making the reat of the sleeves invisiable but it caused those blocky edges. Do I need to edit the texture itself to get the smooth edge effect?

Thanks

Timbales · December 2015

galatt said:

A simple question;

When I made this http://orig00.deviantart.net/7e20/f/2015/340/2/d/cooking_up_trouble_by_gx_9901-d9jb5bn.png I attempted to give the one figure a short sleeved uniform by just making the reat of the sleeves invisiable but it caused those blocky edges. Do I need to edit the texture itself to get the smooth edge effect?

Thanks

what model is the tunic?

galatt · December 2015

Timbales said:

galatt said:

A simple question;

When I made this http://orig00.deviantart.net/7e20/f/2015/340/2/d/cooking_up_trouble_by_gx_9901-d9jb5bn.png I attempted to give the one figure a short sleeved uniform by just making the reat of the sleeves invisiable but it caused those blocky edges. Do I need to edit the texture itself to get the smooth edge effect?

Thanks

what model is the tunic?

Sorry, V4 Courageous

Timbales · December 2015

galatt said:

Timbales said:

galatt said:

A simple question;

When I made this http://orig00.deviantart.net/7e20/f/2015/340/2/d/cooking_up_trouble_by_gx_9901-d9jb5bn.png I attempted to give the one figure a short sleeved uniform by just making the reat of the sleeves invisiable but it caused those blocky edges. Do I need to edit the texture itself to get the smooth edge effect?

Thanks

what model is the tunic?

V4 Courageous

Instead of making the sleeves invisible under the scene hierarchy, go to the materials settings for the tunic. You'll see that the sleeves have their own sections, set the opacity to 0 and you'll get the smooth look you want.

galatt · December 2015

Timbales said:

galatt said:

Timbales said:

galatt said:

A simple question;

When I made this http://orig00.deviantart.net/7e20/f/2015/340/2/d/cooking_up_trouble_by_gx_9901-d9jb5bn.png I attempted to give the one figure a short sleeved uniform by just making the reat of the sleeves invisiable but it caused those blocky edges. Do I need to edit the texture itself to get the smooth edge effect?

Thanks

what model is the tunic?

V4 Courageous

Instead of making the sleeves invisible under the scene hierarchy, go to the materials settings for the tunic. You'll see that the sleeves have their own sections, set the opacity to 0 and you'll get the smooth look you want.

Thanks, I'll try that.

patience55 · December 2015

That should work. The idea is that bones and Shading Domains/materials do not necessarily cover the same mesh.

.....................

I've added this to the list as a helpful item for those making skin mats: Blood vessel textures for skins by nmizu

They would be something to put on one of those other dials on the Surface Tab, not to take over the main texture but to enhance it.

patience55 · December 2015

Seasons Greetings to all!

Winter has finally arrived with some SNOW!

When my next spurt of modeling energy erupts, I hope to update and/or simply make new some of my sets so they will be more user friendly for Iray shaders too.

Cheers :-)

scatha · December 2015

That'd be nice, Cath. :)

Finally updated my steampunk version of the Defiant bridge from VP, hope you guys like it.

scatha · December 2015

Outside view for the Rogue Shadow :)

Will Decker · December 2015

Started working on the sets of the U.S.S. Khambatta. Started with Sickbay. Kitbashing the Sickbay 2 Set to look more like a TMP style Sickbay (Given the TNG set was originally the TMP sickbay)

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