New Constantinople 3D WIP

K

Kilrathi_Princess

1st Lieutenant
NEW 3D PROJECT

Well this is bugging me... does WCP have artificial gravity on all the space stations. Because New Constantinople rotates and the ships seem to be hanging on in the lower G area, but the inside makes it seem like they have artificial gravity.

It would be strange to have a station rotate pulling you one way and then add artificial gravity pulling you down the other way so now I'm wondering where the interior shot is coming from.

I don't know but I think the inner ring would be better right? Also the speed that the stars rotate at, how would that help determin where the inside shot is from?

I rotated the image so that the rotation makes sense to me if it was using rotation to make the effect of gravity.

newconst2.png

newconst3.png

newconst.png


This will be my new 3D project... I just like making places to go and land ships and explore and it would be nice to be able to get some different shots on NC.

:)


You guys were very helpful in this thread, it gave me a lot of ideas on the size of this station.
http://www.crius.net/zone/showthread.php?t=18223
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EDIT:

And yes I realize the floor of that interior shot is not curved and doesn't suggest that the image would ever work rotated the way I have it but if the station was large enough, then the curve would only be subtle.

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Howdy! Welcome to the forums. Cool project - a nice unexpected choice for a rendering.

My guess would be that the intention was for the concourse to be on the 'outer' ring. Here's a clearer picture of the in-game sprite for New Constantinople where you can see the large window divisions:

privnewconstantinople4.gif


Here's a very messy close-up (I'm awful with 3D objects) of the original mesh - no windows in the inner ring:

messyconst.jpg


Wing Commander usually has anti-gravity without explaining it - while it'd be a cool and realistic touch for N.C. to be rotating to generate its gravity, there would still be hundreds of other ship and station designs that don't work that way.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Awe jeeez, can an admin please add an "R" in princess. :) I was having a gawd aweful time trying to log in and didn't realise I spelt my name wrong to begin with. :(



Thanks for those close ups, I only had some poor quality far shots of the stations so I wasn't sure about those even being windows :)


Could it just be that New Constantinople might be built earlier, or by a different race, or was taken over and renamed, or is just an older station or something, as a way to explain why it might use rotation.

I guess I could always make two versions :) odd thing is those windows and the size of the ships in the docking bay would mean the ships in the bay are small or those windows are very very big or they are actually many levels of windows that blend together on such a low pixle image.

I kinda see the intention though an I guess thats what counts.
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EDIT:

We must have ninja mods/admins here... they work very fast! thanks for the name change :)
 
Well got some more work done.

I'm not sure how to get the texture so that it doesn't distort as it gets to the outer diameter, I may have to apply the textures in segments.

The modeling is not quite done, I need to add more detail to the center spires and also begin to hollow out an interior along the rim.

These aren't the final textures, just ones I had laying around.

I took a photo of the sky to get the background stars. long exposure time. Lots of red and blues and whites but hard to see now.

new_constantinople_01.jpg

new_constantinople_02.jpg
 
Cool renders! -- 3D stuff always amazes me because I have such trouble with it!

Could it just be that New Constantinople might be built earlier, or by a different race, or was taken over and renamed, or is just an older station or something, as a way to explain why it might use rotation.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't worry too much about it - it's entirely possible that Wing Commander uses both large wheel space stations to generate gravity sometimes and then some unspecific magic technology at others, depending on design.

Historically speaking, N.C. (can you tell that I'm worried about my ability to consistently type Constantinople properly?) is probably pretty new. Expansion into the Gemini Sector didn't start until 2639, only thirty years before Privateer.

I guess I could always make two versions odd thing is those windows and the size of the ships in the docking bay would mean the ships in the bay are small or those windows are very very big or they are actually many levels of windows that blend together on such a low pixle image.
Click to expand...

Which window are we talking about? The ones on the concourse are massive multi-story plates that look out into space (you can see a little person standing by the mission computer at one point). The only ship that passes is a Galaxy... which doesn't give a very good idea of scale, since we don't have actual size numbers for it.
 
It actually looks kind of neat with the distorted textures. Makes it look gigantic, somehow.
 
Argh, I had such a nice render in Cenipak and after I uploaded the file to youtube it got all pixilated :(

Anyways here is an animation of what I alread have above, nothing new added really.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhDVVm0pO2I



Don't mind the gratha it stole the textures from my stations and it doesn't look good but I just left it alone since the model was giving me trouble when I tried to bake a different texture to it.
gratha_Pass_Render.jpg

gratha3_Pass_Render.jpg

applied "auto levels" in photoshop
gratha3_Pass_Render-1.jpg

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Right now the speed of rotation is about 45* / 30 frames ( 1 sec)

I thought this was close to the speed in the game, but I haven't really played it recently to confirm... Looking at the speed in the animation I made it seems quite fast, there is nothing really massive about a fast spinning object. If B5 Sections rotated any faster B5's scale might get distorted.

I'll consider slowing it down more if;
A: I rig a camera inside the center of my model and it's much faster then the games speed, or B: I chalk the rotations speed in the game up to a limited number or frames or a frame rate which for some reason made it appear to rotate much faster. The other possibility is the CPU speed causing the game to play much faster then it should overall...
I guess I just posted this to get some opinions of the problem. :)
 
Hey, do you have the original video around at a higher resolution? Or your original pictures or newer pictures with your new textures?
 
Yeah I still have the original in a few formats because I was trying to find which one uploads to youtube best and not get killed by the compression.


I'm going to redo the animation, more lights maybe a star in the BG if there was one in the game and some interior shots of the gratha looking out.

The Target VDU recognizing NC and then the Com coming on, maybe a bit worried that a kilrathi ship is in the area or just radio chatter. Then the Gratha flying through the center of NC, barely missing a large ship leaving NC, and drops off a pod/package at high speed and then maybe someone already docked would have a tractor beam to catch it. Then that person is detained and so is the package but someone else working for security is there to help him get out.

The fralthi jumps in, the bridge is quiet, your inside as it watches the gratha on approach in the distance and confed or militia chasing it... then you see the guns hitting the gratha sheilds and it start to take damage then the camera cuts back to the fralthi interior and you see a flash of light and one of the kilrathi on the deck makes a low grroul sound and turns and walks off camera. Then someone gives an order to jump again.

Thats just the intro so I can do the short credit list.

problem is it took a good half a day to render that short scene you saw and it wasn't even on the best detail yet :(
oh here is the other version, same vid but I made a better sound effect, and used in game music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0M6pFHrrlM

I'm still kinda upset that the camera kinda stuck to the grathas motion a little too closely, my fault but fixible... I need to figure out a way to make a better chase camera because with just key frames for some reason parenting causes the kenimatics? do weird things, like you could rotate the camera 15 degrees and then if you move the gratha it would cause the camera to do a 360, or jitter even though you didn't tell it to do that.
 
Out of interest do you use 3dMax or Maya to animte the scene?
Did watch the animation and like you mentioned it was fast but rendering takes a lot of time. And looking at the light effects it takes even more. Great job so far will be interesting to see how it will work out in the end :)
 
XSI 5.0

Maya is nice, and I have an easier time animating in Maya because it's not trying to animate for me like XSI does, especially with joints.
 
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