Creating Curved Horizons in Max (Death Star issue)

[Jedilaw]

Hello all,

Some of you may remember the Death Star Greeble Pack that I released a while back. It is designed to be used in creating large-scale Death Star surfaces as image backdrops, or for creating Death Star trench models.











At any rate, I've never been able to figure out how to create a properly curved horizon using these tiles. I've tried subtle application of the spherize filter in Photoshop as a post effect, but that has never produced very convincing results, at least to my eye. Max has a spherize modifier, but the poly count for a full landscape is pretty huge, in the 3 million range, so creating one object and applying a modifier to it would likely cause Max to have a stroke, or set my computer on fire.

The same issue applies to making the trench run, but in slightly different fashion (the curvature only needs to be along one axis because of the narrowness of the trench). Fractalsponge has suggested using FFD modifiers to scale a set of wall tiles against a template curve, which I think might work okay for still shots, but I'd like to figure out a way to do the same kind of perpetually-moving background animation trick that IlM did for ANH.

Anyone have any thoughts to share? I'd sure appreciate some advice on this one.

[biotech]

Well it seems to me that you only need to have the real greebles in the forground, you could create a normal texture map, or a bump map, based on your greebles for the distance shot, apply that to a globe or just a curved section of polys, and that shouldnt give your pc a stroke.

[spudmonkey]

A bump/normal map would definitely help for the poly count. However, there is a simple solution; build your area, then apply a bend modifier to the whole are, setting the middle to the focal point of the camera (ish) and bend in the direction that the camera is pointing. a 3x3x3 FFD would also work, but the main thing is to align the direction of the modifier to the camera. Not exactly easy to explain, but the X/Y should be pointing in the same direction to the camera, but there should be no rotation about the X axis so the Z plane remains flat...

[Jedilaw]

The problem is that the bend modifier, or the FFD modifier, would be applied to a 3.7 million-poly object. That's just a ton of calculations to ask Max to make at one time (since millions of verts would have to be rearranged and have their positions recalculated). If it could be applied incrementally, a piece at a time, maybe. But I don't know of any way to adjust the settings for the modifier such that part of a curve is made in one pass, and part in an adjacent pass, with everything remaining lined up as it should.

[biotech]

Could you use a fish eye lens on the camera?

[Jedilaw]

Originally Posted by biotech

Could you use a fish eye lens on the camera?

Actually, I'm wondering if ILM did something similar when filming the model. I know the surface model wasn't curved, but the trench run has apparent curvature. Maybe it's a combination of lense curvature and focal length...

[chrono]

Originally Posted by biotech

Could you use a fish eye lens on the camera?

DOH! I was gonna say that!

Ever try putting these on a sphere and not a plane?

[Dallidas]

Why dont you just break the object up into several long strips and apply the curve modifier to each strip? That way it wont set your PC on fire.

[Jedilaw]

Originally Posted by chrono

DOH! I was gonna say that!

Ever try putting these on a sphere and not a plane?

Yeah, I tried that using a mesher, but it didn't produce aligned results.

As for doing things in separate strips, that thought occurs to me, but I don't know how to configure the settings in such a way that the curve continues smoothly from strip to strip, without seams or misalignment.

One thought did just occur to me: what about using a very subtle circular gradient as a bump map? Apply the map to the whole landscape, and the renderer should raise the elevation slightly towards the center, right?

[mJAstro]

If you use the strips and apply a bend modifier on each strip couldn't you just clone one and use the same pivot point to just rotate the clones by X degree?