The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

           Hello folks! 
            Well it’s been a while now since I promised the core team members that I would be re-creating the “Duck Spin” animations. For those of you who are scratching their heads; these animations were shown when you hit the (info) button on the ship selection screen. I came to understand that it was not possible to include the original Star Control 2 animations INTO the pc port for legal reasons. (You can put them in after the fact of course, but they do not belong to us.) To that end, I am re-doing IT ALL, including the intro and ending videos. This time however, each ship description video will be an ACTION SHOT and belong to everyone. All animations will be 400 frames, with a pause at frame 300 for ship information overlay. McMartin will be working on that. More than 60% of the material needed to do all this doesn’t exist yet. I am looking for as much good source material as possible to help my designs remain true to the heart of SC. There will be a UQM PROMO VIDEO combining these animations with high quality screenshot videos and other material. I’ve even contacted Eric Schwartz to see if he was willing to help create a few parts of the video. (Clip showing a Shofixti female waking from cryogenic sleep, etc…) It’s going to make you cry people!

Mycon FInal (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/mycon.avi)
MyconHD FInal (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/MyconHD.avi)
Androsyn Semi Final (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/androsyn.avi)
Druuge Final (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/druuge.avi)
Spathi Motion Test (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/spathi.avi)
Thanks Novus                     

(http://Http://www.urquanmasters.com/shipanims/320x240/Mycon/UQM_Mycon0300.png) (http://www.urquanmasters.com/shipanims/320x240/Androsyn/UQM_Androsyn0050.png)
(http://www.urquanmasters.com/shipanims/OcclusionSmall.png) (http://c-68-56-131-63.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/UQM_DruugeSM.png)
Thanks to Meep-Eep for this hosting.
Project Gallery (http://uqm.stack.nl/files/spins/)

Yep; TFB didn't do them, so they can't release them.

Judging by your preview video and the plans you describe, this has the potential to be as awesome as the Precursors' remix packs.

Not a problem. Mirror here (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/MyconHD.avi). I have 500 MB of unused web space to spare on another account, and I suspect that we can use SourceForge for hosting anyway, if this is considered a part of UQM.

I really want to see this happen, and I'd be happy to provide advice (or, hopefully, contribute to discussion) on compression and distribution of this video and assist in getting UQM to play it. FFmpeg plays your DivX 5 video properly (and it looks great!) and is licensed under LGPL, so we can use it in UQM (and pretty easily, too; it integrates nicely with SDL, apparently); I see no good reason to change that.

HD video is going to be overkill for many users' systems, so it would probably be a good idea to provide a standard definition package as well (640x360 would work very well with UQM).

Wow, terrific! I see that a lot of UQM projects have appeared in the near past (or are appearing). I wonder in what degree we owe this to the 2007 IRC chat.

I have only two comments to make:
1. Shofixti nubiles emerging from cryo sleep should have fur as short as possible (there are lots of ways to explain this, such as because freezing has cut it, or because ZEX is such a pervert that he cut their fur etc., but the main reason is that they must look as gentle as possible). They also can't possibly be dressed. ZEX must have taken off their clothing.
2. Use Slylendro's sleek Yehat model (like here (http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=3756.msg48631#msg48631)) and don't forget that the Dreadnought's and the Jugger's mid-sections are wider in reality than in the 3DO videos.
3. In the ending, Talana can wear some lighter clothes - it's downright sadistic to force her to wear such heavy clothing... After all, she doesn't have to wear her uniform aboard the Earth Starbase.
4. Talana sex scene video required.

OK, not two, turned out that they were a little more...

i *warship* *yuubuu*

(http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/fan/images/krish-yehat.jpg)

Personally I think Krish's Yehat model from Timewarp looks a lot better, anyone know if it's still around? I'm sure it would be in the hands of the PonaF.


Afaik Talana's uniform in the last scene had almost nothing on anyway, what more do you want? o_O

Ok so someone's going to go get live FMV actors to do a porno shoot? ::)

Ow, nice! I haven't seen that model before. Yep, it looks better (sorry, Slylendro), but it needs some texturing. It looks too perfect.

There was a reason for which I said "two comments".

<I-am-not-a-Dynarri>

This looks really amazing Amiga_nut, I look forward to seeing all the finished products.

Hot stuff.

Surprisingly, the HD video runs neatly on my crappy PC, which can't even play Apple's medium-sized movie trailers... In fact, it barely runs UQM with minimum settings. :-\

Anyway, a thought about the Druuge Mauler model... isn't the ship's back end a thruster? I'm kind of obsessed with realism and functionality, so those metallic arms covering it seem a bit strange to me. I mean, they'd melt or something. :-\ But I guess that's just me.

Hot stuff.

Well, you’re right about that. Since I have been doing these ship designs, there has been a bit of controversy regarding the thrusters of the ships. If you look at the original animations, and just about all the fan work for that matter, you will see that conical transparent polygons are used to “simulate” the thruster exhaust. All the new UQM animations will be using a sophisticated particle system instead. As for the actual thruster designs, or any other design suggestions; PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR IDEAS HERE!
"A picture is worth a thousand words."
(http://www.urquanmasters.com/shipanims/MaulerForumTest.png)
unless it's broken

I see you're using a resolution of 320x240. While this is great for compatibility, most machines that run UQM should be able to handle 640x480 video as well. 1280x960 would be pushing it (and slows down horribly on older hardware). Since even the HD videos aren't too large in terms of file size, I suggest we provide the videos in those three resolutions (assuming you have the CPU time and disk space to render all that, of course).

Since the videos are playing back full screen, we can switch to a video overlay for hardware accelerated YUV to RGB conversion and scaling (at least on workstation-style hardware; I have no idea whether consoles or hand-helds support this sort of thing).

I always want to use more resolution! It shows the tiny detail so much better. I have had several discussions on the subject with the powers of UQM. I have been told that 320x240 is what they want for the videos. I played around quite a bit with codec’s before I settled on the divx set-up used in the HD video. Of course I would love to use 1080i or something. (I could) But it's important everyone can see the videos play smoothly.

Considering the way UQM handles video playback right now, 320x240 is easier to implement and works pretty much everywhere UQM does. Nevertheless, I think support for higher video resolutions is worth the effort.

x2 . Hope to see more soon.

Well...... :P I've always found the Arilou Skiff's headlights rather ridiculous. I mean, the guys can move through different dimensions, for crying out loud. Why would they have something as mundane as headlights on their ships? It's not like headlights are going to be of any help considering the distances in space. :-\ They The bumps could instead be regarded as some sort of sensors or something.

I don't know why these things bother me so much. :-[

Cool and nice video amiga!  :)

If you're talking about the picture in the "Ship design revealed" thread: I know its budget. I lathed and textured that in 10 minutes. Mostly just my #1st test using the posting BG color as the render background.
(/insert science fiction music here/)
What about when the Arilou go “outside”? They may be sliding through distant dimensions where space is thick like rice pudding. And don’t forget they visit the Orz where, (perhaps) they take their ships down into the deep of the ORZ home world, and hang out or something.
(/stop music/)
TFB’s design clearly had headlights, and they will stay. Ask George Lucas what the hell 1/100 of all the crazy Star Wars ship detail was for. 

Headlights for going through 'the dark'? :P

Sorry, couldn't resist. Maybe the headlights are for sight going through our dimention? Or for planetary investigation which the Arilou do a lot.

How else do you expect them to shine blinding lights at humans while they abduct them, if they don't have headlights on their ships? ;)

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing this project at completion, because what's here looks mighty good.

No need to be sorry. The model in the render I posted is actually a retextured model of Kris Hauser... I personally didn';t like the textures enough to put them in an animation so I remade them.
Check the movie2 (http://uqm.stack.nl/files/other/slylendro/YEHATvsMYCON.avi)  - Yehat VS Mycon.
=]

Hey Slylendro, do you have the sound effects you used in this animation? I'd like to get a hold of em ;)

I dont know about those specific, but these what I have in general which I used in most of the animations

soundeffects.rar (http://rapidshare.com/files/42137662/soundeffects.rar.html)

Slylendro: Nice work! Good explosions. BTW... Someone mentioned Kris Hauser...(I love some of his models. http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/fan/images/kh_supox.jpg (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/fan/images/kh_supox.jpg)) If anyone knows how to get in touch with this fellow, please have him contact me.

I guess the headlights must stay since they're canon. Oh well.
Hmm, but the light beams shouldn't be visible in space, since there's nothing to reflect them.

Anyway, Amiga, don't take this as criticism or anything, I'm just trying to help. It's not like I can do any better (http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/519/avatarlh3.png). :P

Sly, that video is a good example for something my PC can't play. :'( Is there a lower-res version (or better yet, a less compressed one)?

You're assuming that the headlights of the Skiff just shine a light, like headlights on a car do. However .. this is the Arilou we're talking about. While regular light beams wouldn't be visible in space, the Arilou seem to have a habit of at least "bending" the laws of physics (inertialess drives, teleportation, somehow getting a bit of TrueSpace into QuasiSpace), so whatever contraption that Humans have classified as "headlights" on a Skiff are quite likely to A) actually be something else entirely, and B) do things that shouldn't be possible.

And the Arilou, of course, would never tell us any details about their technology.

I uploaded all the movies to Youtube.com try them
Youtube.com/slylendro (http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=Slylendro&p=r&page=1)

Nice looking Mycon, but if you want it to look "real", you have to make it pulsating. There's no other way - the Mycon's vessel is alive, not made of metal.
Also, make the plasma ball denser.

Good input. I'll see what I can do about that.

Computers are like the Old Testament; A lot of rules and no mercy.

[[[[[[[[[[-Slight Catastrophe-]]]]]]]]]]
      Well, I was going to work a little bit on the Mycon ship’s surface textures. Taking the advice that perhaps it should pulsate. I loaded the scene and found that the (temporary) changes I had made to create the occlusion renderings had become permanent. All the subtitle surface textures I had so carefully created were lost due to the auto save function in Lightwave9. Unfortunately, the backup model was created before the final surfacing. So, if there is to be another Mycon animation it’s going to be tough to get the same look. Keep in mind that no image maps are being used here. It’s all procedural, which has the advantage of no pixilation due to the camera’s proximity, and the disadvantage that, I can’t just fix it quick by reapplying the maps.

What this means to you all is: I can't render any new Mycon stuff, and unless many more of you think the Mycon should pulsate; this sequence stays the way it is. 
 :'(

Well that depends. Which part of the podship should be pulsating? the Interior? the exterior? Both?

Holla at that!

(http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/fan/images/pablo/pablo-syreen.jpg)

There is some incredibly goofy stuff in that link, but some damn fine examples of the ships as well.

-Kwamp

That's some fine art !

Hey Slylendro, do you have that Chmmr Avatar Tsing made? We could really use it for what we're doing, and if you do have it could you post it here? Thanks :P

http://uqm.stack.nl/files/spins/show.cgi?video/AndroFINALbubbleTEST.avi (http://uqm.stack.nl/files/spins/show.cgi?video/AndroFINALbubbleTEST.avi)
This is the final test of the Androsyn Bubbles, rendered in HD.

That bubble demo was seriously awesome.

Indeed.  It is incredibly awesome.  TFB would be proud... :D  I'm so excited about this...

I have two comments to make related to the Kohr-Ah FRIED and the Pkunk superheated metal minigun:
1. The FRIED, according to Supox dialogue ("ports open up around its perimeter, jetting forth gouts of flaming plasma.") are flame jets emerging at regular intervals from the perimeter of the Marauder (probably in 2D), not a cloud of gas covering the ship - i.e. "what you see is what you get", approximately - they're jets, not balls of plasma.
2. The minigun of the Fury shouldn't  launch bullets larger than the ship - they should be small white projectiles. Though it may look better with the big bullets used by Super-Melee.
(regarding the scale of projectiles and ships, heed this 2007 IRC quote:

23:12 <@Meep-Eep> < Valaggar> Did you think of sizes for the ships? How large would be the size differences, like in Super Melee or more?
23:13 <+robot> We usually had artists make cool bitmaps and that determined the size of the ship.
23:14 <+PR3> We also abstracted the sizes of the ships, planets and other components to a certain extent purely for gameplay fun.
)

The big question I’m asking is: Where are these bitmaps? Where is this material? I keep asking, and no one seems to bring forth any REAL help. I know as soon as I really get rolling on this, people are going to be boiling with suggestions and opinions about my animations. I’m telling you all now that if you have material (that you made or found) to share, now is the time. After a certain point it will be too late, and I won’t be willing or able to incorporate your suggestions. (E.G. Mycon is totally over and done.) PICTURES TELL IT BEST!

Actually, any material that anyone has made can't be considered canon unless it's simply copying something from the original game...unless that's what you meant. Also, I have a few suggestions.

1. Even though it's not usable in Super Melee and probably won't be for a long time, You should make one for the Sa-Matra ^-^. Same goes for a fully pimped-out Precursor service vehicle, ZEX's Intruder (If you're not sure what I'm refering to, It's pretty much the same thing as a normal Intruder, just that it's a dark brown color, and has a second gigawatt beam emitter on the opposite side of the normal one.), Tanaka's Scout, and the Black Spathi Dagger.
2. Make sure the VUX limpets aren't just glowing green spheres. They are living mollusks, you know.
3. For the Utwig Jugger, if I remember correctly from the description and sketches from the SC2 resource guide, when it uses its shield, it has a sort of white sphere that envelopes it and then you see a flashing silhouette similar to what you see in combat.

Again, these are just suggestions, you don't have to use any of them if you don'w want to.

Actually, it's never explained what the VUX limpets are. It is said, though, that they have a cocoon, so they should be spherical (until the cocoon cracks, i.e. on impact with the enemy ship). As to the Utwig Jugger, the envelope you speak about is never referred to in the RPRG's text, though there is indeed a drawing showing it - doesn't seem too canonical to me (it was drawn so because of technical limitations - with only pencil-and-paper you can't show that the ship is shielded if its shield fits the ship skin-tight).

And about those who say that the Mycon Podship is organic - that's not canonical too. It's never stated whether it's organic or not. My guess is that it's made of volcanic rock and magma.

I was referring to when they open. And there are a few sketches of them in the SC1 manual, if I recall correctly. They looked an awful lot like green versions of the Cacodemons from Doom. (Well, in the manual, they were black and white, but I would assume that they are green.)

Those bubbles are very impressive. Do you have any plans on a transformation animation?

Yes. Just about everything you can think of, and maybe a few things you hadn’t, will be re-created. Thanks for all the support!

These look great...keep up the good work! I'm looking forward to checking out the final product.  ;)

Amazing work, I'm excited!

There was a sketch in the SC manual, but as Kaelos recalls, they were more like short slugs, that looked like a Klingon's forehead, ringed with teeth and/or tentacles..  Allow Kaelos to see if he can't find his manual and hit you guys with a scan..

Also, that bubble demo was /serious/ awesome ^-^

EDIT: Scanual ahoy, cap'n!

Ah, but if you think about it, they'd have to open their mouths completely to be able to latch on. They hatch from spherical eggs, so there's still a 45% chance that the creature that hatches is round, not tube-like. They just have the appearance of being tube-like in the pictures because their mouths are open so wide.

Chickens hatch from round eggs. Human eggs are spherical. Your theory doesn't hold true.

However, artisticly I'm okay with these round, green, sphereoids spinning around slowly and opening the mouth to latch on. It looks great in my head anyways.

The buble look sweet, is that voxels or something like that?
But I think you have a dillema here. Should you make it look good, and do the bubbles slow, or should you make the bubbles fired like in the actuall game?
What do you think?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and finger the bubles as an aplication of metaballs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaballs).

Sargon had it close, they're HyperVoxels.
The answers to those questions can be found in the last link of the first post.
WIP Work In Progress photos.

Eric Schwartz responded to my e-mail....

(http://c-68-56-131-63.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/Swsaid.png)





(http://c-68-56-131-63.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/ShofixtiCryo.jpg)

Admiral ZEX's cryogenic bunker

What are you talking about. I mean, I know that Eric Schwartz is an Amiga nut like you, (as well as a furries best friend) but you go and change the title of the thread and then post this... I don't follow.

Oh, and can you scale down the WIP picture. Not a bit deal, it just makes my screen too wide so I have to scroll to read.

I like the animation on the bubbles, but I don't see them jittering around like they should. Would that be a tough change?

Hey, I just had an idea. Why don't you kill two birds with one stone, Amiga_Nut? Like, make a graphics patch for UQM using your 3d models. Something like making pictures from the above-view for each ship in the 16 rotations, along with their firing pictures in those positions? It may be more work, but since you're already working with the CG, I just thought if you had free time while you were working with it (I know not much sense in my statement. When do I ever make sense anyways?)

Thanks for all the advice. I am tight on time though.

RE: Bubbles - Yeah no problem.

RE: Graphic Patch - Given the resolution, I doubt a render would look better than the original graphics.

Ah, sorry, found it. So your plan is to combine 3D ships with hand drawn 2d characters? I totally approve. I wonder if I could post the storyboard I put together of a SC2 fight scene. I was going to make an animatic, but it never panned out. I feel like I too have no time.

Then again, if I can do an animation club at school this year maybe I'll make that my year long project.

Really good looking there Amiga! Although I do have to say, the Mycon Podship doesn't look "meteorish" like. The gray rock should be more jaggy and such, and the propulsion hole at the back I think needs to be larger. The plasmoid looks fantastic, and I like the crystal like effect at the front of the Podship, maybe you could add like a rippling lava effect to the ship aswell? :p.

Storyboard! ~ Good god that's the best Idea yet! Since I'm mostly doing modeling and texturing right now; I have solid plans only for Mycon Spathi and Androsyn. Every other sequence is totally open. So...

1- Now accepting story board submissions for each ship description animation. Remember that each clip will only be 400 frames (That's 13.33 seconds) total. Frame 300, (10 seconds in) will be a pose for information overlay. The remaining 100 frames (3.33 seconds) will be the ending.

2- Mycon is done and over. Sorry
 
Mycon frame 300:
(http://www.urquanmasters.com/shipanims/320x240/Mycon//UQM_Mycon0300.png)

So we can suggest what another ship model might do? Well, if that's the case...

Here's one that I think would work well for the Mmrnhrm transformer: Transformer flies in quickly in Y-form, then transforms into X form. X form drifts through space for a while, turning around quickly while slowing down, and proceeds to fire off its lasers. It then turns back into its Y form, launches some missiles, and flies away.

General suggestion about turning in space: since there's no air, changing directions doesn't need to be graceful as with jets. For example, when a spaceship needs to go leftwards, it would just rotate on the X plane and thrust. No lifting the left side of the ship or anything. Another example: to turn back, the ship would rotate on the Z plane and thrust. No "circular" movement.

But then again, I guess that's boring (and even looks unrealistic to the "naked eye", especially since many ships resemble jets).

Hmm, suggestions for scenes? Here's one for the Pkunk Fury.

The camera follows it as it flies from a pretty close range (showing its front), but then it makes a fast sequence of right and left movements and the camera struggles to follow it. Then it moves "past" the camera, and the camera moves to show it flying away from it.

Then it does a Death Blossom, caught exactly at frame 300. :D
Then, ah, it turns to the direction of the camera and flies flies right into it. :P

From the bottom left, a Druuge Mauler comes into view, moving to the top right, and away from us, turning clockwise. We zoom out so that there's quite a bit of empty space ahead and particularly behind the Mauler.
The mauler quickly fires three shots and gets propelled backward. It moves towards the left edge of the screen, the front pointing to 2 o'clock. The camera slowly pans to the left so that the Mauler nears the left edge of the screen, but as the camera is accelerating the Mauler stays into view. At the same time, we zoom in so we get a close up view of the Mauler. You hear a loud screaming and bright red flames can be seen flaring up through the portholes of the Mauler.
Frame 300, overlay ship data.
The ship keeps moving backward, but the camera is panning more quickly now and is catching up. The Mauler, without changing speed, turns towards the camera, while we zoom in a bit more.
We're looking right down the barrel of the Mauler, right in the center of the screen. At the deep end of the barrel, you see a violent mass of flames, while you hear the sound of heavy machinery, whips and screaming.
We zoom in a bit into the barrel.
A rumbling sound begins to rise. The screen fades to black. After half a second (a bit longer if there is the time), a violent BOOM.

An Earthling Cruiser fleeing away from a Dreadnought (or any other ship) firing, flying from right to left, with the camera "looking in" from below, only to have the cruiser quickly turn around and fire a missile. The information overlay frame 300 shows the Earthling cruiser firing the missile with the PDL activating on a passing meteorite, with the remaining frames either blowing up the enemy ship or the Earthling turning around again and running tail between its legs.

My storyboard was a bit longer. Say about 2 minutes with character animation, holds, drama, etc.

300 frames, by the way, is only about 10 seconds at 30 fps which is standard for most digital mediums and what i'm going to guess these animations are at. (If you use 24fps, standard for film and american hand drawn animation, you get 12.5 seconds).

For a good example from a (now) professional animator of a ship flying in space, click here (http://www.navone.org/HTML/Movies.htm), scroll down, and check out Zero-G. It's by Victor Navone, creator of the famous Alien Song who now works for Pixar.

But there's no sound in space! :'(

</partypooper>

So don't use regular microphones, but rather something like a laser microphone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone). Problem solved.

Let's not forget that George Lucas, creator of the Sci-Fi cornerstone; “Star Wars”, was never hampered by silly details like: (Sound doesn’t travel in a vacuum)

Joe Straczynski said when making Babylon 5 that they were confronted with a stylistic choice early on in the series' production:

• No sound in space.
• Surround sound in space.

...which would be more fun to watch?  He said it wasn't much of a choice at all.  :)

Actually, no sound in space can work quite well too. I personally thought it a very nice touch that all space scenes in Firefly and Serenity had only music (and occasionally the sound heard by the characters inside their spacesuits). Also, the "helmetless EVA" scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey was, in my opinion, all the more atmospheric and frightening precisely because it happened in dead silence.

Yus, that /is/ what he said. "Frame 300, (10 seconds in) will be a pose for information overlay." What is teh point you's trying to raise here?

(http://c-68-56-131-63.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/Druuge1.png)
 ;D Final texture test.

It looks good... but I've always wondered what the green caps is there. ???

Re: Posting on UQM forum [[ 2002 ]]
Found this... http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=2.msg2 (http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=2.msg2)

IS THIS IT? http://www.medievalfuture.com/div/sc2-com.avi  (http://www.medievalfuture.com/div/sc2-com.avi)

NIce! No one ever told me about this!  :o

Okay, here's my lofty, 10 second idea. The numbers are time index:
1: Sultry lips are pursed.
2: A hand (alien) is gloved. (<1 second)
3-4: A silky leg is raised, held, and bought down
5-6: View the side of an undetermined ship as:

• an airlock opens (1 second)
• a body in a space suit hurls out from it

7: turn pan from previous shot to the syreen ship, showing where the astronaut is headed.
8-9.5: continue pan past the ships cockpit where for an instant (5-7 frames) a smug syreen captian can be seen) before resting on a magestic shot of the syreen ship from above where we can see:
9.5-10: the Syreen ship being approached by a dozen floating space men.

If you'd be willing to continue the shot a few seconds I'd add a quick shot of an engine flash and the syreen pealing out leaving her thronging public free-floating. Maybe even make 2 of them from opposite sides crash into each other (off center of the shot).

I was going to draw pictures of this, doing a proper storyboard and all, but my one son is climbing into my lap as I type this, begging me to let him color, the other one is disturbing the baby, and we've got a birthday party to go to in 5 minutes. I somehow doubt I'll find the time later. I hope this will satisfy as is. I thought about all of the character stuff once i realized you'd have Eric Schwartz to help out, but most of it can still be done CG. (Everything in from second 5 on, except the 5-7 frames of the captian.)

I really like this trailer. Simpile and to the point. Kinda hooks you in with a little mystery thrown in. ie whats that ship and why is it headed for earth? Defintaly has atmosphere to it. My 2 cents.

Ooh, Syreen... my turn:

A Penetrator and a Cruiser are flying side by side, with some distance between them. The camera moves to face the side of the Penetrator ship facing the Cruiser.

In front of a large window stands a Syreen female, in her usual outfit. We zoom in and around her to see her from the back, with in the background the Cruiser in the window. Through various medium-sized windows we see some humans at work.

The Syreen flicks a button on a panel besides her, while keeping her face pointed towards the Cruiser. The Syreen song plays and as one all human heads immediately turn towards her.

With one move she grabs her knife and cuts the straps to her bra.

Most of the male and some of the female humans disappear from their windows, many with their mouths open. The camera begins to turn.

A short moment later some of the Cruiser's airlocks open and a stream of humans in EVA suits comes out.
At the same time, the camera moves out to show an external view of the event.
The Penetrator is on the left, the Cruiser is on the right. We're looking at their sides.

Frame 300, overlay specs.

The camera tilts a bit to show the event from the front
Suddenly an asteroid enters the frame from above and sweeps the humans away.

The camera moves down into the path of the asteroid and we see it coming towards us, with the humans spluttered on the side facing us. The asteroid hits the camera, and the screen goes to static.

VUX:

A generic "dumpster in space" transport creeps past in the initial scene. The transport obviously has human occupants. Then, out of nowhere, a VUX Intruder warps in, relatively close to the transport, automatically shooting its Gigawatt beam. The transport zips away, being much faster than the Intruder. The Intruder uses the gravity of a nearby moon to zip past the transport, launching limpet cocoons towards it. (It zooms into the launching ports, showing the limpets being detatched from the green, glowing interior of the ship). The camera focuses on the cocoons for a moment as they hatch and clamp onto the transport's hull and engines. The Intruder moves in for the kill, then, as it opens fire (frame 300) the info and stats overlay comes down. (presumably, during the overlay, the screen will be frozen at a point where the laser is melting through the side of the transport that's facing the camera, opposite the Intruder.)

(http://c-68-56-131-63.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/UQM_DruugeFinal.png)
Druuge Final


*Amiga_Nut applauds in tears.

(http://c-68-56-131-63.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/VuxLimpetTest.png)
                                                            Vux limpet shell test

VUX:

An Utwig Jugger is flying in space.

Suddenly, a VUX Intruder warps in at the rear of the Utwig ship and immediately starts launching Limpet mines, with a plopping sound.

The Intruder turns towards the closest side of the Intruder, which is its rear, and starts to fire. But it is too late. The Intruder is moving in the other direction, and with every Limpet that hits, the Jugger turns more slowly, until it finally stops moving altogether.

The Intruder continues its round around the Jugger, turning around before it would get into its firing range. It's still launching Limpets. We're zoomed in pretty close now.

Screen to black, and a title card "A few minutes later".

We're back, and the Jugger is still in the same place, but coated with layer upon layer of Limpets. It's now completely green, and clearly a lot bigger than it was before.

The Intruder, almost facing the Jugger, fires a few laser shots across its bow. A faint red glow from underneath the Limpets shows that the Jugger is activating its shields.

Frame 300, overlay stats.

The Intruder thrusts at full power towards the Jugger and bashes right into it. The Jugger starts drifting away from the Intruder, and the Intruder in turn bounces back a little -- the Jugger is basically one big bouncing ball after all. A few limpets come loose at the impact.

The camera zooms out and tilts a little, revealing what the big green ball is moving towards now: a flaming sun.

Arilou:

A Mycon Podship is flying through space. Suddenly, an Arilou Skiff teleports in front of it, just within laser range.

The skiff starts firing lasers in quick succession, at different parts of the Podship, while zigzagging right in front of it.

The Podship fires a plasma ball towards the Skiff.

Just before it could impact, the Arilou teleports to the other side of the Podship, and starts firing at it from the rear.

The Podship is turning, but the plasma ball is changing direction too.

The plasma ball hits the Podship, and the ship starts to crackle.

The skiff moves around the Podship, in the opposite direction that the Podship is turning, all the while still firing. Some fragments come off from the Mycon ship.

Then, the Podship explodes. Debris is flying in all directions.

With a large chunk of debris flying directly towards the Skiff, the screen freezes and we see the stats overlay.

The movie continues, and the Skiff teleports to off screen.

The camera then quickly pans to the new location of the Skiff, where it just powers on some sort of tractor beam. But the object it is tractoring is still off screen.

The camera moves a bit further, and we see the object. It is a cow.

Shofixti:

We're seeing a Shofixti Scout in space, next to an asteroid.

Cut to the inside the cockpit of a Shofixti scout, looking outward from the front window. The left part of the front window is obscured by an asteroid, and the rest is space.
On the window is some sort of display, showing a crosshair and various ship vitals.
The ship itself is mostly dark. There's a light glow coming from the various lights on the control panel in front, which reveals the silhouette of a pair of furry hands. In the top corner of the window some square things are hanging from above.

In the front window, something is appearing from behind the asteroid. It's the back of an Ur-Quan Dreadnought! It's still a bit away though.

The shadowy paw flicks a switch and the lights come on. The vitals in the on-screen display begin showing activity, and it appears that the furry hands belong to a Shofixti. One of the hands is holding a joystick.
The square things in the corner appear to be a pair of dice, dangling from some lever.

The Scout jolts forward and rushes at full speed towards the Dreadnought. We're still looking from the inside of the ship.

As the Scout closes in, the furry paw presses a button on top of the joystick.

A barrage of shots hits the Ur-Quan ship, but they all bounce off in various directions.

Some fighters emerge from the docking bays of the Dreadnought. The Shofixti's other paw moves towards a panel in front of him containg three switches. He flips the first one.

On the screen a MS Windows style dialog box appears. It says "Self destruct -- This will void your warranty. Are you sure?". The paw flicks the second switch.

The "yes" on the dialog box lights up for a moment, and then the dialog box disappears. The fighters move closer.

A moment later, a second dialog box appears. "Self destruct -- Performance may be degraded. Are you really very sure?"
The paw flicks the third switch. The fighters move closer.

The "yes" on the dialog box lights up again, and then the viewscreen turns blue. Some letters at the top seem to read "Page fault".

Then everything goes bright white.

Cut to the outside. This Shofixti ship is a rapidly expanding ball of debris.

Frame 300. Overlay ship statistics. All lines from the overlay point to unidentifiable parts of ship debris.

The explosion continues, ripping apart various fighters and tearing off the rear of the Dreadnought. The rest of the dreadnought starts spinning uncontrollably.

Cruiser (sorry if that has been done on the previous page. I'm feeling lazy. :) ):

A field of debris and tiny asteroid fragments is being shown, the camera moving slowly to the right, and being pretty focused on the field of debris near the camera. The background is pretty blurry, and presumably contains a large asteroid of sorts. One particularly large piece of metal (debris) enters the screen from the right side, tumbling slowly, but it is dark due to the shadows cast onto it by nearby, larger asteroid chunks. Clearly, this debris field is very fresh, which can be seen by the relative density of the asteroid chunks.

Slowly, an Earthling Cruiser enters the screen from the right side zapping small debris with its point defense laser as it moves along.

Suddenly, on top of the cruiser, a relatively little stick emerges from the ship body, and a bright white searching light on top of this stick is being lit, slowly, the light is being pointed at various pieces of debris. The beam of light isn't turning eraticly, instead it turns rather smoothly.

A bit faster than before, the light is being turned towards the larger piece of debris, and once it 'hits' it, it can be seen that Ceres Base (http://uqm.stack.nl/wiki/Ceres_Base) is painted in large black letters on it.

The cruiser's searching light fades out, and the stick retracts back into the ship's hull. Slowly, a part of the background fades into a bright green, as if a bright green object just appeared from behind the severely blurred asteroid in the background. The background music/sound gets louder in volume. Think bad horror movie..

Suddenly, the camera changes focus to the asteroid and green object in the background, in the same style as "The Prophecy" (a demo) by Conspiracy has a transition from foreground to background at 2 minutes 50 seconds (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6193773604164769118&q=conspiracy+project+nemesis&total=3&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0) (this includes the excessive zoom and camera wobblyness) and it is revealed that an Ur-Quan Dreadnought has just emerged from behind the asteroid.. it faces to the left, and after having launched four fighters, it slowly begins turning towards the Cruiser.

Camera follows focus on these fighters, and it can be seen that both of them get destroyed by the cruiser's point defense.

Camera fades to black.

An alarm signal is heard, and slowly the camera fades from black to a large hall, in which plenty of intercontinental ballistic missiles can be seen, and a large crane that lifts these from the stack to a missile loader kind of device (think Millitary sub torpedo hatch). The room is being lit solely by a few red, rotating 'alarm lights' (the ones you see on fire trucks).. One missile is being loaded and a large hatch being closed... Seven red lights positioned around the hatch begin pulsating, and a whoosh can be heard. Pretty soon after that, another missile is being loaded..

..the camera fades to black again.
..the camera fades back to the 'outside' scene. Missiles are rapidly being launched from the Cruiser (say, 5 of them), and whilst they all hit the Dreadnought, it is becoming clear that the Dreadnought is facing the Cruiser... Slowly, the dreadnought slows its spin, the cruiser stops firing (cue dramatic effect!)..
...few seconds pass...
The Dreadnought rapidly fires a few fusion blasts. They all hit the Cruiser, and just before the last one hits the Cruiser, it launches a missile.

..The screen freezes just before the final blast hits the Cruiser. On the screen, you can see the cruiser, one missile, and the point defense being activated on a piece of debris. Stats are being shown...

..the screen unpauses, and the Cruiser is being obliterated..

The camera moves towards the Dreadnought, which then somehow is being depicted as being the winner of this short battle. Not sure how this is being done, but I bet there's some way of doing it..

Few seconds pass, and suddenly one missile smashes into the Dreadnought, explodes, causing the entire Dreadnought to explode..

..fade to black.. end of movie!

Nice.. :)

Just some random idea: it'd be best to show most of the in-ship Syreen commander stuff with the same camera position/placement as in the following image:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v60/guesst/avatars/Syreen-Crew-100x100.gif)

Is that a Limpet, or is there a ship in there?

Am I correct in assuming that the environments and ships and such will be CG, whereas the characters will al be drawn traditionally? I really think this will work if it isn't the case. I'm even willing to do the 2D animation in flash myself.

Also, Megagun, keep in mind that these animations are only 12-13 seconds long.

Chmmr:

Show the Avatar, along with the 3 Zapsats which are orbiting the Avatar coming through space from the right side of the screen coming towards the audience and then pan the camera behind the Chmmr, to reveal what it's coming up against, an Ur-Quan Dreadnought. The Dreadnought sees this and begins to launch fighters. The Chmmr is unmoved and continues to move around the side of the Dreadnought, and as the fighters come into range, each of the Zapsats in a turn-taking rotary motion turn to face the fighters, each one firing brief split-second ion-cannons (Homeworld Cataclysm style) which destroys all of the fighters (Sound effects: Graviton Beam from Master of Orion 2 or Homeworld 2 Pulsar). The Ur-Quan stops launching fighters and then turns to face the Avatar, by now the  Ur-Quan can't turn fast enough to get a full frontal face on it while the Chmmr is at the side. Close up on the Chmmr wings, the tips of the wings at the front are actually Tractor Beam emmiters and a borg-style blue tractor beam (Sound effects: Chmmr Tractor) hauls the Dreadnought to the front of the Chmmr, with that it's too late, and the Avatar uses it's laser (Normal Chmmr laser except modified to sound more epic?).

Close up of the Avatar using it's laser then pan to the right with a close up of the Dreadnought's hull which we see a bright with magical dust? effect laser ripping through and tearing through the outer and inner plating of the Dreadnought with ease, slicing corridors and decks, with crews of Spathi, VUX, Umgah and Thraddash being sucked out into cold space, with all manner of torn metals ejected and the levels of decks themselves visible. By now the Zapsats will also begin to work, constantly pounding and blasting what remains of the hull leaving large craters which drastically increase in number with a constant barrage of ion cannons. The Dreadnought attempts to escape and the Zapsats target the engine nacelles of the Dreadnought, rendering it immobile (close up on the engines to see it pulsate before power and the drive becomes offline) We see slave crew attempting to escape in fighters (close up on Ur-Quan hangar deck), with some going for the Chmmr while some desperately try to get as far away as possible from the carnage. The fighters that engage the Chmmr are destroyed instantly by the rapid firing ion cannons of the Zapsats, and some of the fighters that escape are unlucky to be destroyed on the Zapsats return trip from pounding the Dreadnought hull, however some of the fighters do escape.

The Chmmr then moves to a safe distance above the battered Dreadnought, and with a focused beam laser to it's warp core, it explodes in a fireball, with the front part of the Dreadnought cartwheeling slowly through space. Pieces of debris from the wreckage that fly towards the Avatar are blasted out of the way by the continuous ion barrage of the Zapsats to move them out of the way of collision. The Chmmr then opens up a hyperspace portal and leaves. We cut to the fighters that escaped, their engines have run out of fuel, and now are drifting, all we can hear from them close up are various screams, then cut to black, and the viewer is left with the revelation that the ones who did die from the Chmmr are the lucky ones.

Yep, I wrote a little cruiser story being chased by a dreadnought/other ship, only to have it turn fast and shoot off a nuke.

And for another one: Yehat Terminator:

A fleet of terminators flying steady into space, only to have one of them shot at ( the shields flashing up temporarily) and the Terminator breaking formation, going off to attack it's assailant (sp?). While the camera follows this terminator, the overlay comes in at a moment that the Terminator is shot at (and firing shots itself), continuing the chase after the overlay.

Oh sure, I post a Syreen idea first, complete with timing, and it get's nothing because it's at the bottom of the page. Meep-eep posts his at the top of the page and Amiga_Nut is probably going to use it. No, that's okay, I understand. I see how it is. That's cool guys.

I'll bet you'd have loved it if I had drawn the story board out like I was going to. Sooooory for being a family guy.
[/mock hurt]

The base sphere on your limpet is visible. That can be fixed by making the sphere invisible if the bumpyness persists, or by texturing the sphere to reduce it's visibility.

Ilwrath, short and simple: Umgah drone minding its business, flying from left side of the screen to the right side, only to be overwhelmed by a decloaking Ilwrath. Overlay comes over when the decloaking Ilwrath is still partially cloaked and firing it's flamethrower. In the last few seconds after the overlay, the Ilwrath recloaks while the Umgah goes up in flames.

Sounds like you want to make the last frame before data overlay like the info screen from SC1 (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc1/ilwrtech.shtml) and you'd have something awesome.

I'd lengthen it a bit by alternating cuts of the ship to cuts of the ship being aproaced from a low angle, ala jaws. Possibly even intersperce a spider-like appendage flipping a switch or pulling a lever now and again. Story board it our proper and time it to the jaws theme.

Kohr-Ah: another short and simple. A Marauder passes close by the 'camera' like a great black shark, past the wreckage of ships floating in space. It approaches a planet and begins firing. The planet burns like the sun...

If you add the FRIED being activated to clear the debris and the overlay kicking in there, you'd have something.

I’m loving these ideas. Please try not to make your suggestions so technically complex. If your idea is simple, and shows an implicit appreciation of the timing constraints; it is much more likely I will use it. Also, keep in mind that the appearance of other ships in the animations will be rare. (To demonstrate an attribute mostly)

400 frames at 30fps
Pause at 300 (for ship info)
Eventful ending++

 
ANDROSYN SEMI-FINAL -anim (http://c-68-56-131-63.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/AndroSemiFinal.avi)

ANDROSYN WORK -anim 20.4 MB (http://c-68-56-131-63.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/AndrosynCometWork.avi)

(http://c-68-56-131-63.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/AndrosynWork3SM.png)
 ;D

I haven't read the entire thread, but:

The Druuge's vessel is meant to resemble a sniper rifle. This means the green bump is either a laser-targetter or night-vision equipment (though I don't support the latter claim). Either case being, I recommend that you make the metallic net around the green ball much thinner and the ball itself much more radiant and vibrant. As it is now, it simply looks like a tennis ball. Or a lemon.
Also, the backside of the Mauler - that red 'thingy' should also be much more radiant (like the Mycon plasma effect). It's not a tail light, it's a reactor exhaust (haven't seen the animation yet, but it should not simply be lighted up like a red bulb).

Other than that, great work. I especially liked the Androsynth bubbles, though I would add a much much longer, stronger and bigger 'comet tail' when it accelerates away - it's supposed to resemble a comet after all, and comets have those characteristic tails.

So give us an idea, Amiga-Nut, of which ideas so far you're likely to use, and which ones's your not and why. I think that'll help cut down on the number of not-what-you're-looking-for ideas.

The "Blazer" is hot! 8)

I disagree there... I've always imagined the main part of the ship to be a huge reactor with a cannon on one side and exhaust on the other, and the green bit to be the crew module. (Perhaps it could be made to look a little better, but I don't think it's worth the time considering the amout of ships to do.)

I argued the same thing before, but with that little exhaust thingie and the darker red, it looks like some huge energy container. Which is pretty neat if you're asking me. :P But I did imagine it to be like you said.

Oh, so that's an exhaust. I thought it was the tailhook where they'd hook their claims on to drag around.

Is it just me or is that second 20.4 MB video unplayable? :-\

I think you need Fraps (http://www.fraps.com/download.php) for that one. The video capture codec is included in the capture application package.

Orz Nemesis sheep spin video:

We see a Nemesis coming towards us (we're above it, to the left of it, it's flying towards the bottom-left corner and it's slightly tilted like this: --_), and seven Marines are flying with it, carrying big chainsaws and shouting, "For the Great Father and the Emperor!". (for extra effect, add a chorused and echoed "GO!" here)

The camera turns to the right and we see a Dreadnought passing by; Orz cannon shells are hitting it with brutality and the Marines are charging in with the chainsaw-holding arms outstretched forwards; they burst through the Eterna-tech hull as if it were butter and exit through the other side of the Ur-Quan ship.

Another shell hits the command chamber and the Dreadnought self-destructs. The Orz Nemesis flies through the explosion, the Marines burst out of it then sprint towards the Nemesis. (The overlay pause ensues in the cloud of hot plasma and debris, with the Marines nearing the Nemesis)

______________________________________________
VARIANT TWO (if you don't mind having multiple Nemeses)
______________________________________________
A swarm of Marines (~50) are charging through a formation of Dreadnoughts, chainsaw arms outstretched. The camera switches focus frantically from a Marine to another as they burst through the Dreadnoughts (already overwhelmed by the support fire from the Nemeses) and their fighters, leaving none alive.

Then they turn 360 degrees and return to their motherships. The original Orz theme ensues while the Nemesis formation gently passes by, above the camera.

Here's a better Orz idea:

A Nemesis moves past the camera, with the camera turning to follow it, so you see the front of the ship first, then turn and see the back of it moving away. At that point, a Marine jumps out of a hatch and moves towards you.

It's an Orz in a space suit. It moves right in front of the camera and waves. Then it reaches out towards the camera, as if the space suit wasn't in the way, and its flippers cover your view completely -

(pause to overlay ship data)

- and then when the flippers move away, the camera is looking at a giant party, with lots of smiling, dancing Orz and Androsynth.

Not to flame your idea *prepares his Ilwrath Inferno Cannon* but I gotta say...that sounds more like Disney "magic"...

My Nemesis Idea:

A group of Arilous Skiffs are flying through an asteroid field. (Don't ask me why they're there -- maybe they felt like doing some Xtreme racing...I dunno) Suddenly, there's a flash of green light, and a lone Nemesis zips past the Skiffs, launching marines (complete with an emphasized "GO!" with each one that pops out. Maybe 4 marines? or one for each Skiff that you put in.) at the Skiffs. The Marines enter the Skiffs and the Nemesis comes around to make another pass. Most of the Skiffs explode and the marines that were inside escape before they do, but a single Skiff survives (The marine that entered it unfortunately died...somehow....), and as it tries to retreat, the Nemesis turns its turret towards it and fires. At the precise moment that the Shell is about to destroy the Skiff, the info overlay comes down. After the overlay is gone, the Skiff explodes and the Nemesis returns to Quasispace.

This would be good for a "race intro" video for the Orz. The idea is, when the first encounter with a race ensues (before the screen showing how many ships their battle group has), you get to see a short video descriptive of the race's nature (or of the way you've met them etc.). I've compiled a list of suggestions (not complete) here (http://ceruopran.googlepages.com/ideasforuqmraceintrovideos).

Nemesis:

A lone nemesis flies around in space, when suddenly a Yehat Terminator enters the area, and begins firing at the Nemesis.

The Nemesis turns it cannon around and fires, whilst launching 7 or so Marines..

Fade to black, and then fade towards the inside of the Terminator. 5 Marines are standing near a corner of sorts, one of them is crouching behind a barrel. A gaping hole can be seen above the marines, and you can see the stars through the opening of that hole.
The marines are clearly discussing with eachother how to handle the situation. They're flapping with their fins, you see.. :P (inside the fishbowl that is on the vac-suit that is)

A visual representation of the situation (yay MSpaint):
(http://home.deds.nl/~megagun/temp/marines.png)
Suddenly, one marine enters the Terminator through the hole, looks around, and runs past the barrel and the marine behind it, one weapon held high in the air, as it runs towards the left edge of the screen and beyond. During the time it is onscreen, you can clearly see that it's nickname (hey, Orz marines have nicknames too!) which is shown in black print on the shoulder of the Vac-Suit facing the camera is "*Leeroy Jenkins*"...

The other marines see this, suddenly stop flappering their fins, wait a second, and then all rush in, following *Leeroy Jenkins*, whilst firing weapons..

Fade to black and back to space. The terminator explodes, marines plus debris on the left, Nemesis on the right. The Nemesis shoots at a particularly large piece of debris that is threatening the Marines.

Ship statistics...

The piece of debris shatters and wipes out all of the Marines..

End

Yes, that made it work for me. If you don't want to install fraps, just unzip The FRAPS dll from HERE (http://www.mediafire.com/?8zrwd3ostyl) into your Windows/system32 directory, and you'll be able to instantly view the video with most any application, no need to reboot.  ;)

I gotta say guys(girls), amiga laid down some ground rules:

- It is rare to see another ship, let alone entire fleets (there's goes my terminator idea, although you could rewrite it to a single terminator flying to space being shot at by an unknown (and out of camera range) ship and the terminator chasing it, shields flaring up and blahdiblah). Not to mention that this sweetens up potential new players to "can't I play with more ships at once? the animations show it!"

- the ideas should fit into about 10 to 12 seconds max, with the a clear indication of where the overlay goes (it would be awesome if it was activating both weapon and special at that point, although a bit of creative pointing to colored parts of ships could make up for that). Detailled Orz marines jumping in and out of ships would probably be quite a bit of work.

Personal opinion: I would avoid any interior of a ship. The amounts of work to detail that and possibly ending up creating 3d models of the races would be insane.

By the way Amiga, a cool effect for the Chmmr Avatar's ZapStats would be to have them dynamically circle the Avatar (basically make them "patrol" around the ship spherical). An idea is to make the Chmmr animation like the Androsynth bubble test, having the camera move from one side of the ship to the other (back lower left to top front right for example), only to have it fire its laser -> overlay kicks in -> last two seconds the camera moves further in its trajectory as the Chmmr flies off into the unknown.

Feel free to comment.

edit: typo

For a variant of ZapSats circling an Avatar without getting in the laser's way, see Slylendro's movie 1283571629 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1M_qSU-XEU).

Then a one-ship-only Nemesis video follows:
0-8.5 -- A Nemesis circles around the camera, shooting at it (moving its turret accordingly); the camera is stationary, but rotates to keep focus on the Nemesis.
8.5-10 -- Suddenly, the Nemesis turns downwards and from what was, a few moments before, its back, three Marines emerge and thrust towards the camera
10 -- AT THIS POINT, OVERLAY ENSUES, pointing towards a Marine - "*GO! GO!* Marine" -, the Nemesis' turret - "Manual Targeting 360^o Turret" - and a shell - "Shock Wave Howitzer Shell" - just launched by the aforementioned ship
10-13 -- The three Marines near the camera, getting really close (on the verge of entering the ship that the camera represents)
13 -- The screen goes static just like in the Mycon video.

Ah, a Shofixti Scout vessel video has just slipped into my mind.
0-10 -- We see a Scout being shot at by unseen Dreadnoughts from different direction; the camera remains stationary and watches the skillful pilot evade ALL the dozens of Fusion Bolts trying to hit him, while shooting with Mendokusai darts of its own
10 -- (AT THIS POINT, OVERLAY ENSUES, pointing towards the various items shown here (http://uqm.stack.nl/wiki/Image:Star_control_i_shofixti_scout_databank.png), except the Divine Wind, as we can only have one ship in one video, per Amiga_Nut's directives)
10-11 -- The Scout evades the camera through the right (that is, ->) part
11-12 -- A moment of silence ensues
12-13 -- A huge explosion occurs in the right (->) part (the Glory Device's explosion).

(http://uqm.stack.nl/files/spins/image/UQM_MeteorWORK.png)
(http://uqm.stack.nl/files/spins/image/UQM_Druuge0172.png)
http://uqm.stack.nl/files/spins/show.cgi?video/DruugeTestDiVX.avi (http://uqm.stack.nl/files/spins/show.cgi?video/DruugeTestDiVX.avi)

Hmm... when the Druuge shoots for the first time, shouldn't there be some smoke or something similar to show that it's shooting? As it is now, it looks like it used the Blade's special ability.

Yeah, that doesn't work. :P

Ah, good ol' Amiga Nut. Throwing off the screen width with his over sized WIP shots. (Insert smiley to show I mean no malice)

Amiga Nut, what do you know about animation? Your Druuge needs a take, a few frames that anticipates quick action that is to follow. In the case of the Druuge, the take can be a round puff of smoke followed by a flash of light even before the streak of the shot is seen, and backwards jerk needs to be a bigger initial jump, traditionally accomplished by actually deleting the frame with the initial movement. You don't see this sort of thing, but you feel it.

Druuge Final (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/druuge.avi)

Well, you can use low-poly models such as this one:
(http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/623/utwigrd2.th.png)
 ;D
And have them walk around the room without moving their appendages, just to decrease the amount of work needed.

That looks cool.

Fine! I'll install FRAPS.

---

Good job with the Mauler! :) Is there a higher resolution version of that?
What's coming up next? :D

  This looks fun.  I wanna make one.  Has anyone done (or is planning to do soon) the Earthling Cruiser?  That would be easy for me to model (as they have top and side orthographic views in SC1) and it's one of my favorite ships.  Can I call dibs? 

As I've mentioned earlier, Amiga_Nut, high-definition versions of the videos would be very cool, if you can spare the time and space to rerender the animations (and still have all the necessary files; how much of the Mycon animation stuff can be salvaged?). 640x480 would integrate well with UQM, and the HD versions are just too cool to not use.

Right now, I'm encoding the videos using ffmpeg (http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/) to ISO MPEG-4 Part 2 (with an Xvid FourCC identification code to get compatible codecs like Xvid and DivX to accept it). With the quality settings I'm using, the file size is about 1 MB per ship (down from 2 MB for the 3DO videos) and the video quality is as good as it gets, more or less, at this resolution; the worst problem is the chroma downsampling. I've noticed that the Mycon video in particular depends a lot on the equipment and software it's played on (mostly due to differences in chroma upsampling). On an old nVidia Riva TNT's video acceleration, the Podship degenerates into a mass of red and orange Lego bricks (essentially 160x120 resolution naively upsampled back to 320x240). Newer hardware and software fares a lot better; on a newer but cheap Intel 855GM, there's some slight blockiness around the edges of the red areas, but the actual reddish (lava?) areas are quite smooth.

Of course, this is me looking for problems with my nose only a few cm from a fullscreen video on a 15-17 inch display. For most cases, the current video quality is adequate. However, I think doubling the resolution would allow noticeably greater quality without affecting download size much.

I suppose a change of codec would be possible, but MPEG-4 Part 2 has the advantages of being very widely supported (as in I've seen cheap DVD players handle this stuff without a hitch) and not too resource-intensive (MPEG-4 Part 10, a.k.a. H.264, may have better quality but it is slow, at least with decoders we could use in UQM).

The video link there seems to be broken. :(


Indeed: Apple uses that codec, and as I mentioned, I can't even play their medium movie trailers, yet the large Mycon video plays fine.

Beautiful videos, great work there  8)

I thought to join with idea of Pkunk Fury animation:
Fury flies across the screen and fires few pellets (trying to hit ship offscreen). The other ship fires (only bullet is shown) and Fury is destroyed. Few seconds pass, while camera zooms out and pans a bit, and then Pkunk resurrects. Info screen. Fury spins and shoots pellets at the end.

Rough timing (in seconds):
0-3: flies across the screen
3-6: fires few pellets while flying
6-7: destroyed
7-8: camera zooms out and pans a bit
8-10: resurrection
10: info, rebirth trails still showing on screen
10-13: spins and shoots

Tried to make it quite simple and manageable - but destroying the ship might cause trouble.

You hear that everyone? That's what I'm talking about. A little dry perhaps. But still good. A technical direction. Spice it up a bit Jaenis and you've got this one.  ;D

For everyone else who’s posted: Just because I have not directly responded to your ideas does not mean that I don't like them. In fact, I am very grateful for all the input. I can guarantee that most of you will likely see at least some elements of your ideas in the upcoming animations. I'm still waiting for an actual storyboard.  ;)

Revise<>Repost... I don't mind...   remember that 400 frames is a SHORT amount of time to work with. Tell me what to do with your favorite ship.
Also: There are certain things that I am having great fun working on... The Illwrath cloaking device... Chmrr tractor beam... Orz marine... Arilou teleport... I am holding off on showing this stuff too soon. Don't forget about these necessary elements. (What does this ship do?) What does a Pkunk ship resurrection look like? o_O

alephresh: Yep that's broken all right. That's the old one. No worries.

Spathi Motion Test (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/spathi.avi)

Traddash Torch: flies toward camera firing (camera makes the impression as if it is dodging the Traddash peashooter), only to turn just in front of it and leave a massive fireball/firebath. Overlay kick sin here, describing the primary and special, after the overlay, the camera is engulfed in flames.

0-8 Camera is dodging shots of Traddash peashooter
8-10 Traddash lays down firewall (I never thought I'd use that word not relating to IT)
10-12 Camera slowly gets hotter while it drifts into the fire.

Amiga, are you planning on putting the overlay (with the ship specs) into those videos yourself, or is someone else going to be tasked with that? 

They look really great.  I like how you've built the spathi in 3d.  It's always been one ship I've had trouble seeing in 3d, but I think you captured it perfectly.  Looking forward to the rest!

-Kwamp

The overlay is going to be generated by code in UQM itself, so that it can easilly be modified for translations.

I was actually looking forward to a more 3d version of the Spathi. This one looks a bit too symmetrical for me. It'll do though, just a personal preference.

Amiga, got a sneak peek for the Chenjesu? It looks like it would be one of the hardest ships to model and I'm pretty curious how it is going to turn out.

(oh and I saw this topic drop down a bit so I was wondering if there was any development)

Thanks for the concern Koowluh. ;)

Modeling is tough work IMHO. I spend most of my time working on architectural and landscaping CGI. It's slow going building the ships. Holding to the original look of SC has been daunting as well as educational. I still haven't received any usable model files from anyone. I may be doomed to create all this myself. Anyways….
Here’s the first WIP pic of the Illwrath.
(http://c-68-56-131-63.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/IllwrathWORK.png)

Hi!  I've been working on Star Control 2 animations for many years. Not for a game but a fan animation(a retelling of the ending, and an embellished version that'd feature the fight that'd preceded it, and possibly the Yehat/shotfixti re-union, and MAYBE  the urquan showdown at delta(?) gorno).  I've been idle for a few years but I may be starting up again soon. I got a bunch of ship models already but most of them not all canon or textured. (KzerZa urquan, spathi(bridge & char), chmmr, syreen, yehat(with bridge & char), shofixti(cockpit &char), Samatra and Vindicator(final payload configuration).

Urquan Dreadnaught WIP... last worked on in 2004 http://zenzmurfy.deviantart.com/art/Uruan-Dreadnaught-WIP-62693226 (http://zenzmurfy.deviantart.com/art/Uruan-Dreadnaught-WIP-62693226)

Only the shofixti one is partially textured mapped so far; i want to raise the detail level of the hull some more.
The cockpit is untextured so far. http://zenzmurfy.deviantart.com/art/Shofixti-ship-WIP-62693498 (http://zenzmurfy.deviantart.com/art/Shofixti-ship-WIP-62693498)

Here's a test animation of the Chmmr & satellites:

Hey Amiga!
A recent post (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/forum/index.php?topic=1399.msg20355#msg20355) made on the SCDB gives us someone who has some models of Star Control ships.
I also think it would be worth contacting Slylendro and Tsing for their models (why haven't they sent any?).

EDIT: Model creator just posted!

Looks like my newbie attempt at embedding a youtube video failed, so heres the link for my Chmmr test animation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75rhNXJ_Vlc (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75rhNXJ_Vlc)

and here are anims of my interpretation of the SaMatra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqT_-whMOmU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqT_-whMOmU)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCH1_zHcW7w (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCH1_zHcW7w)

Heres my non-canon Spathi Eluder shooting off some missles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzvA8kwPMHM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzvA8kwPMHM)

This one is a Urquan Dreadnaught with mild embellishments. The current one is covered in nurnies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD11-3tOS0Y (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD11-3tOS0Y)

Your Chmmr is the most true to the game graphic version of the Chmmr that i've seen, although I always thought the blue in middle was one crystal with a bridge over the middle. But in truth I kinda like the smooth ivory whiteness to it. When you get to a final animation for it, tho, you don't need to have all it's zap sats fire at once. Stager them a bit.

Your samatra is... interesting. I like it when it's glowing, but in the light is just seems too... plastic. Not sure what I was expecting, but that wasn't it.

Your Ur-Quan, however, was dead on. I don't think I would have put that much bumpyness to the ship if I had done it, but looking at it I really like it. The only thing I'd say is film it so that you get some sense of the shere size and ominous presence that the Ur-Quan would like you to feel. I'm thinking something like Galvatron in the Transformers movie from 1987.

I'm going to ignore that spathi.

Thanks! and thanks for the feedback!

chmmr:
Good point about the simultaneous firing of the sats; i'll have to try out the various combos to see what i like. And best of all  we got youtube now... no more bandwith concerns as far as these short test animations are concerned. Now I wont restrict myself to stuff under 10 seconds long, but then again tests tend to be short regardless.

Sa-matra:
Yup! plasticy... Going to change that very likely. I am aiming to make the ship look bigger than I had previously planned and that requires working on the visual cues for scale and shiney plastic is probably not in the mix.

Urquan:
I thought the dreadnaught was analogous to the battlestar galactica(original one) with some trek thrown in, it had to be bumpy. So I made the runes be the bumpy parts. But the version you see in the video is the older one. The newer is REALLY covered in "stuff". I still haven't determined if it's going to work out better that way.

Spathi:
I based mine to look kinda like a jumping jack, which i assumed the design is based on originally. Some of ships i build are based on what I interpret from how they look from the sprites themselves. The Urquan Dreadnaught is an amalgam of all the urquan sprites; thats why it looks like all 2or3 versions. The Kohr-Ah I will be building will be based on the drawing i made based on what the sprite looked like to me and not the one in the manual.

I don't know what Guesst's issue was with the Spathi (the spinchter releasing the missles?), but I thought all those videos rocked.  Maybe I'm just not "in the know" as far as how easy it is to produce renderings like these, but it's pretty awesome to see the ships in 3D like this.

I'm not sure if this was ever addressed or not, but were PRR3 or FF consulted on the ship designs for SC3?  With the '3/4' view it may be possible to discern the shape of ships better than the media from SC2 alone, if they were accurate converted within the artists original intention.

Can't wait to see what else you guys come up with!

-Kwamp

I'm 100% certain that they were not, as even in top-down view, those ships barely resembled SC2 ships (especially the Dreadnought, the Eluder and the Jugger).

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed them! As for the difficulty of making them, I intend to someday eventually make a cartoon with own story/characters and making fan art is a good way to practice and learn 3D animation to gain more experience without working in a shop. It also has the advantage of being stuff I can show others while I continue development of personal projects or working under secrecy on other peoples projects.

As for game play, I think it should be 3D EVEN if it's strictly top down view. There are a lot cool effects possible with 3d games. Also, the ships can do all kinds of cool stuff that is harder to do in 2D than 3D, like eject 3d debris, billowing smoke trails, engine thrusters, manuvuering jets etc.

As for what else I am doing with Star Control related stuff, here are some more old animations( Sorry... been idle for last few years):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wecC2GWkulo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wecC2GWkulo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEvxl8lJRD4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEvxl8lJRD4)

Beautiful. I love it. I thought the model for the shofixti was too flat, but, the animation was great. Actually, you are a fantasitc animator. Seeing your character work I'm really impressed. Doing a dramatic fly by is one thing, but what you do with characters is beautiful.

And for the record, I don't have any issue with the spathi. It's beautifully animated. However Kwamp said it first that the design was non-canocial. Personally, I always liked the non-symetry to the ingame graphic for the Spathi ship. Kwamp's seems a bit SC3ish.

And I agree that the Ur-Quan is a bit like the original Battlestar, right down to the launching fighters.

Wow! Thanks! :)  Hopefully I can return to doing more work on my SC2 fan film in the near future. I think I have been working on SC characters ever since  I was apalled by how bad the SC3 puppets looked.

btw: here's an early speech motion test of a Yehat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJPEyJuw4vM (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJPEyJuw4vM)


As for canonal stuff,  I tend to deferr to the sprite itself, in addition to what does in the game  with its written description. Hopefully my embellishments are plausible extrapolations on the existing designs or descriptions of the designs in the manual or in-game.

Very nice.

Anyone know who did this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApJyfcprb30&mode=related&search=

I'd say that Sa-Matra looks pretty good

-Kwamp

That's Tsing's video. According to the file in the zip, it was last modified in Nov 2000. The file has been on
http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/fan/video.shtml (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/fan/video.shtml) for many years.

"attacking the sa-matra and failing" by Tsing.

These two were news to me...

Vizualized Khor Ah (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYOxidL-kGY)  -jan 2007
Star Control II - The Motion Picture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL0enr4udjo)  -aug 2006

Out of all the fan work out there. This is the one I've got to give props to.
Slylendro shows off a dazziling display of skill and effort.
The Fall Of The Alliance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-kL_XXxecU)

p.s. Why don't you guys let me pimp your object files. The less modeling I need to do, the faster the videos will get done.

Which objects are you looking for? and when do you need em?

Models I have already done (or working on) and don't need.

Illwrath
Mycon
Androsyn
Druuge
Spathi
Syreen
Pkunk

So, everything else. :P

Cool! and when do u need them?

Usually the answer to that kind of question is: "Yesterday."

Maybe this time "rather sooner than later" or something like that is more appropriate...

Good thing some of my stuff is 4-10 years old!  :)

HEY YOU, YEAH YOU!! THE GUY OR GAL THAT THINKS THEY CAN DO 3D ANIMATION AND MODELING. SEND THOSE MODEL FILES!! NOW IS THE TIME!!! LET'S SEE WHAT YOU GOT!! EVEN THE PONAF HAS NO LINKS TO THE ACTUAL MODEL FILES; WHICH IS WHAT I NEED MOST!!

WHERE TO SEND:
Attach your: .lwo .dxf .3ds .obj or any other format you can think of and send them right away to:

metallicmedium /\T yahoo D0T com

Now here's the thing... I may need to augment or change things around in the geometry. Total credit will be given to the original creator. I can include the WIP of each model file here if said creator doesn’t mind my critique.

Likely things wrong with YOUR model files:
1. Wasted geometry (Detail that is hidden behind other polygons and adds wasted time to all renders.)
2. Illegal polygons (Polygons with points that are out of plane.)
3. Redundant geometry (This is likely from a n00b modeler and can include 1 and 2 point polygons that were not intended.)
4. Poor detail (Not canon, too simple, Ect.)

BUT SEND THEM ANYWAY! DO YOU KNOW A GUY WHO KNOW’S A GUY? E-MAIL THEM! DO IT NOW!

      Thanks!

Canon, damn it, canon!

  Maybe he meant the Druuge Mauler's main gun.

  I haven't had much time to work, but here's what I have done so far for the Earthling Cruiser:

(http://img107.imageshack.us/img107/2281/earthlingwip2sr4.th.jpg) (http://img107.imageshack.us/my.php?image=earthlingwip2sr4.jpg)

  WOW LINK ROT!!!!  >:( ....  Ummm so..... I'm still doing it... not going to make that deadline though.... Instead of rushing things.... I'm going to take some sweet time. Should be peeling eyeballs by spring. It's all about quality... I'll fix the dead links here tomorrow perhaps.. Still looking for model file contributions. If you have any model files you wish to give away. Please attach and mail to me.

Got into  Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/join/?u=fd4def303fcf4606ac9fe723326e5e0e) 3D virtual world recently. Super neat IMO and a dangerous distraction.

Hi Amiga_Nut,

Looks like you've been successful in collecting some ship information including models, sketches, etc. Do you have something like a repository set up where the files can be accessed?

Regards,
-ptx

I've added a couple of models to http://uqm.stack.nl/wiki/3D_Models. They are low poly and simplistic, but if you need them - they are there.

-ptx

Thanks ptx for that post! I'll have a good long look at those soon.

Project Archive (http://www.metallicmedium.dnsdojo.com)
Project Gallery (http://uqm.stack.nl/files/spins/)

Big thanks to Gekko for his donation of this Utwig model. More to come I hope. ;)

Animated Utwig: UQM_UtwigTest.gif (http://c-68-56-193-60.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/UQM_UtwigTest.gif)
(http://c-68-56-193-60.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82//Utwig_Forum2.png)
(http://c-68-56-193-60.hsd1.fl.comcast.net:82/Utwig_Forum1.png)


Moderator edit: turned the animated gif into a link; 1MB images in postings is not a good idea.

That is some pretty hot stuff. Have you been in contact with the Sins project  (http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4119.0)by any chance? Perhaps you could help each other out...