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Topic: ship videos? (Read 13604 times)
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seankreynolds
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I'm not sure how the .mov was encoded; the conversion process to AVI was uncompressed, but the original may have some form of compression.
I've just upgraded to the new version of my software; I'll be in soon. With it I can export directly to AVI, which should take care of the problem.
I normally can do up to 60 fps ... the ones I posted are at 15fps because I didn't know what frame rate you were using and I didn't want to make huge test files.
So as far as the main videos go, we're talking a simply spin on its axis with a starry background, like the original 3DO files?
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seankreynolds
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OK, I have all my new software so I can do the stuff I was talking about. I've done a couple quick test renders of the Earthling Cruiser: no compression, 30 fps, 320x240, one in .avi and one in .mov
http://www.seankreynolds.com/cruiser/
Take a look at those and let me know how they work for you in terms of programming stuff. Again, this is a low-rez render with a placeholder background (a default "nebula" background image that comes standard with my 3D software).
In particular I'm curious how well looping these animations would work on your systems. If you loop the file from the end to the beginning (as it would if it were just a simple 360-degree spin like the 3DO ship movies) and it hiccups on your system, we'll definitely want to go with some other animation event for these things (such as a flyby or demonstration of ship attacks/defenses), otherwise you'll get that hiccup every 6 seconds (the 3DO version had one full rotation after 6 seconds) and that'll be yucky.
I'm not adverse to a different animation event; for example, I could have the cruiser fly into the foreground from the background, firing a missile as it does so, then "park" in the foreground, perhaps blasting an asteroid with the point-defense before assuming a static pose at the end of the file (at which point you'd probably want to hold the animation on that last frame, or transition to a still-frame rendition of that exact frame if that's not feasible). Or I could have it fly away off-screen and you could still loop the animation, so it would continually come into focus from the background, flyby, and exit frame again (in which case and animation hiccups won't be obvious because you'll only have the background image in frame and that will be the same at both ends of the file).
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seankreynolds
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Ah ... I'm giving y'all the uncompressed version so you programmers can do what you need to do with the uncompressed version to make it work. In this particular case I need to know if there are looping problems on your end with a full render.
In the future I'll just render fewer frames for the previews, but I needed all frames for this situation.
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seankreynolds
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Hmm, I see no such link in any of your posts in this thread.
Edit: Ah, I've looked around and found what you're talking about.
Edit: But there is no Earthlink ship there. And they're all in MAX format, which I can't read anyway.
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« Last Edit: June 30, 2005, 09:39:22 am by seankreynolds »
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seankreynolds
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{Both of those pages have a model pack with a cruiser in them, I don't remember which one is better. And it shouldn't be much trouble to find a 3d object converter (there are tons of freeware ones around) and convert it to something standard your modeller should be able to read, such as .obj.}
The problem is that most or all of those are in 3D Studio Max format, which is a proprietary format and there aren't any 3rd-party converters out there; you basically have to have a Max user save the file in a more generic format such as OBJ or DXF, which usually ruins its utility in two ways:
1. It goes from a dozen linked parts (in the Cruiser's case, most people would model the body as one piece, the nacelles as separate pieces, etc., with small details as separate parts added to each component piece) to one very complex piece that can't be broken into its separate parts. That in itself isn't a major problem because we're talking about a complete and finished model, but when combined with ...
2. It removes all textures, giving you a flat gray object that you have to retexture ... which is a MAJOR problem because now that your shapes are gone you have to figure a way to make it work, and it's basically impossible (for example, you'd normally wrap a cylindrical texture around the nacelle, a disk-like texture around the bridge, and so on, but you can't do that any more when the nacelle and bridge are now parts of a giant complex object).
Basically it's just easier to create your own model at this point.
{Out of curiosity, what modelling suite are you using? }
Strata 3DCX.
{EDIT: Just found the model I was thinking of:
http://mypage.iu.edu/~djtavria/vegastrike/shpearcr.3ds}
Yep, I can open that (I can open 3ds files no problem) but it's a melded and textureless object (problems 1 and 2). Here, compare how that file opens as one textureless melded object ...
http://www.seankreynolds.com/cruiser/shpearcr.jpg
... to how my file opens, as a set of textured objects which I can manipulate separately ...
http://www.seankreynolds.com/cruiser/sean.jpg
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« Last Edit: June 30, 2005, 06:35:49 pm by seankreynolds »
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Deus Siddis
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That's not 100% true, you can import 3ds files in blender 3D(freeware) and they'll come across as separate objects. No textures, lights or cameras though. MAX files cannot be imported, period.
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seankreynolds
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That's why I said "usually." 
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