Oolite Bulletins

The graphics in Deepspace are definitely impressive. I am really excited about what can be done at both Deepspace and Oolite. The winners are all of us.

those deepsapce Thargoids look mint!

Thanks I was actually going to re-design the Thargoid ships to be more metal like and conventional. The original are supposed to look like an organic metal skin sort of like the Vorlons in Babylon 5. I was going to introduce a bumpmap too to give it a more organic feel. But then decided I wanted a more traditional metal design. Hearing someone say they like it I might not go down that route then Maybe I've been looking at it for too long ha ha.

I have known about Oolite for a few months too but only just found these forums, doh. I know, not very observant of me

That looks amazing. I have appropriated the wallpapers provided for my desktop.

Thanks, yeah those Desktops are pretty sweet. I have it as my desktop too ha ha. I think they came out pretty well.

Opinions on how Thargoid should look are devided on these forums as well....
Myself like the boxy metallic look (as depicted in the sketches in the ol' manual) as well as the current colourfull look.
Others prefer a more biological look.

W.r.t. the thargoids, I'm fascinated by the yellow/green gradient texture of the ventral part of that Thargoid - would that work with green/purple? - what about a thargoid utilising that coloring effect for the whole body...?

I quite like the main body, but it's seems just slightly busy...

I take you point. I agree, thats why I was thinking of a more conventional look. Maybe just simplifying the main body texture to be less busy, I'll have a think about it. May still alter it to be metal like.

Off on hols now guys, so I may not reply for a while, keep the posts coming though.

Have a good one mate.

i'm still of the opinion the Tharg ships would be insectile/chitinous rather than metallic (though glossy beetles can look metallic!). tried doing a couple of textures for the redesigned Thargoids but they weren't very popular. i think w/ the new shader stuff coming out the Thargoids would be one of the ships most benefitted by clever new graphic effects, to give them a for more alien look as opposed to the standard human ships.

oo, i like the idea of the thargoids having having that beetle 'shell' look, you know the one that changes colour between green & purple - is it possible to do this in a shader? maybe by blending between texture maps depending on camera viewing angle? Then add in some 'close encounters of the third kind' flying saucer neon effects too, heh not asking for much am i!

Griff wrote:

oo, i like the idea of the thargoids having having that beetle 'shell' look, you know the one that changes colour between green & purple - is it possible to do this in a shader? maybe by blending between texture maps depending on camera viewing angle?

Yes. Working out how exactly to resopond to the camera angle is the tricky part, although there’s probably research on this. Two textures wouldn’t necessarily be needed, although using one as an environment map would be one way to implement it.

It would look best with normal mapping, of course.

sorry for derailing the thread! heck, i thought there was an example of this 2 colour shader in my shader book but i was mistaken, there's a 'velvet' shader example but it's rather vague. i can't find out the name of the effect i'm looking for, it's sort of like the 'fresnel' shader at the bottom of this page http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manua ... se_Shaders
Edit: no, it's iridescence. and it looks amazingly complex!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridescence
some (directx shader language) info on it here in the ShaderX2 free chapter section http://ati.amd.com/developer/shaderx/index.html

This might be of help. Please do a search for "brdf nvidia", and choose the first link (I can't post links here since I'm a n00b).

What you're looking for is "bidirectional reflectance distribution functions", or BRDFs. You should be able to find one for something like purple velvet and overlay it atop a green shiny surface to achieve the effect you want. The above-referenced stuff is nice because it's quite trivial in its requirements, so it'll run well on even very slow graphics cards.

You guys have done an amazing job on Oolite, btw.

cheers,
-Nick