TR:FF in Lightwave 9, help needed...

[Youhow2]

I am currently taking a class in 3D animation and for my final project I choose to model a themepark ride. The Animation has to have atleast 2 different particle effects, which will be used atleast 3 times during the animation,and synchronized with one of the models in the animation. While for most 3D people, that sounded like your Ideal "space" project, I was kind of forced to do something more challenging(space is so easy in lightwave). So I came up with the brilliant idea of doing TRFF. The downside is, that I have to use ALL of my own models.
I have to build the whole thing in a month, drawing and laying out the whole thing myself. Pretty much, I have to rebuild the whole thing myself, every part you can see on the outside, in a month, and surface it to make it look real...

I thought I would come to ask for pictures of certain weird parts of the ride, detailed pics of the queue, and certain parts of the ride. If anyone who could draw well could recreate parts of the ride for me that would be greatly appreciated.

Now if anyone could find a blueprint for a top spin, I would SERIOUSLY love you for ever, It would save me so much trouble...

Please help! I will post updates of it every other day or so, and a movie when I am done..

[Youhow2]

Well I meant to put a picture here, but I lost my jump drive, so whenever I find it pictures will go here.

So far I have finished the upper part of the OSTR, after I finish the base and the seatbelt, I can build a chair... That'll be about another 2 days. after the chair is done, I can copy it across the gondola, and pretty much that will be the whole gondola, minus a few minor details.
The gondola is estimated to be done by the end of the week.

I will have pictures on wensday...

Any help with close up pictures is greatly appreciated....

[Youhow2]

I lost my stupid jump drive again:scared:... I know, I know:cursing:

BUT I am extremely close to finishing the ride vehicle. All I need to do revolves around copying and pasting some seats(yeah, I finished them). The paint job on the bottom and the side of the ride is very unlikely to happen, but I will try to make it look somewhat appealing.

I have finished the whole OSTR, so that is set to the side for right now. I have decided to remove the seatbelt because If I had them, I would need to model a realistic ride op to come across and buckle them...:lol: (hint, even dreamworks doesnt even model the humans and ogres for shrek by keyboard and mouse, they scan clay models of the characters onto their computer, then surface them)
The seats will be set in different layers to close at different times, when I animate the ride in motion, but that is still 2 weeks off AT THE LEAST...

Next thing I am going to focus on is the arms. Those might take me up to a week to model. I figure I'll build a generic model, copy it into another layer, and flip it so it is on the right side, then add the surfacing which makes each arm different.

After that I will tackle the queue and then the themeing...

I'm going to build a section of the queue and do the copy-pasty thing to form it...

Then I will do the hard part, the themeing. The trees are going to take forever... The statues are going to look crappy, and the back drop will look weird, because by the time all these are done, I'll probaly only have 1 day to surface all the objects...(1 good looking object= 1 day of work) Then it's off to animating... and the final render... Which will probaly take another week:lol:..


That's my order of operations... I promise pictures by tuesday...

[Sam]

I can't wait for the first pics!

I'm in a 3D animation class too, but my project has nothing to do with amusement parks. :closedeyes:

[Youhow2]

Really, a school class or an outside of school classy-thingy?

P.S If you know anything I can do to reduce points(polygons) in those seats, help would grealty be appreciated (Each seat contains about 2833 points). My computer can probaly handle 20k comfortably, but when I render, all those points needing to be generated every frame along with the stand still water, and the particle effects water and fire will give me probaly a week long render, something I cant afford to do... I can render for about 3 days tops...

[Youhow2]

PICTURES!!!!

Sorry I didnt put any lighting on the objects when I took the pictures... You should be able to see the general concept. The only thing that is really close to the final render is the OSTR. I'll be glad to take any tips on the ride vehicle or the seats...


http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a205/youhow2/superwootwoot.jpg

front view of the seat...


http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a205/youhow2/wootywoot.jpg

Half finished ride vehicle with no ostrs(because I need them in a different layer so they can close by themselves)... lol probaly wouldve only took me 1 minute to finish it before I took the picture.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a205/youhow2/wooty2.jpg

better seat picture...


http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a205/youhow2/wootin.jpg

My beautiful OSTR...

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a205/youhow2/w00ty.jpg

side view so you can take in it's sexy-ness...


Plaese leave comments...

[The Storm Runner]

That looks pretty awesome! :thumbup1: Very realistic, too. :smile:

[Youhow2]

That looks pretty awesome! :thumbup1: Very realistic, too. :smile:



Really, when I uploaded the pictures, I figured I needed to fatten up the bottom of the seat, cause it looks too thin. It'll only take two clicks and a small slide of the mouse to fix, so I'm not worried bout that bit atall..

[Youhow2]

okay... here is the deal, I am now a week behind with my project as I needed to remodel EVERYTHING... I had way too many points for everything. The ostr had over 2000 points and the seat had about 1500 points... I got the seat down to 150, and the ostr somewhere around 500... I still need to cut down on the ostr just a little bit more.


My deadline for ALL modeling is thursday... So just yo let you know, the rest of the ride will look somewhat crappy, and unsurfaced, But when I get around to starting the animation, I'll go back and redo, and surface what i can.

The ostr isnt nearly as sexy as it was, and looks like something a newbie would make, and the seat looks a bit more ho-hum. Not nessacarily my fault I couldnt use that many points... blame the 6+ year old computers, running on a video card that is not suitable for a brand new program... Oh yeah, they are macs too... ;)

[thatdancingbear]

Horray for G4 towers!

(just assuming :smile: )

[Youhow2]

Well, I promise there will be a major update tonight... I havent updated in a long while... Almost everything is finished... the blocks I'm using to create the queue line, and the lowering-raising platform are done, the actual ride is done, and all I need to finish it the themeing, which will not take long at all to finish. I may or may not get to the statues and or heads, I may just make ruins in the little fire-pit area. And the ride will go with it's soundtrack...

Should be finished next week... If I dont get you pictures today I ill be highly dissappointed in myself. look for them around 8-9 for you west coasters...

[Youhow2]

About the lack of updates but I have been very busy...

I emailed my self a screenshot of the Prototype render. It lacks all themeing and various details that may or may not be added later... as soon as I get a new jump drive I will post a prototype video.

[Youhow2]

sorry I got the final ride build done, It lacks some parts and all themeing, but I had to get something done on time. this should be up tomorrow, atleast a picture.

this time I'm sure there should be something up tomorrow

[Youhow2]

Pictures coming up later today... all I gotta do is upload them to photobucket...

[Youhow2]

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a205/youhow2/finishedride.jpg

that is the finished ride by itself, with no themeing. Most likely It will be themed in a nother month or two, If I have time... I do have small pieces of themeing done but I have had no time to add it into the animation.

The render time for the movie is 80+ hours 3500 frames at about 1 frame per minute.



http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a205/youhow2/newride.jpg


This is a closeup of those new seats I was telling you about, I think in the end they ended up better than first ones..



http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a205/youhow2/wootinin.jpg

This is the ride vehicle standing alone without those yucky concrete supports... This was when I was still doing the full theming job on it..
The supports for the queue also look better becausee that is when they were completely 3 dimensional. I had to take out the "third dimension" so I could fix model and animate the ride. They used to have more points than the old seats...



Fun Facts: 6 seats contain more points than the topspin and queue

The first calculated render time was 89 hours

Over 240 hours went into building what's done so far (minus the themeing I have done, and parts of the ride that couldnt make it into the "first complete render")

The whole scene contains over 30k points

The gondola is not connected to the arms, by a small length

[Maxamillious]

That's pretty sweet. I wish I could do something like that. :)


Just wondering, but how big is the file for this? :wink2:

[Michael]

Nice work. :cool1:

Can't wait to see this with scenery!

[Sam]

Wow that's a long time for rendering!

The project I'm working on for my 3D animation class has a rendering time of about 30 minutes for 100 frames (3.33 seconds of video).

This is quite impressive what you have done, even though it does remind me of SFDK's far-from-decent top spin "Voodoo" :stick_tongue:

[Youhow2]

That's pretty sweet. I wish I could do something like that. :)


Just wondering, but how big is the file for this? :wink2:

I really couldnt tell you that, til the movie is done rendering, in another day or two lol.

I know it's a few hundred megabytes for about 10 seconds of video...

Everything in the modeling application takes up 10 megabytes I think? It takes about a minute to load everytime I start up the program

[Youhow2]

I got a CRAZY update coming on tuesday... Not telling you what it is yet... You just have to wait and see. Maybe I should wait til I get some more responses so I could improve it, that's why I posted here anyway...


*The update is not the video... You just have to guess.

New project... just cant get the stupid video on my computer... wont be a problem, now that I actually own lightwave 9....

[Youhow2]

expect a update next week

[Youhow2]

Since I have been unbanned, I still have all the base animations done for this. I will upload them later this week, after I find them. XD...