Post your space station concepts and designs

[Kangaroo]

The commerence center rework - 2k polys instead of 9,8k

Front:


Back:


Lower side:


Upper side:


Wireframe:

[klauss]

Cool - though a totally different concept. I'd keep both.

[Kangaroo]

Klauss - is there any way I can test my models with Ogre myself? Just need to make sure I don't make anything that won't work.

[klauss]

Go here and download the exporter for Blender. You'll need to download the command line tools too.

As a quicky, you can use the CEGUI Mesh viewer to quickly preview them.

A better (but much more complex) way would be to put them inside the SystemExplorer in SVN branches/ogre_branch. The problem with that method is that you have to create a material instance script (not a biggy, but you have to do it manually), and create an entry in unit_xxx.csv. I almost always do this one (rather than the CEGUI mesh viewer), but maybe it's easy for me because I know the System Explorer - I'll write a small tool to import mesh files temporarily for quick testing when I get the time. The advantage of using the SystemExplorer is that you use the pre-fabbed material scripts with shaders and all (otherwise, your model will look like any regular OpenGL view of it).

[Kangaroo]

Thanks for the links, got to work now.

[Kangaroo]

Two plugin module concepts for the stations.
These models are 341 and 443 polys (not triangles)

Fuel tank front:



Back:


Computer and electricity plant:

[chrisdn]

top one could be the sewage treatment module? Start trying to piece them together and give everything a use. Not only does everyting have look goo but should have some rudimentary explanation of their existence. The computer module could be additional core prcessors and storage>?

Great designs though

[klauss]

Why do people think computers would need that much extra room - rooms - in the future?

Rather, call it "data processing modules" - and it doesn't have computers, it has workstations for people to use in their everyday dataprocessing.

[Privateer Ferrius]

I don't think they would, but you would concievably be using a lot more of them, and you would need room for humans to walk around and work in the space, and such.

Just my $0.02 Canadian.

[Oblivion]

Computers get smaller and smaller.

[Kangaroo]

Call it whatever you like, anyway if you put it that way, our stations are unrerasonably large already if compared to the utility size there. I think that the computer module could as well do any other thing if textured properly.

[chrisdn]

Makes don't difference what the modules called but on the computer debate...personal computers may get smaller and smaller, super computers haven't really changed that much in size...just there power. Computers may get smaller in the future but processing requirements will increase at the same time. As more info needs to be processed, larger storage is needed. 10 years ago 1 GB of storage was massive...now a days 80GB is considered small!
If you ever see schematics from Start Trek the computer core on the enterprise alone is gigantic, same in 2001 (HAL), Arther C Clarke and Asimov both wrote of stations which were entirley used as super computers...as have most modern Sci Fi writers. I believe that computers in the future will be big- not gigantic but I also believe that storage requirements are going to be gigantic...look at todays SAN farms? Have you ever seen the requirments for IBMs data storage or for General Electric? They are unbelievable!

[Kangaroo]

Yeah, and if anyone has ever read the Digital Fortress by Dan Brown, then you'll know that there always will be a need for big computers.

[chrisdn]

and secure storage...would be a plan to have a fortress type station that sells secure storage to patrons...In the future, information will be more powerful than ever and people will do anything to get their grubby little mits on it.

[chrisdn]

Been playing about with Cinema 4D and came up with these. Atlantia's wings look strange coz of some glitch when I export to 3DS. Gonna have to redo...bah humbug! Anyway, here's an image of a ship and a station. It's Kanagroo_22's commdcom and atlantia. Trying to give off the impression of size?

[klauss]

Add realistic ligts and you'll achieve the sense of scale: streetlights in the domes' streets, small spotligts in certain places in the station's surface (places of the exterior in need for permanent illumination - dunno). Remember: realistically sized. That means that you'll need probably about a hundred lights - not great for the game, so I guess the dome will need a lightmap for that.

[chrisdn]

dunno how to do a light map Klauss. The thing with the bitg habaitats on the comdcom is that they're the size of Manhattan. So there'd be nearer 1000000 lights inside... If you can point me in the right directio of a resource on doing a light map it'd be much appreciated. I also need to do one for the the superstructure of the ship. Cinema 4D is great for but hardly know what anything is! I could always do some promo videos for VS using if needed...what do you reckon?

[klauss]

I don't know either

Perhaps I could wing it with hard work, if I had to do it... but explaining how to do it would first need knowing myself (winging does not require previous knowledge).

I imagine you could start by placing the lightbulbs as white emissive balls, and all the stuff that's done to bake ambient occlusion (only instead you're baking "global illumination", because your light sources are actual lights, instead of an ambient source).

But afterwards you'd have to take the baked texture and retouch it by hand to give it a more "city lights" look.

I can't get any more specific, because, as I said, I don't know any more speicifcs.

(The basic approach, less accurate but still cool, would be to add a couple colored lights inside the dome).

[Ryder P. Moses]

Just slap a glowmap on it. It's not like the rest is photoreal.

Lightmapping is nice for interiors and places where most lights will be hitting and bouncing off of more than one surface- where all that shit gets really hard to keep track of. It's not worth the bother on something like this, especially if you're just looking to add windows and crap to make it look bigger.

[klauss]

But I didn't mean windows only. I meant "city lights", which make buildings cast shadows but also bouce on buildings and create nice and complex light patterns.

But yes... a glowmap it is in the end.

Though, I'd say adding a series of lights inside the dome, pointing to its ground, of course, at the intersections of those structural thingies (name?) would get a nice look already (and with less work).

[Kangaroo]

Is there any use of lightmaps when you add a pattern texture?

[Ryder P. Moses]

Klauss: Consider also that Chrisdn is using a tiled texture he downloaded from a fairly popular webpage, with what looks for all the world like a basic box UV-map of the sort programs tend to apply automatically. You're talking about a technique that combines a few of the more advanced and time-consuming modelling skills, ones that takes a good while to learn and damn near forever to master, and requiring more technical skill and patience than he's capable of quite yet. Lightmaps are indeed fancier, but only when done properly- and given that tex-baking the thing would involve skinning it or at least unwrapping the faces for the baker, which hasn't been done yet as far as I can tell (let alone that I or someone else would have to walk him through light-rigging, radiosity, skinning and texturing, complex skills he has previously expressed a strong disinclination to learn) there would in fact be a good deal more work involved for a negligible effect. Just letting him put a bunch of yellow dots on a black bitmap and apply it like he has all the other textures would be about what we're looking at here as feasible, and likely all he wants or needs.

Kangaroo: You mean... what, a tiled diffuse map? Your question doesn't parse.

[Shark]

trying to work out how to stop specific objects from leaving a shadow in povray...no idea at all but god loves a tryer eh?

Just add one of the following to the end of your object definition:
no_shadow
no_image
no_reflection

[klauss]

Klauss: Consider also that Chrisdn is using a tiled texture he downloaded from a fairly popular webpage, with what looks for all the world like a basic box UV-map of the sort programs tend to apply automatically. You're talking about a technique that combines a few of the more advanced and time-consuming modelling skills, ones that takes a good while to learn and damn near forever to master, and requiring more technical skill and patience than he's capable of quite yet. Lightmaps are indeed fancier, but only when done properly- and given that tex-baking the thing would involve skinning it or at least unwrapping the faces for the baker, which hasn't been done yet as far as I can tell (let alone that I or someone else would have to walk him through light-rigging, radiosity, skinning and texturing, complex skills he has previously expressed a strong disinclination to learn) there would in fact be a good deal more work involved for a negligible effect. Just letting him put a bunch of yellow dots on a black bitmap and apply it like he has all the other textures would be about what we're looking at here as feasible, and likely all he wants or needs.

Kangaroo: You mean... what, a tiled diffuse map? Your question doesn't parse.

Hence the alternative: place a dozen dynamic lights. Cinema 4D won't mind.

[chrisdn]

Shark...cheers for that...I'll try it straight away.

Klauss...I need to play with lights and more importantly resd the damn manual!

Ryder...I want to learn the stuff but I work full time and have pretty limited spare time because I'm committed to alot of other things. I do what I can when and how I can. Yet again your pissy attitude and condescending remarks have brought the tone of yet another thread down...clap clap