3D Animation

BetterSpace

With the painting of the nebula map done, we can get on with the fun part, and start rendering some nice images of our nebula sitting in a glorious starry sky.

We can also do some tweaking to the nebula in the scene, to make it fit the requirements of our particular scene.

BetterSpace

Now that we have built the geometry and prepared the surface attributes for our nebula, we must get on with the really important part of the nebula and paint the image map.

BetterSpace

BetterSpace

Now that we have built the geometry for our starfield, we can start to add more realistic surfaces and set rendering options so that we can finally render our new starfield scene.

A lot of the techniques described here were initially suggested by Mojo of Foundation Imaging, so if you recognise some settings, that's where they're from.

BetterSpace

The first, and arguably the most obvious visual cue to the viewer that they are looking at an image showing outer space is the presence of a vast, sprawling starfield against the inky blackness of space.

Recently I've been playing around with some of the newer features that have been added to Lightwave by Newtek. I started by importing a PDB structure of a basic antibody for IGA in blender, then exporting out to Lightwave's native format.

Next was adding in the bones to control the movement of the arms of the antibody so that they could be made to bend or rotate like the real structures (or as close to real as can be imagined since they are so small and move so fast). The basic bone structure was two simple bones going down each of the "arms" to provide it with shoulders and elbows along the narrow linkages. Other bones were built up the main body to keep it rigid against movement from the arm bones.

I've spent a little time over the last several years (wow, has it been close to a decade already) playing around with a piece of software, Lightwave 3D. I've done a few minor projects with it, such as a Dancing Antibody, and recently decided that maybe I should spend some more time learning. So, in an effort to learn more about 3D animation and Lightwave in specific I started to build up a model by following a tutorial I found online. It's taken me most of the last month of off and on work, but I was able to go through all 3 parts of the tutorial. While my poor laptop was able to handle the model itself, the graphics card, a Radeon Mobile 9000 IGP, the drivers apparently don't allow for me to see textures on the model in Layout except after rendering. I can live with that as I can see the effects of lights on the base model which is the critical thing to be able to see once texturing is finished.

Updated Dec. 6 It's been a while since I last had something to write. Part of that is because I've been busy in a few new games. One of those is a campaign that is taking us through a very old module for D&D, The Temple of Elemental Evil. We're not even halfway through the Temple and our party has already suffered major losses and replacements within the party. I've been taking advantage of the shear scope of this dungeon to slowly improve my minuscule Lightwave Modeling skills.

Blizzard has announced the next expansion to the World of Warcraft. The Mists of Pandaria. "Shrouded in fog since the world was sundered more than ten thousand years ago, the ancient realm of Pandaria has remained unspoiled by war. Its lush forests and cloud-ringed mountains are home to a complex ecosystem of indigenous races and exotic creatures -- including the noble and enigmatic pandaren. Will the mists of Pandaria part to reveal the world's salvation...

Another "Blast From the Past" that I recently ran across thanks to some gamer forums I read. Wildspace - A TSR Ad for something that looks like either a predecessor to Spelljammer.