Oblivion bubble ship

[Patrice Terrier]

Thank you for the new shader!

However the change you have done for stray light, breaks too much of the existing projects , thus (until we have a new global parameter)  i keep the previous "gl_FragColor = fragmentColor;".


I have a few things to fix onto the platform, but i shall post it soon.

[Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky]

My friend,

We're definitely moving away from the immediate mode and pure Lambertian and Phong shading towards more modern, capable and versatile composite material shading with rich texture sets. Therefore our normfrag_shader becomes predominant in our rendering pipeline. It is the main tool we should concentrate on, and the other render modes shouldn't prevail over that main tool regardless.

In fact it is very easy to adapt all our existing .MAT files to this new reality. If the .MAT file doesn't have any special lighting specs, just set its #straylight meta parameter to 50 and there you go exactly with its former 100% lighting. If it formerly was 75% then set it to 25 or 30 and there you have its original light intensity again. No other light or material adjustments are necessary.

FFP and normalmap-less Blinn-Phong use other shaders that aren't affected by this quick fix, so that the simplest models (like e.g. the Iron Man model) will be rendered exactly as before in both FFP and PPL modes of operation.

[Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky]

Note: for better reality the bubble ship should not be exactly centered to the middle of the platform 

LOL had Tom's clone landed his bubble ship so carelessly just one single time, he would've been disqualified and incinerated by the aliens immediately.

[Patrice Terrier]

Here is the release candidate version for both "static" and "flying".

I learned how to create ambient occlusion materials with c4d, and this release candidate version is using several revisited meshes to better match the movie original (especially around the rotor tail section, and the static platform).

[Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky]

Oh Patrice,

The model looks simply exquisite... I bet here we got by far the best bubble ship on the market!

And it was real fun to work on this model. Thank you again for the great job you've done!


(The bluish haze we're currently trying to emulate with lighting is in fact a post-processing effect. When working with my earlier immediate mode engines, I used to simply render a final semi-transparent viewport-sized tinted quad to produce the exact same effect. If we run any Oblivion movie screenshot through the Auto levels filter in Photoshop, Gimp or Paint.NET, we will get that bluish tint removed and we'll see the scene as it used to look under the original movie studio lighting. )

[Patrice Terrier]

The color of the original model under studio lighting is almost white, with very few surface artefacts, on the platform the white color turns to light blue due to sky reflection, see the attachment.

Indeed the main_body surface, and both bubble engines should be more glossy.

[Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky]

Auto levels in Paint.NET: studio lighting, true colors, no more light-bluish post-processing tint. Streaks of dried dirt seen vividly all over the left and right engines, winglets, fuel tanks, back leg, and gun turret. Just like they would be on any existing combat aircraft.

[Patrice Terrier]

Our model should match the movie tint, Tom Cruise himself looks like a bluish smurf.
That is the way the whole movie has been rendered, and we are in a fictitious earth, after a major nuclear conflict that put a lot of dust in the air, changing the light color for ever, except in the idyllic refuge area where one of the clone is listening old good vinyls

[Patrice Terrier]

I am reworking the drone model to add a little fellow to the flying version…

[Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky]

I'm looking forward to seeing the result.

[Patrice Terrier]

First look…

The use of AO makes a huge difference !!!

[Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky]

It looks very good indeed!

From what I can see, there's not only AO but also that crop_ks specular map used?

[Patrice Terrier]

Here is my first WIP of Drone166, feel free to enhance some of the textures, because this is my first shot. 

I have totaly reworked the model 

[Michael Lobko-Lobanovsky]

Patrice,

Your work is very impressive.

I don't think I can really improve on what you've done.

I have just one request.

Look very attentively through the controls that affect your AO baking. There must be some selector or input box or whatever that controls the width of grayscale margins that should surround each occluded fragment in the AO texture atlas. (see engine_axe_occ.png below with 6 px wide margins around each fragment of the engine axle mesh)

These margins should be approx. 5 to 15 pixels wide depending on how precise the mesh's UV mapping actually is. The margins help to disguise the abrupt, jagged borders of AO texture areas at places where the occluded fragments overlap. The jaggies generate ugly texture seams similar to those seen in Bad_AO_Texture_Seams.png below.

Blender has its AO margin width set to 16 pxs on default. Your AO maps have either a 1 px wide margin or no margins at all.

[Patrice Terrier]

Mike

The main difference between C4D and Blender, is the default background color used in the AO texture.
Blender uses white, C4D's black.

However the Blender GUI is so much complex compared to C4D, indeed i couldn't figure how to use it 

I have also a pixel tolerence in C4D, however that's not enough, the only way to solve the issue is to rework the texture with PSD using the layer outline with white color, to antialias the border section.
This is what i am doing now...