Cob3: Faulcon de Lacy or Cowell & MgRath?

[DaddyHoggy]

Actually, I always interpretted it as FdL being more of a high-end / specialty manufacturer that didn't have the necessary production facilities to do the job themselves. Or that they were using something that C&M produced and were heavily modifying it, kind of like Fischer does with Lotus. Either of these approaches would also explain why the Cobra Mk III is such a great all-around vessel of the originals.

So this would be AMG improving Mercs kind of idea? Sweet.

[JeffBTX]

Well, whether it is C&M, or FdL, initial experiments indicate that the medallion / inset / whatever design on the dash is impractical. By the time it is turned into a HUD, the lettering is either too small to be readable, or so big that it looks kind of cheesy and ridiculous. Mainly this is due to the lettering following the semicircular outline of a circular medallion. I WAS thinking about gold lettering for "Faulcon de Lacy", chrome lettering for "Cobra Mk III".

A squarish inset is still possible. But I won't bother with who manufactured the ship.

SO... I'm still going to ray-trace an opaque dashboard, but there will just be a metal cobra / inset somewhere on it... probably lower right corner, with "Cobra Mk III" below it in raised chrome lettering.

After experimenting today, I have to re-think the radar display.

[ADCK]

I always wanted to make a Cobra Limited Edition, with Hood Ornaments, Tinted windows, the kind of Cobra you'd expect to see on Space Billboards But never got around to it, maybe one day I will.

[Wolfwood]

EDIT: Nevermind, I just had a breakthrough. The Paint Shop Pro manual was making it out to be harder than it really is. I have it mastered now, it's simple.

I trust you found the simple sliders to adjust the opaqueness of the different layers? (they exist at least in PSP X and up)

[JeffBTX]

I always wanted to make a Cobra Limited Edition, with Hood Ornaments, Tinted windows, the kind of Cobra you'd expect to see on Space Billboards But never got around to it, maybe one day I will.

... don't forget the pair of fuzzy dice that hangs from the Cob3's rear view mirror ...

[JeffBTX]

EDIT: Nevermind, I just had a breakthrough. The Paint Shop Pro manual was making it out to be harder than it really is. I have it mastered now, it's simple.

I trust you found the simple sliders to adjust the opaqueness of the different layers? (they exist at least in PSP X and up)

Wolfwood,

Hi,

The "problem" is: limited experience, in *this* subject. But I am getting a handle on it. Throughout my experiments today I figured out how to do a lot of things. Sooner or later, I might actually get to PLAY Oolite and advance my savegame towards the Constrictor Mission.

I've been using Paint Shop Pro for years (always as a registered owner, currently I have PSP 5 patched up to 5.03); BUT I never messed around with layers or masks. I also do raytracing with POV-Ray... and I use those two together in various ways.

If you import a (palleted) image into a POV Raytracer scene, and it needs to be partially transparent, you specify the pallet index(s) (there can be more than one) that should be transparent. Very simple.

So if I have a RayTracer source file, of say, a modelled volcano, hot lava, a tornado, lightning hitting the ground... and a modelled King Kong the Giant Gorilla (in heat, no less, and hopped up on Viagra)... and I want to import a picture of my "favorite" politician into it... I can get an image of (insert politician here), just standing there... (screaming, if I can find a picture), fill the outer parts of the image with white (or pure green or any other color)... just leaving the politician... turn it into a GIF (or any other 8 bit palleted format), and in the Scene Description Language, when I reference that image, I specify the pallet index(s) that need to be transparent.

The PSP manual mainly talked about masks (a little), layers (a little), didn't provide enough info on alpha channels (from a tutorial standpoint). So I was trying to do things the hard way, and "fumbling around".

But I have had an excellent book, "PSP Power" on CD-Rom for years, never looked at it until last night. "All things have been explained". I am making hud-things with transparancy now, no problem.

The other thing I experimented with today was making the instrument panel / dashboard / components modular. I can RayTrace as many images as I want, cutting up what I want into "pieces", and piecing them together via hud.plist. This is going to make it easy. Individual parts can be as opaque or as transparent as they need to be.

[DaddyHoggy]

Off topic ( ) I downloaded POV-ray and Moray today for my work Vista machine, it doesn't seem to work very well - if I open up one of the pre-included .mdl files in Moray and ask it to render it says it can't find pov-ray even though 1) I've pointed it at the right directory (I installed in a non-default location) 2) it does actually open a copy of POV-ray before it tells me it can't...

Can you point me at a good place that will quickly get me up and running with this?

[side note: in the gallery it was good to see how many of those images were created where Wings3D was the source of the 3D models]

[JeffBTX]

DaddyHoggy.... sorry for the possibly late reply, I know how it is when one needs answers.

Sorry, I haven't used Moray since it was a DOS program. I don't use any modellers or POVray "front-ends" anymore. I just plan and do everything in my head, and write source and render "on the fly".

=====

FIRST of all, is POVRay working okay? Or is it JUST Moray that isn't working? Again, I can't help you with Moray.

Let me know... I don't know how much time you've had with it... best way to check is to start POVRay, File > Close All (in case there are files in the que... POVRay remembers the last file(s) you had open, and will re-open them unless you specifically close them in POVRay).

Then File > Open, one of the simple files included in the "scenes" folder. I'd suggest scenes \ incdemo \ colors.pov, if you are new at this. It renders quickly, you will see results immediately. This way you will know if it is working OK.

[DaddyHoggy]

DaddyHoggy.... sorry for the possibly late reply, I know how it is when one needs answers.

Sorry, I haven't used Moray since it was a DOS program. I don't use any modellers or POVray "front-ends" anymore. I just plan and do everything in my head, and write source and render "on the fly".

=====

FIRST of all, is POVRay working okay? Or is it JUST Moray that isn't working? Again, I can't help you with Moray.

Let me know... I don't know how much time you've had with it... best way to check is to start POVRay, File > Close All (in case there are files in the que... POVRay remembers the last file(s) you had open, and will re-open them unless you specifically close them in POVRay).

Then File > Open, one of the simple files included in the "scenes" folder. I'd suggest scenes \ incdemo \ colors.pov, if you are new at this. It renders quickly, you will see results immediately. This way you will know if it is working OK.

Thanks for the speedy response (seriously) - POV-Ray seems to work fine - I've rendered the woodenbox and biscuit demos - although I can't work out how to make them bigger/higher res (320x200?). Anyway, I don't want to derail this thread any further - I will try and get time to play a little on my own and then PM you, if that's OK?

[JeffBTX]

Sure, feel free to PM me. I'm about to go to bed, it's 09:43 A.M. here (shows you what MY sleeping habits are like!) so I might not answer for a few hours.

In the meantime... to select resolutions, look in the box near the upper left corner... the one with the down arrow at the right edge, with a drop-down list box.

For example, mine currently says "1400x1050 A0.3 M2" (not a standard setting, because I made modifications).

That's how you select resolutions.

The box just to the right of that is the command window. All sorts of things can go in there... but for now, if you enter:
-f
then it will DISPLAY the rendering, but it will not save the image into a file. If you enter +fn, the image is saved as a .PNG, +ft it is saved as an uncompressed TARGA (.TGA) file, if you leave the window blank it will be saved as a .BMP.

The resolutions in that resolution box are determined by the contents of quickres.ini, which you can edit if you want.

And if you need a nonstandard resolution, what you put in the command window will override the resolution box. The resolution box might have 320x200 in it, but if I enter this in the command window:
+w9937 +h23 +fn
... then it will render a 9937x23 .PNG file. And that would be strange.


My quickres.ini currently looks like this (and this was so modified that you may as well say that it was just re-written - it will look different than yours):

Code: Select all

[320x240, A0.3 M2]
Width=320
Height=240
Antialias=On
Antialias_Threshold=0.3
Sampling_Method=2

[640x480, A0.3 M2]
Width=640
Height=480
Antialias=On
Antialias_Threshold=0.3
Sampling_Method=2

[800x600, A0.3 M2]
Width=800
Height=600
Antialias=On
Antialias_Threshold=0.3
Sampling_Method=2

[1400x1050, A0.3 M2]
Width=1400
Height=1050
Antialias=On
Antialias_Threshold=0.3
Sampling_Method=2

[1680x1050, A0.3 M2]
Width=1680
Height=1050
Antialias=On
Antialias_Threshold=0.3
Sampling_Method=2

[160x120, No AA]
Width=160
Height=120
Antialias=Off

[320x240, No AA]
Width=320
Height=240
Antialias=Off

[160x120, AA 0.3]
Width=160
Height=120
Antialias=On
Antialias_Threshold=0.3

[320x240, AA 0.3]
Width=320
Height=240
Antialias=On
Antialias_Threshold=0.3

... So have fun with it, and PM any questions that you have.