Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine Hold your horses, Bob. I'm not quite done yet. I plan on adding the "medical crane" and the "new panel from Turnabout Intruder" today. These were just some WIP shots I wanted to get up after a (quite literal) full day's worth of work. My meticulousness is really starting to add considerable time to the project. I spent my entire day off on this yesterday, and only stopped for a two hour nap. Started when i woke up around 10 am, stopped when i went to bed around 3 am. Which, by the way, constitutes a good day off.
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine I suspect you've confused "omitted" with "hasn't gotten to it yet." (Donny can't do all of the Sick Bay adornments first.) I notice he hasn't added the Robiani-Dermal Optic device controls, nor the emitter unit, for that matter. The mirror is missing from the door jamb into Dr. McCoy's office, and neither of the two instrument stands is there. The door to the sliding glass door cabinet is still missing, nothing is on the shelves yet, and the open/close button is not there yet. He used the first season slide switch on the overhead monitor instead of the third season design. I think we should just give Donny some time to actually do the work before we get too critical of the unfinished-ness. More information about the Jefferies Seperator ("medical crane"?!) from "Journey to Babel" in this post from a little over a year ago: http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=6025597&postcount=47
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine It's quite all right, GSchnitzer. Robert and I have become quite the research partners since this thread started. I take it as inquisitive excitement, rather than criticism. Thanks for the post on the Jefferies Seperator! Never realized that vial of red liquid was the human elements of Spock's blood being filtered out. (Glad I know its official name now, as well)
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine Looking good so far!!! Can't wait to see the video (and if you have the status board moving, lol). Also I am looking forward to the next room . . . whatever that may be!!
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine Yes, you're right and I apologize. I wasn't sure whether it was still WIP or final, hence my confusion (and thanx for the "Jefferies Separator", I shall - of course - use that term henceforth ). Donny, I believe I know that feeling from the Deck 6 plan and analysis I just finished. Try to take longer breaks to resupply yourself with energy. After 50 years a couple of days more or less shouldn't matter that much. Bob
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine Here, gentlemen, is your Jefferies Separator. Most of the lettering is guesswork. I could only make out "Trans.-Plas. Sep. 147a" on the arm's upper left corner. I also filled it with red blood instead of green, since we are on a ship mostly comprised of humans.
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine Absolutely astonishing that this is what can be done with a gaming model engine! I guess the future of interaction and 3D realism really IS in the gaming world!
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine Absolutely. Real-time stuff is getting almost indistinguishable from rendered stuff. The potential is enormous.
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine I'm just afraid my poor 7-year old PC won't be able to handle it, even with a slightly newer video card. It was struggling with that other lower-poly Enterprise/Shuttle simulator.
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine I've been working with game engines since 1998, and I'm still floored by what the top of the line game engines, like UDK (Unreal Development Kit) and Crytek, can do. I'm doing things in UDK that I only dreamed about a few short years ago, with more detail and more polygons packed into each area. Wonder what it will be like in another 15 years? Holodecks, here we come!
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine I struggled with the lower-poly simulator (Gambit Realms NCC-1701) you're talking about as well, whereas my project is running flawlessly at max settings on my PC. The game engine the Gambit Realm guys used may not be as optimized as UDK, and the fact that they were having the entire ship loaded at once didn't help either. I really should release a demo soon, just to get an idea of how older PCs are running my project. If it helps ease anyone's mind, my PC is 2 and a half years old.
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine Good to know. Maybe there's hope for my old clunker after all!
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine Best pic I can locate off the top of my head for that front lettering is from "Spock's Brain:" Top and bottom buttons look to be labeled with random numbers and letters with some superscript characters (as usual). Middle button looks to be STARTFLO or STANIFLO or something like that. Having helped to light actual TOS-era sets, I can tell you, Donny, that one of the things that's missing that will make the sets pop is using a cucoloris in your lighting. Instead of smooth, bland (albeit colorful) walls, I think you need some "texture" to make the rooms look like something is going on there, instead of just looking dead: Looking fantastic!
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine I agree that my sets could use this. I just have to find a way to do it with the gaming engine. The obvious way would be to actually make a 3d "cookie" mesh with a spotlight entity behind it. The problem, however, would be that this "cookie" would be visible somewhere in the set. However, UDK may have a way to add a texture mask to the light entities themselves. I'll have to do some research and fiddle around with it a bit. I'll be sure to post any results here. Thanks, Greg. Your help has been invaluable!
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine Actually, zooming in the middle button says "STANUFLO." Top and bottom buttons look like some kind of chemical formulae (something to do with blood filtering?). A real doctor could probably make sense of it.
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine Actually, it's my understanding that it was common practice during the production of TOS to label things with random numbers and letters, sometimes with subscript. Examples include wall plant ons found in engineering, corridors, and elsewhere, the sickbay exam room panel seen in one of my screenshots above, and bridge display graphics. (As a matter of fact, and feek61 can back me up on this, one of the seldom seen bridge display graphics was comprised of nothing but groups of these random letters and numbers.) Therefore, I doubt any doctor would be able to make sense of it. If I'm correct, isn't this where the GNDN acronym came from?
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine @GSchnitzer: I did some research and found out that I can indeed apply textures to lights (special materials called "light functions") and this process if perfect for achieving a cucoloris effect. You can see the results in the screenshot below. I've left the effect pretty subtle, but I think it gets the job done. Let me know what you think. You'll see below that I'm also experimenting with some in-game post-process image grain. Opinions on that are welcome. It gives a sort of "TV" feel to it. (You can get a better sense of the image grain by clicking on the image below and viewing the image at it's original 1920x1080 size)
Re: TOS Enterprise Interiors -- Unreal 3 Engine The cucoloris effect and grain looks quite splendid. It takes some of the CG edge off. The blood in the container is a little creepy though