Griff's normalmapped ship remakes

[Griff]

hi bigmike20vt
no they don't really fit in with these ships so i don't think i'll include them, the come from an early attempt at re-doing the ship set before Ramon posted a sneak peak of his Anaconda remake and showed us all how it should be done (the secret is - the original designs are beautiful as they are) as you've pointed out the griff krait and boa as just too different, they've lost the original design

[bigmike20vt]

cool, so then we could have griffs originals oxp pack

and then griffs "specials" oxp

<if you are game >

once again, good job!.

[ADCK]

Actually, I'm curious about what Griff plans to do after he finally completes all his ships? You going to do all the other versions of Elites ships? Like bushmaster, and other older ships from EliteA etc?

Or even Frontier/FFE ships?

...

Or does Griff completing the whole set or the original ships herald the coming of the apocalypse because only by making a deal with the devil was he able to produce such awesome ships? O_o

[Griff]

it wasn't so much a deal with the devil, more of a deal with the devs! It's only because of the OpenGL awesomeness they've added to the game plus all of Ahrumans example shaders and help that i've been able to do any of this.

After finishing the shipset i probably won't do another one, not for ages and ages anyway, i'll more than likely just hang around chipping in graphics and ships for whatever crazy new OXP idea someone has on the forum.

[Diziet Sma]

well, it's safe to say i won't be winning any prizes for my screen shot skills (i've no idea how a_c takes such amazing shots, as soon as i turn off the hud to take the pic i fly past the object or i hear it bounce off the hull )

I'm pretty sure a_c gets his shots by using the bullet-time feature (commonly known as Time Acceleration Factor) to slow Oolite down to 16x slower than real-time.. that ought to give you all the time you need..

[another_commander]

OK, tutorial time.
Here are the tricks of the screenshot trade, free of charge because you are all great guys and gals

0. Make sure that the OXPs System Redux and Debug are installed. Lately I shoot without SR, because I find I quite like the procedural planets, but still it's a good idea to have it, because of the moons it creates etc. and it looks cool anyway.
1. Assign specific roles to the ships that I want in the screenshot by editing their shipdata.plist.
2. Find systems in the eight galaxies which have nice default light and star color / quantity settings. My favorite one is Edrebi, a little anarchy in G5. This system just begs for screens. Birera in G3 is a very beautiful one too, with a blue tint in its stars, looks like a movie of sorts. There are plenty out there to choose from.
3. Increase star_multiplier_count and nebula_multiplier_count to populate the system with some nebulae and loads of stars. The last batches of screenshots I did have been made with star_count_multiplier = 20 and nebula_count_multiplier = 2.
4. Launch debug console.
5. Launch Oolite. Set shaders to full, if supported. Load up a save game in one of the prettified systems.
6. Go spaceborne and find a place that looks good enough as environment for a shot.
7. Spawn the ships you want to display. I use the built-in macro :spawn shipRole, where shipRole is the specific role from step 1, or a self-made macro called :sp5near shipRole, which spawns 5 ships of the selected shipRole very close to the player. :sp5near is defined as

Code: Select all

"sp5near"	= "system.legacy_addShipsAtPrecisely(PARAM, 5, 'abs', [player.ship.position.x, player.ship.position.y, player.ship.position.z+5])";

And now the fun starts.
8. Target the ships you need to take pics of and execute the magic console command:

Code: Select all

player.ship.target.setAI("dumbAI.plist")

This will stop the target ship and set it to rotate. Now you can approach it to a comfortable distance for a shot.
9. Now it would be a good time to switch off the hud. Pause and press "O".
10. Once happy with the scene, watch a bit the rotating ship and pick the moment that you will take the shot. Use TAF when the right moment approaches, but make sure to switch off the FPS display before the shot.
11. Start pressing '*' rapidly a bit earlier than the actual desired moment of shot. Normally I save three or four pics for one scene. This ensures that you have grabbed the right moment in time and sometimes you find that one of the "other" shots is actually better for what you want to show.


*Advanced Tip*

12. If I really want to get funky with it, I spawn a Coriolis somewhere in the distance, target it and have the ship.target.explode() command ready at the console. Just before taking the shot, I detonate the Coriolis and start screenshooting like mad. This creates explosions that last long enough to be able to have at least one good shot in the batch. This is how the Cobra-Explosions-Moon shot was taken. BTW, the system in that shot is Birera and the Griff Cobra is a self-made external view, which I call 'Cinematic'. The definition for this view in case anyone would like to toy with it is

Code: Select all

{
	view_description = "Cinematic View";
	view_orientation = "0.0 0.35 1.0 0.05";
	view_position = "-10.0 10.0 150.0";
	weapon_facing = "FORWARD";
}

Easy, no? It is actually much simpler than it looks. Come on, have a go, you know you want to.

Oh, and before I forget, taking screenshots doesn't always have to be complicated. Sometimes it's as simple as taking a single shot while flying in space, no director's set or anything. It still looks good

[Cody]

Brilliant a_c... I'll be saving that for posterity. Thanks!

[Griff]

I've been busy tidying up the thargoid shader, i managed to get the effects maps mixed up and accidentally used the laser glow map for the 'aargh i'm dying' effect map, looks quite neat but might send us all into seizures if i added it into the oxp so i made a small mov instead, make youself a nice cup of tea and have a view - warning - gets really strobey!!
http://www.box.net/shared/8xyvy8bn5c

[Commander McLane]

Oh, yeah!

[Edmund]

TRONtastic!!!!

[Svengali]

I've been busy tidying up the thargoid shader, i managed to get the effects maps mixed up and accidentally used the laser glow map for the 'aargh i'm dying' effect map, looks quite neat but might send us all into seizures if i added it into the oxp so i made a small mov instead, make youself a nice cup of tea and have a view - warning - gets really strobey!!
http://www.box.net/shared/8xyvy8bn5c

Hehe, nice one, Griff!

[ramon]

coooool

[JazHaz]

Who's this handsome devil?

That's odd, isn't the decal flipped horizontally from the one you use on the forum?

[JazHaz]

Now that Winston has re-enabled file uploads on the Wiki, I have uploaded all the Griff ships (as found on page 1 of this thread).

View all the latest images here: http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Special:NewFiles

Thinking maybe we can use this images on Ship Data screens on the wiki in replacement of the old ones?

[Griff]

That's odd, isn't the decal flipped horizontally from the one you use on the forum?

yes, good spot! i haven't checked out the shader in game yet, that's a screen grab from inside AMD's rendermonkey program where it think i've set the scene up with the wrong type of model coords resulting in the mirrored texture flip