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Does anyone have the rendering tutorial from ewans lair? Or does anyone know of any site that has strata 3.0.2 tutorials? I am having problems getting the ship to spin... Thanks
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First, view your ship how you want it to look pointing straight up. Be sure this is at a TOP VIEW. You will adjust the angle later if you want a 45° sprite.
Open the project window (you can press p for a shortcut). On the left, you will see "1 (1)". Select the "(1)" and change it to "(36)". Then, you will see "15 fps" a little to the right of that. CLick on the "15 fps" and a menu will pop up. Select "Other..." and a dialog will pop up prompting you for a frame rate. Enter "36".
Now, select the "1" in the "1 (1)". Click the up arrow next to it 9 times. Now, select the rotate tool, and, holding shift, move it 90° clockwise (holding shift allows you to move it 45° at a time).
Repeat the last paragraph twice. Now, open the object properties palette (under the Windows menu). Select the transform tab. Select the rotation part (the counterclockwise arrow). Under Y, it should say 90° (or -90° ;). Now, click the up arrow from before 8 times to get to the last frame. Set the Y box that says 90° (or -90° to 10° if it says 90° or -10° if it says -90°.
Now, your ship should rotate smoothly around in the render.
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Umm... Strata cant do that.
On a side note, what is the angle for the lights?
Quote
Originally posted by 3D Noob: (B)Umm... Strata cant do that.
B)
Strata can't do what exactly?
With 3.0.2 you can make the ships spin, and do everything orca suggested. I've done it many times.
You might be thinking of Strata 3.5 Base, which had many features removed, Including Animation (I think, any conformation on this?) So you would not be able to spin a ship in that version. But it's entirely possible in 3.0.2 .
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The spin tutorial can now be found (probably temporarily) (url="http://"http://www.macfire.net/el3/tutorials/classic-spin.html")here(/url).
However, if you are wanting to do ships for NOVA then you will have to do a bit of adaptation. I've not gotten round to making a tutorial for NOVA yet. I'll consider making one once I finish the ship I'm working on currently.
The method orca described would work, but it isn't very accurate. I prefer adding a camera to the view and placing it at coordinates behind the ship such that it is at 45 degrees. Other than that, it isn't too much different to make sprites for NOVA...
You make your base sprite as before with the engine glows disabled in the project window (remembering to render double size if you want to use the LASIK technique).
When you come to making the engine glows, you use mask off the ship by giving it a matte black texture then enable the engine glows in the project window.
How you do masking is up to yourself, but I like creating a bright white glowing texture, turning off anti-aliasing in the render screen, and render at in game size.
If you want to do banking sprites you just have to edit each point you added in the project window and rotate them relative to the object on the z-axis.
Thats it really.
ewan
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Originally posted by Jules: < snip>
Well, I forgot to mention the angle...I've always used view the rotate tool. Click on the arrow at the bottom or top, and move the mouse down. In the bar at the top, it says your current rotation. When it reaches -45°, you're done.
That method of masking isn't very accurate, especially if you're using LASIK. The best technique is to select the magic wand tool in Photoshop, turn off anti-aliasing, and set tolerance to 0. Then use the magic wand to select only the black part around the ship. You could also just do it in AppleWorks.
On banking: I forget...is it 5.625° or 11.25° that's the standard?
Originally posted by orcaloverbri9: **Well, I forgot to mention the angle...I've always used view the rotate tool. Click on the arrow at the bottom or top, and move the mouse down. In the bar at the top, it says your current rotation. When it reaches -45°, you're done.
On banking: I forget...is it 5.625° or 11.25° that's the standard?**
Eh, the method I mentioned is far far far more accurate than the magic wand method! For example, what if one part of the ship is heavily shadowed? In that case, you are going to mask a bit that is shadowed but is still actually part of the ship. I have never had anything but perfect masks from the method I described. The magic wand on the other hand has created a lot of mess!
A combination could be used using a kind of green screen effect to decide what parts need to be masked., but I still prefer just using a white glow.
Trust me, the magic wand method is BAD
Originally posted by Jules: **Eh, the method I mentioned is far far far more accurate than the magic wand method! For example, what if one part of the ship is heavily shadowed? In that case, you are going to mask a bit that is shadowed but is still actually part of the ship. I have never had anything but perfect masks from the method I described. The magic wand on the other hand has created a lot of mess!
ewan**
Actually, if you follow my instructions to turn off anti-aliasing and set Tolerance to 0, it's perfect. In other words, you're wrong.
Also, that technique, while it may be very accurate, is not perfect; the magic wand technique, on the other hand, is.
Originally posted by orcaloverbri9: **Actually, if you follow my instructions to turn off anti-aliasing and set Tolerance to 0, it's perfect. In other words, you're wrong.
**
I second that.
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Also, that technique, while it may be very accurate, is not perfect; the magic wand technique, on the other hand, is.**
Listen, I know of what I talk here, and you in fact are the one who is wrong. Would you like me to render up an example?
Infact, I will anyway, here you go:
As you can see, using the magic want technique ( with 0 tolerance and no antialiasing) produces a poor result as it has additional darkened pixels at the front. The whiteout technique however doesn't have this problem. As I said before, I've never had any problems with the white out method... I think it produces a higher quality result.
However, its up to you, use the method you like. I don't care. Just don't say the magic wand method produces perfect results when I have just proven that it clearly doesn't (and doesn't do time and time again). Ideally, the perfect way to do it would be to just go through each frame and edit it by hand but clearly this isn't always possible due to time constraints.
-edit- Oh yeah, excuse the ship, its not exactly finished I've only finished the texturing at the front. The rear just has some textures I slapped together for this example. -edit-
(This message has been edited by Jules (edited 03-28-2004).)
Sorry orcaloverbri9, but I'm going to have to go with jules on this one. Setting a renderer to not anti-alias a ship is easy. When you set a ship to be all white, you guarantee that all parts of the ship will be properly masked. When you green-screen, your mask can be incomplete and/or inaccurate, not to mention the extra work to make sure that all of the proper pixels are selected (especially if you have one or more holes through your ship). On a simple ship, truth be told, I'd probably go with the green screen because it's a one step process and is very quick if you don't care particularly on an exactly accurate result. On a very complex ship, I'll make the masks in the renderer because if there are holes in the ship, then you have to go through the time-consuming process of selecting a couple pixels here and there for nearly every frame. If you're looking for a single technique that will be correct in every instance, making the masks in the renderer as opposed to a post-process technique is the way to go.
Matrix
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(This message has been edited by what_is_the_matrix (edited 03-28-2004).)
Originally posted by Jules: **Listen, I know of what I talk here, and you in fact are the one who is wrong. Would you like me to render up an example?
Actually, what you are doing is cutting off the anti-aliasing that happened when the ship was rendered. If you're going to do that, you might as well render it without anti-aliasing. And you want your ship to blend well with the background (not all that realistic, but in terms of eye candy, you want it). By removing the intermediate pixels that help it blend, it...doesn't blend. Of course, if you want it to look realistic, by all means, take off the intermediate pixels.
So, I guess who's wrong and right depends on how you want the ship to look in-game.
Originally posted by orcaloverbri9: **Actually, what you are doing is cutting off the anti-aliasing that happened when the ship was rendered. If you're going to do that, you might as well render it without anti-aliasing. And you want your ship to blend well with the background (not all that realistic, but in terms of eye candy, you want it). By removing the intermediate pixels that help it blend, it...doesn't blend. Of course, if you want it to look realistic, by all means, take off the intermediate pixels.
So, I guess who's wrong and right depends on how you want the ship to look in-game.**
Well in that case why when I replace the green background from the second pic of mine (which was just the mask changed from black to green placed over the top of the main part of the sprite) does it appear to blend perfectly without those pixels that you say help it blend into the black background of the EV space?
Here is the pic with the green changed to black:
Looks pretty good to me......
Rendering with an alpha channel does just as good a job creating the mask.
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Originally posted by UncleTwitchy: Rendering with an alpha channel does just as good a job creating the mask.
yeah, i've heard that but how do you extract it from the movie file?
Originally posted by Jules: **yeah, i've heard that but how do you extract it from the movie file?
Use the Sprites utility from NovaTools. It creates a mask image from the alpha channel.
Yeah...I changed the backgrounds to black (what the hell is up with having like 5 trillion different shades of green?!?) and found them to be virtually identical. The only difference is thst when flying over a planet, the alpha render would look better.
Of course, the magic wand method probably does make it blend better with the background, but certainly not anything perceptible to the human eye.
So it doesn't really matter.
Originally posted by orcaloverbri9: **Yeah...I changed the backgrounds to black (what the hell is up with having like 5 trillion different shades of green?!?) and found them to be virtually identical. The only difference is thst when flying over a planet, the alpha render would look better.
So it doesn't really matter.**
The main difference is when flying over a planet you see a think dark outline round the ship which looks quite nasty. With the alpha mask (and the technique I described which is essentially the same as alpha masking) this doesnt occur).
Thanks guys for your help, I didn't mean to start an arguement though.
The more I use Strata the easier it is and the better my ships look, but I am having troubles making textures. I have Photoshop 6 and Elements 2, just in case you were wondering what I use...
Dang Jules, that ship looks awsome... you must take me as your aprentice and teach me your ways.
The last time i used Sprites to make picts from a strata quicktime movie it crashed. What format do you save the strata movie in?
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