Doktor Gonzo

Also really cool to see the Ghost get some love -- VERY nice!

some first results with converting Rod's awesome Regult model into Maya:

Yeah, Jay's project IS rather similar, albeit more ambitious in scale. I was REALLY looking forward to seeing him put out footage. Unfortunately, it looks like his pro career is keeping him busy at the moment, so we might to to do our modest best to put out something similar!

Oooogh, can't WAIT!!!

Hmmm, sounds good! I'd love to learn about matte painting, it's an aspect of this kind of work that my own education didn't cover at all And I know what you mean about keeping up with it, this is the first time I've dusted off these models in a long while, and the stuff that I've been doing for work hasn't really allowed me to exercise the same skill sets. As for what shots to do, my overall notion (it's far too loose to call it a project) is to do the battle from episodes 1-3, VFs versus battlepods and fighterpods on and over South Ataria island. I'm open to either recreating specific shots in 3D, or doing new shots that fit into the same scenario. I'd like to try for as close to photoreal as possible, since other stuff (like Aria) has already covered the more anime look so very well). My intended starting place was to recreate the sequence of three or four shots from the intro, where Hikaru's fighter transforms to Gerwalk mode, dips into the streets, then runs, rolls, and takes down an ascending battlepod. I think that would look fabulous in full 3D. I've actually got most of the models I'd need -- the VF, a pretty detailed street. The main element I'm lacking is a battlepod, and I'm hoping to plug that gap with Rodavan's awesome model. Speaking of which--

Chillyche, I'm not really any good at cartoon-style work and I have no 3DS experience, but if we can figure out a Maya-to-Max conversion pipeline, then I'll happily lend you my VF-1 model, or model you other stuff that you might need.

Funnily enough, that's EXACTLY the project I had in mind as a pure blowing-off-steam hobby exercise -- recreating some of the battle shots from the first 3 episodes in 3D. I've laid hands on CityEngine to generate a background setting, I've still got Wolf's awesome Macross model too (and I hope he won't mind me using it, with proper credit given), we've all seen Rodavan's totally awesome Regult, and there's no shortage of great vf-1 models floating around here. Maybe we should try making a group project out of this!

And awesome to hear from you and from Rod! Now we just need to get Datterboy and Vinnie and Les Parisek posting some stuff too, and it'll be just like old times around here!

Sure thing. For the battroid pic, no real post - also no real lighting! It was I guess a supremely lazy way to get some fast full-color results. The color posed battroid is a comp of three passes -- a straight-up color pass with whatever default lights Maya creates, and comped over that in Photoshop, the ambient occlusion pass from above set to Darken (for soft shadowing) and a pass done with Maya's Physical Sunlight Environment lighting mode, which creates a soft, glowey, washed-out look. Comped that on, boringly enough, Soft Light, to give some softness/warmth. For the pic of the battroid riding on the fighter, I did a little more in Photoshop. My machine is elderly and it didn't have enough ram to do a sunlight simulation with two valkyrie models at once, so I made do with just the color render and the ambient occlusion render (which is why it doesn't look as realistic or as naturally lit as the first one.) I merged those two layers. I duplicated the layer and, on the lower down of the two, did a motion blur in the direction of the fighter's travel, size about 15 pixels. Then I offset that layer so that the entire blur was "trailing" the unblurred layer up top. I gaussian blurred the top layer a little also, so it would look a little less out of place over the background. I also dropped its opacity down to 95%, so a little of the color from the backround tinted it. I added a very, very light grain via filter. Then I just dropped in the gunfire and exhaust, and airbrushed in some rudimentary contrails. Think that was pretty much it

"Overtechnology"

And just to be really silly:

Thanks!

Hey Temjin, got any more?

Nevermind, figured it out. Also found the file I used to generate the battroid ambient occlusion render and did one in full color:

Silly question for any of you guys who use Maya -- I just tried rendering NEW shots of this, but it's moved hard drives since the last time I opened the file, and it's having trouble re-associating with the textures in its new location. Anybody know if there's a way to do a batch find-and-replace on the texture paths in Hypershade? thx, DG

Rummaging for more new/old stuff.... don't think I ever posted clay renders of this model, so... here they are

Nope. Though I believe there's a decent pipeline via the .fbx format, which is Autodesk-proprietary.

Maya, with some occasional forays into MotionBuilder (the valk is rigged for use of mocap data, though the only thing I've ever done with that is a frankly kind of disturbing animation of 2 valks in Max and Milia livery dancing to Fire Bomber songs....)

I do too - though, admittedly, when I made this model (a long time ago now!) I think I settled on this approach because several people on this board had already built unassailably cool VF-1 models. I knew I couldn't outdo those, so I instead opted to go in a direction they didn't, with a "realistic" and "fully functional" model...

I did, though as you can see in this new render, I've just tweaked the model to have it take a little more after the 1/60 v2, especially the head placement (sorry, Jenuis )

Hikuro, Good call! It's actually a series of cel-shaded orthographic renders of a 3D model (that doesn't "cheat" on parts resizing/interpenetration between modes and so is subject to the same constraints and compromises as a toy...)

I'll chime in as well -- lovely stuff, Dante! And on a related note: Rodavan, is there any chance that I could borrow your lovely Regult model as well? I'm feeling an itch to play around with some Macross-y cg again myself....

....I'd also happily welcome criticism on any point where the lines or proportions are inaccurate.

Also, I believe, the predecessor design to the just-revealed T-50

Hopefully somebody has a use for this...