~ A P O P H I S ~

ANNOUNCMENT: as soon as my computer is fixed, (hopefully within next week) I am going to start looking for some help. Cosmic NUasance, who was putting my ships in game, had to drop out, so I need somone else who can do it to take his place. (my own attempts to do it have ended in failure)

PM me if you are interested.

Can you be more descriptive?

well, I just need somone to take the 3D models of ships, and turn them into RLeD's. I just can't get the hang of it. :blink:

i don't even know how.

I believe you have to render them at 45 degrees vertical with specific light settings and make 36 renders each in 10-degree increments (ship rotates, camera/lights stay steady), and another 72 frames with turning animations if you want turning animations. Then you have to make glow masks, shield masks, etc etc. Make a new topic on the board asking about it, I'm not too familiar with it.

i wasn't really asking.

You use blender, right Yoda?

What I do is to first set the camera behind the ship at a 45 degree angle (or whatever--it looks like it should be more like 30 degrees from the top to me, but I ain't a professional here), give it a square viewfield zoomed and centered on the ship, a black background, and set up the lighting as here. I used the sun-type lamps for both and it looked okay.

Then, in object mode, add an armature, and set it facing the direction of the ship.

Now select everything you want to have rotate (i.e. not the lights and camera) as well as the armature, and then shift-click the armature again to highlight it. Then go to Object->Parent->Make Parent (or press ctrl-p) and select the armature. Now everything should be linked to the armature as you fiddle with it.

So, now would be a good time to select SR:1 Animation from the display type drop down menu at the top of the screen. You should have a window with your ship and armature and stuff as well as an animation graph window on the right. Now all you have to do is make sure you are at the first frame (the frame you are on is the number that changes when you press the left and right arrow keys), select the armature only, hit the 'i' key and set it to key the rotation. A blue line should appear on the graph to show the angle over each frame. Now before going ahead to key other frames, you are going to want to either right click on the line, or click on the RotZ box on the right, and then go to the curve menu, and go to Interpolation Mode->Linear. That will make your model move at a constant rate between key frames. Now, you just need to set a few more keyframes by scrolling ahead to the proper frame, rotating the armature the proper amount, and hitting the 'i' key to save the rotation in the animation. I use 90 degrees (right) at frame 10, 180 degrees (down) at frame 19, 270 degrees (left) at frame 28, and 350 degrees at frame 36. I think you could get away with only 3 key frames, but any less than that and it will interpolate the shortest path, i.e. spinning slowly the wrong way.

Now when you render the animation, it should output it to some directory as a series of numbered images, 0001, etc. On my computer it is c:\tmp. These need to be put in a single graphic file tiled, in the proper order, which is clockwise starting with straight up. The best way I've found so far is to use the create panorama feature of Irfanview to stitch the images into row and then the rows into columns. Irfanview which is freeware, but unfortunately is windows only, so that might not work depending on platform. However, there's almost certain to be plug-ins for photoshop and the like that do similar things. Actually I had a gimp plugin at one point where all I had to do is paste everything into different layers and it would tile it out properly at some point, but I got a new computer and can't seem to find it again.

Once you get the main image tiled and scale it down to the proper size, you'll need to make a mask. What I do is do another animation in blender only I set the background white, turn off the lights, and turn off raytracing in the scene menu (so the reflective stuff doesn't pick up the white). This should give you a nice black on white ship outline, which will need to be inverted, but all in all works pretty well. Well, you'll need to tweak it so that everything's either black or white and to get the edges right since Nova doesn't support partial transparency. I'm not very good at doing precise looking edges, but I think there's a couple topics with tutorials somewhere around this webboard.

Anyway, I don't know how much you know to begin with, so i just kind of threw everything I know out there, but maybe it can be a bit of help to you. at least i hope so, those ships look pretty sweet. Good luck!

This post has been edited by Keldor Sarn : 28 May 2008 - 03:11 AM

thanks keldor sarn, but I can do that bit. (although your method looks to be a whole lot less painful than the one I do)

it's getting the mask and sprite in the game that always gets me. (setting up the various information correctly in MS)

thats easy. taking a mask and sprite and making them into an RleD? right?

correct

unfortunately, it is gonna be awhile. my dad found the problem with my computer. the hard drive is fried, and now it is beyond repair. I am going to have to buy a new one, which is going to be expensive. I might also have to buy a DVD drive, and install it, so I can reinstall the system, which will cost more money.

frankly, I don't see my computer getting fixed until sometime after summer.

however , My dad managed to save my files, so when the computer IS fixed, I will still have all of the progress I have made, on this and a few other projects.

In that case, it might be worth getting a new(er) computer. Good to see that the files survived the Grue-munching.

At this point, I'll reissue one of my "Tips for Young Players":

ALWAYS back up your work! Back it up as regularly as you change it. If you use Mac OS X 10.5, use the Time Machine feature. If you don't, at least make sure you keep DVD or thumbdrive backups. I suggest backing up daily, but weekly will do in a pinch.

I've only ever lost material I was working on once, and that was more than 10 years ago (1997), which is when I started to make sure I backed up.

Don't make my mistake. Backup isn't an option -- it's essential.

@pipeline, on May 28 2008, 08:56 PM, said in ~ A P O P H I S ~:

At this point, I'll reissue one of my "Tips for Young Players":

ALWAYS back up your work! Back it up as regularly as you change it. If you use Mac OS X 10.5, use the Time Machine feature. If you don't, at least make sure you keep DVD or thumbdrive backups. I suggest backing up daily, but weekly will do in a pinch.

I've only ever lost material I was working on once, and that was more than 10 years ago (1997), which is when I started to make sure I backed up.

Don't make my mistake. Backup isn't an option -- it's essential.

how incredibly helpful of you.

oh, and scratch what I said about the files being saved. I have 2 hard drives, and my dad saved the wrong one. I have the Apophis files, most of my applications, and not much else. I also lost every single 3D file I have ever made. I am going to have to start over from scratch on the spaceships. :mellow:

Oh.

I think thats all that needs to be said.

Damn , yoda. I feel your pain.

This post has been edited by Shlimazel : 29 May 2008 - 01:29 PM

Sorry to hear that, Yoda. Sad times indeed. I still get bummed when I think about the 20-odd ship models that I lost in a crash back in the Classic EV days. I wish you success in getting back on your feet!

@yamfries, on May 29 2008, 09:17 PM, said in ~ A P O P H I S ~:

how incredibly helpful of you.

It may not be helpful to you, as you're past the point of no return. I do, however, hope that it will be of help to everyone else here. Don't be a smart alec just because you thought you were so invincible that you didn't need to back up.

You've proved my point, actually. Everyone always thinks that it'll "never happen to them". (shrug) It does.

Yeah, I'm sure that's going to be a huge consolation to Yoda. Have a little tact, man. Telling someone to back their stuff up just after they lose years of work is like a kick in the face, regardless of whether you intended it that way.

@yamfries, on May 29 2008, 04:17 AM, said in ~ A P O P H I S ~:

oh, and scratch what I said about the files being saved. I have 2 hard drives, and my dad saved the wrong one. I have the Apophis files, most of my applications, and not much else. I also lost every single 3D file I have ever made. I am going to have to start over from scratch on the spaceships. :mellow:

Ouch, man. That is NEVER a good thing. Oh well. It happens.

However, when you redraw your ships, you can make them look better than their previous form.

@shlimazel, on May 30 2008, 08:04 AM, said in ~ A P O P H I S ~:

Yeah, I'm sure that's going to be a huge consolation to Yoda. Have a little tact, man. Telling someone to back their stuff up just after they lose years of work is like a kick in the face, regardless of whether you intended it that way.

(facepalm) For crying out loud's sake. I'm not telling Yoda to back up, I'm taking the opportunity to tell everyone else to back up.

No matter what I say or do, I can't bring his files back. He's quite literally beyond the point where I can help him. What I can do is try and use the example (and my own previous foul-ups) to try and convince people that backing up isn't an option, but a necessity.

--

I should note that I'm also pretty jaded on this matter. If I had a buck for every time a potential TC that was "almost at the point of completion" suddenly just happened to lose all its files in an inexplicable computer failure...

I'm just too old, and too cynical, I guess.