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[NickD]

Hello,
I present you my recent work - an end of 19 century torpedoboat, designed by me.
She is mix of Yarrow and Schneider designs, customized by me at my liking.
The work is almost completed, i need to add a boat and some little details, and also finishing the painting - including textures on some details.

But I need some advise: First - is someone knows how to make anchor chains? The chain plugin didnt work properly, and i need not a straight, but curved chains. If it is possible, I want to avoid making them detail by detail on hand.
Second - I'm not satisfied from renders - the details look unnatural on this lightning, and some curved or edged details look at render only like plain colour - their edges cant be seen, no shadows or other signs showing position of the edge - for example you cant see edges on charts and flags boxes on the bridge - they look plain brown. Can someone advise me how to make the render better?
      
Overall look from the bow:


View from another side:


Side view:


Afterdeck detailisation - dual topedo tube, mast with crane, rear bridge with projectors and torpedo reload on a cart:


A close look to the bridge and forward 6pdr Hotchkiss guns and ammo:



Best Regards,
Nick

[floyd86]

Nice work on the details. Are you going to texture it, or leave it this way? I think with textures it would look awesome!
As for the lighting. Have you tried an Ambient Occlusion pass? Using a AO-pass as an overlay will make the shadows and edges come out better. You can read some thing about ambient occlusion in this topic.

[NickD]

Many thanks for the advise! I'm trying AO-pass now, but it takes too much time to render on my laptop (30mins or more, still not seeing nothing), so i will have and post the result later. I suppose these best quality renders must be done on my desktop machine

About the textures: I've textured some details already (wooden planks, cloth, etc.), but not everything worth full texturing, because these ships were thick painted. You can see here:

But i thought of adding some rust and identification text on the boards (like on japan pre WWII ships) so i will texture some large areas. Do you can advise me about some usefull UV-mapper program, because i want to place these textures precisely.

Meanwhile, i was able to add some new details to model:








 

[floyd86]

What kind of AA settings are you render at? Because after half an hour you should see atleast something... :s

I think uvmapper is a pretty decent uvmapper.
and remember: even paint has a texture

[NickD]

Sorry about delayed answer, i was unable to write earlier.
I've tried ART Ray tracer renderer, AA parameters - 64 samples per pixel, Multy-jittered sampling method.

These options not work even on my desktop too. Anim8or stays at 25% cpu , constatnt memory size and freezes - esc key for cancelling render didnt work too.
Maybe i mismatched something, somewhere?

Many thanks for great texture link, i will use some samples
Thanks for UV Mapper suggestion too - i've finised the model and now experiment with the texturing, i hope soon you can see the results.

Best regards,
Nick

[daniel99]

That's true. Art Ray tracer renders a bit slower. You need to have a powerfull computer for faster results. But sometimes, for complex scenes, I use a technique for fast scanline render, when there is a dead line for the project, for achieving almost AO results. I paint the textures in such a fashion to resemble AO..

[NickD]

Yes, ART tracer works on 4, 9 and 16 samples per pixel, i suppose more will work too, but for too much time.
Here is the final model without texturing. I will texture it soon.



I have another question: i read in the forum about the ART tracer, but isnt it suppose to make shadows too?
I didnt find how to cast shadows on the model.

[floyd86]

Sorry about delayed answer, i was unable to write earlier.
I've tried ART Ray tracer renderer, AA parameters - 64 samples per pixel, Multy-jittered sampling method.

These options not work even on my desktop too. Anim8or stays at 25% cpu , constatnt memory size and freezes - esc key for cancelling render didnt work too.
Maybe i mismatched something, somewhere?

Anim8or freezes alot while rendering. This isn't always a problem. Just wait awhile and the render will finish and anim8or will 'unfreeze' . (doesn't always work btw :s)

[NickD]

Yes, it behaves same way on my PC too.
Sometimes I manage to render a picture like this:

Sometimes it just hang up and i can't figure the pattern of hangups.
Anyway, i will try to render until it manage to complete the render.

Can I ask few more questions, please?

At first, what is the way to render with shadows? The older version of Anim8or renders the shadows in ART Ray tracer, the latest not, and I cant figure how the shadows may be turned on.
The second question is : Are the opaque textures (Alpha blend?) possible in Anim8or? I need such stuff for adding wake and smoke to the ship.

[floyd86]

I like the render nick, too bad you can't easily render more of them.

About your questions:
At first: are you object casting/recieving shadows? and are you light(s) casting shadows? Else it might be possible that you have shadows turned of in your render settings. Go view>preferences and make sure that shadows are check on in your file output.

You can use black and white textures as transparency maps on you materials: double click on you material to open your material editior. Click textures. Now a new windows opens where you can load different textures. Now load you black and white image in the 'trans' -tab. Black will be see through and white will be visible.

[Arik_the_Red]

I've been watching this and enjoying the work, but not made noise until now.  Looks really nice, Nick... Suggestion... If you notice on the photo of the "real boat", where you comment on these being thickly painted... there is a texture to be seen that might be nicely emulated with bumpmap. I did something similar to that for a surface of my guard tower, where I created a bumpmap by doing an HSV noise and blurring it heavily, then mucking around with contrast and brightness and getting the effect attached.

I started with a gray field, and went through the steps as below... to end up with the effect on the sphere at the final image. Subtle, but gives a bit more "realism" to the surface.

I know, Nick is the last guy I should be telling anything, but... just had to pop off

[NickD]

Many thanks for the advises!
The texturing seems to be ok, it was very easy to use transparent textures, when you know how to do it! Thanks a lot!
I've made first attempts to make wake and smoke, and it seems to be ok. I'll just need to perfect smoke and add stern wake, but it is now only matter of time.



About the rendering - yes, the shadows are enabled. I've added a single light, activated lights casting of shadows, but now when using ART tracer, anim8or crashes!
Using scanline renderer gives the render you see above - without shadows.

Arik, thanks for advise, I will try your method. I'm now preparing the texture in Photoshop, using your sample, so soon i will be able to post the results. I suppose it will fit great for gray (war) paint scheme, while the black (standard) camouflage will not be affected much, but here i plan to add some rust

I'm accepting gratefully advises, I work with Anim8or for some time, but lat weeks I learn much new things!

[Arik_the_Red]

either way, I like your work, Nick! As for the bit made, color is irrelevant, the texture's meant as a bumpmap so it can be applied to any texture. In the case of that sphere, I used GIMP to make my texture and the final file was applied only to bumpmap, choosing a random gray for the visible coloring in the main Surface Properties window.

[weirdguy]

Fire when ready, Mr. Griddley.

[NickD]

Well, I'm done with the model. Only markings and flags left, but i will deal with them later.