USS Grandeur - One... More... Time!

[DiSiLLUSiON]

I quite like the cyan glow; somehow, it looks more sophisticated.

[largo]

cyan does look good, but the ship all kind of fades into a monotone.
red makes more of the details pop.

if you're messing with it anyway, turn-signal amber might be nice.
but not if they blink, too.

[Psion]

largo wrote:

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cyan does look good, but the ship all kind of fades into a monotone.
red makes more of the details pop.

if you're messing with it anyway, turn-signal amber might be nice.
but not if they blink, too.

This caught me off guard and I lost it.

However, I second experimentation with amber. And perhaps a red-purple. Or a gradient between colors ... white hot, fading to a bluish, fading to red?

[Cary L. Brown]

Vektor wrote:

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I myself have complained about the garish red/blue color scheme of TNG-era starships making them look like space-going neon bar signs. That's why I've designed the Grandeur's nacelles to be a bit more understated, minimizing the amount of glow visible from any one direction.

I just don't care for the blue version. Might be able to improve it with a lighter, more cyan hue, but I'd still prefer the red:



Much better.

Oh yeah, definitely...

BUT...

Since you're "playing" with color (and since your technique... which I have to admit is pretty damned ingenious... any chance we can see the "geometry behind the screens" just for a reference?) appears to lend itself towards the "different lighting schemes" approach...

How about trying a gradient light source, with higher intensity being more "yellow" and lower intensity being more "dull red?") This would give an overall "amber" appearance not dissimilar to the TOS nacelle caps (which remain my favorite, by far) while still remaining distinct.

Anything to make it look more like "swirling, incredibly hot materials" rather than "Red L.E.D.s"... which bug the #@$* out of me...

[Santaman]

Hmm, maybe make the inside black and the mesh glow red? would in any case look very different to whats normally done. also would be more "armoured" looking.

[Vektor]

Cary L. Brown wrote:

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...any chance we can see the "geometry behind the screens" just for a reference?

Bussard innards with color tinted material applied:



With spotlight turned on:



With diffusing "lens" restored:



It should be noted that the spotlights include only the bussard innards for illumination and do not cast shadows. Also, the shape of the light pattern from the spotlight is achieved by way of a grayscale light mask map. I could probably do something similar by asymmetrically scaling (squishing) the spotlight gizmo and rotating it a little to get that oblong shape, but it's easier to control with a mask map.

How about trying a gradient light source, with higher intensity being more "yellow" and lower intensity being more "dull red?" ...Anything to make it look more like "swirling, incredibly hot materials" rather than "Red L.E.D.s"... which bug the #@$* out of me...

I'm really not too fond of the swirling gas effect for the bussards. I prefer something that looks more like a set of glowing coils or elements, with some depth behind the diffusers. The fact that they aren't merely point sources helps to avoid the LED/light bulb effect, I think.

[DiSiLLUSiON]

That method is simple genius.

[Vektor]

Well, it depends entirely on the diffusion effect of the Arch & Design material applied to the "lenses." It also comes at a cost; that last image took 4 minutes, 35 seconds to render at 800x600 and about 80% of that time was just for the lens. In wider angles where the bussards are relatively small in terms of total image real estate, it's not such a big deal, but up close they really bog things down.

[DiSiLLUSiON]

Hmm, 80% is a lot.

Could one get the same effect with a lightbox plane behind the 'coils', keeping in mind that the coils would have to be much thinner, get progressively thicker in the front and the amount would have to be much, much more? You'd need to arrange groups of these thin coils to get the 'banding' effect. You wouldn't need the diffusion effect and it won't have to render shadows. Though perhaps this would lose the 3D effect too much and I don't know if the added geometry doesn't simply slow the render down again.

On second thought, I have no idea how one could do it differently. Seems to me like your method is the one that takes the least effort yet gives a great visually interesting image. That's why I called it genius, even if it does take a while to render.

[DiSiLLUSiON]

Something different: Would it be possible to make a small render with the warp glow of the nacelles disabled?

I'm very interested in how the cyan collector looks without the blue warp grille behind it; perhaps that would make things 'pop' again, as some have said. I have a suspicious feeling that the curves you've added around the grills are visually interesting enough, but I don't know for sure.

[Vektor]

^^ Aside from an Arch & Design material with glossy refraction, there's only one other method I know of for creating a diffusion effect that looks half way decent. You can apply a falloff opacity effect to the objects behind the bussard lens which makes their edges appear fuzzy. That's the method I used on my old Vanguard model and my original TOS Enterprise model. It only works well with certain shapes, however, mainly spheres, where the surface is guaranteed to curve away from you no matter what the viewing angle. It also fails to cast realistic shadows from the sun or whatever the light source happens to be (when, for example, the nacelle casts a shadow onto the secondary hull or interconnecting dorsal).

DiSiLLUSiON wrote:

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Something different: Would it be possible to make a small render with the warp glow of the nacelles disabled?

I'm very interested in how the cyan collector looks without the blue warp grille behind it; perhaps that would make things 'pop' again, as some have said. I have a suspicious feeling that the curves you've added around the grills are visually interesting enough, but I don't know for sure.

I think the bussard color has been decided and we're sticking with red. Besides which, I have no intention of leaving the warp grills dark.

[DiSiLLUSiON]

No problem.

[lonewriter]

really nice job.

[Vektor]

By request of The Commander/The Citizen:



Click for full size.

[lonewriter]

Vektor wrote:

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By request of The Commander/The Citizen:



Click for full size.

that is really nice! I have to save that, maybe I can use it in the tech manual which I need to get back to working on.