Starchaser

[Kev01590]

Hi all,

My second project. I love this ship, especially 'cos it's nearly all straight lines :D
I'm not so hot at doing objects with curves yet!

Hope you like it anyway.

[TheMightySpud]

OMG!!!! I love that movie........sweet looking model.....you gonna rig the engine pods? :-D

TheMightySpud

[Kev01590]

Yep, definitely a cool movie!

What do you mean by rig the engine pods? (Sorry, it's gone 10pm and my brain's shutting down!)

Cheers.

Kev

[evil_genius_180]

Can't say I've ever seen the movie, but your model looks great so far. :thumb:

[Kev01590]

Thanks eg180!

The movie (Starchaser - The Legend of Orin) was a cartoon that came out sometime after Star Wars. Apparently it was in 3D at the cinema. Never saw that though.
Very similar story to Star Wars too: young man (think Luke) born in the mines who knows nothing about the universe finds mysterious sword (think lightsabre), meets smuggler with ship (Han and Falcon). They're joined by a Princess (think Leia) and a Fembot (think droid) in order to defeat the evil Zygon (think Darth) and free the universe.
Because it was made to be 3D, all the spaceship sequences were really good (for their time, that is), although I can't find any decent pictures of them on the web. I've nearly worn out my video trying to get this thing to look right!

[TheMightySpud]

As far as I can remember, the engine pods rotated around their axis? I could be mistaken, it has been a while since I saw it.

Interesting Fact, this movie is very often stated as being the first animated movie to use CG in its production.......this is however incorrect......it was Transformers : The Movie :-D

TheMightySpud

[Kev01590]

As far as I can remember, the engine pods rotated around their axis? I could be mistaken, it has been a while since I saw it.

Ah, yes. That they did. I'd love to make them do that, but I haven't got as far as being able to animate anything yet. Maybe in time...

I never knew that about the Transformers movie though. Looks there's going to be a little bit more CG in the next one! :D

[TheMightySpud]

Well, I'm not sure about anything in trueSpace anymore (haven't used it since 4.2) but, when you're done, I'd be more than happy to get it into Lightwave and see if I can get the engine pods sorted :) (either way I'd love to convert it when you're done :))

I'm purposefully staying away from any Transformer movie conversation as I could and probably will rant for hours on the subject.

TheMightySpud

[Taranis]

Oh Cool .. there was a someone doing this before the crash . Nice to see it back .. I also second the motion in regard to helping :) In Lightwave that is..

I was thinking of having a go at this .. how about some wire frames :)


EG180 will have a good idea about rotating in Truespace:)..
and on youtube.

YouTube - Starchaser : The Legend of Orin - Trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=masIAvbP2fA)

[TheMightySpud]

I demand Updates LOL....

On the subject of Transformers btw, I'm not allowed to talk about it around my friends anymore LOL......I have a habit of going off on a mad rant for about 3 hours. LOL

Just watched the new trailer, and even though Peter Cullen is doing the voice of Prime, they've still buggered it up.....anyway.....

Loved seeing the trailer for Starchaser.....you should be able to get some really nice detail ideas from watching that, lots of ship close ups :)

TheMightySpud

[Elowan]

...
On the subject of Transformers btw, I'm not allowed to talk about it around my friends anymore LOL......I have a habit of going off on a mad rant for about 3 hours. LOL

I'm with you. I would do the same.:thumb:

[Kev01590]

when you're done, I'd be more than happy to get it into Lightwave and see if I can get the engine pods sorted :) (either way I'd love to convert it when you're done :))

That would be good! Might be a while though. Between work, DIY jobs and other chores, I don't get nearly as much time as I'd like to do this stuff.

Sorry about the lack of communication. Again, it's due to work!

Here's some more pictures. It hasn't changed much!

Taranis, was this what you meant be wireframes, or do you mean side/top/front/etc profiles?

Cheers.

Kev.

[Taranis]

Thats great but top and sides would be super to have also .. I really fancy building this myself .... and perhaps add a few tweaks of my own :)

[Kev01590]

Are these better?

Don't know how accurate they are as there don't seem to be any proper plans, but it seems to look in proportion with the film.

Kev

[Taranis]

perfect Thanks ..I want to try it myself .. these are very handy .. I was able to get a copie of Video in a second hand shop.. a while ago.. so you work look close as your going to get ,,Nice work

[vividevolution]

Awesome to see this ship!
Great work , Dude.

[Dr-Timelord]

holy ***** i've been looking for this film for AGES now. and could never remember the name of it.

i've even found the trailer on youtube

YouTube - Starchaser : The Legend of Orin - Trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=masIAvbP2fA)

[SakuraTakeda]

FYI, I just made one myself. you can find it in the LWG3d.org resources area

[gwiber]

If Prime can be any number of Truck types from a Diesel to a Fire Truck,. and Megatron can be a Dragon, a tank. or a plane. And all of those series can be popular (and are), I don;t have a real problem with the way the movie is showing them.

As long as the stories and personalities are basically the same. I have no problem with it.

Unless you are one of those who stil can;t get past it, you probably like new new Battlestar, you got over them redoing it. Just sit and enjoy the story for what it is.

[Kev01590]

FYI, I just made one myself. you can find it in the LWG3d.org resources area

That's nice! I sort of stopped working on mine 'cos I couldn't decide how to texture it but yours has turned out really good. I didn't get around to doing the cockpit either, but I think I'm going to have to have a go now!
Did you have any troubles working out the angles of the panel lines? They seemed to change direction depending how the ship was viewed in the film.

Kev.

[SakuraTakeda]

Oh it was hell! you and I are/have made the same ship, yet they will look different because of the artist's inconsistenty when they made the movie.I modeled the panels by using the side views from when it was crashed and the underside from when it had landed at the spaceport. I've got a bunch of screencaps I can send you if you want. I'll keep an eye on this thread and help where I can too. :thumb:

I also made some textures for the ship because I didnt want to stick with the flat white that it was in the movie.

[Kev01590]

Thanks for posting those pics. They've given me the motivation I needed to do some work on mine.

I used the same scenes for doing the panels, except I had to make do with pausing the video! I'll try and make some time to do some more work on my model (if my wife lets me!). Think I'll leave the cockpit for the moment though as I'm still learning...

[SakuraTakeda]

no problem :)

I've moved on to the Gunstar from The Last Starfighter. Wish me luck ;)

[Kev01590]

Gunstar, isn't that the one that did the Death blossom thing? That was a nice ship too and another one were you can go further than the film did with the textures. After seeing your Starchaser you don't need any luck! I'll look out for some pics.
When I get time I want to try the Discovery from 2001 but that's probably going to be way off yet. Too many DIY jobs to do!

Have fun!

Kevin

[Kev01590]

Finally got off my backside and did some more stuff on this (thanks to SakuraTakeda for giving me the incentive). Added the legs and the ramp but haven't worked out how to animate them yet! Also, I still need to do more work on texturing around the engines, legs and ramp and probably lots of other bits too.

Here's a shot of it with the legs and ramp down and another against a background I found on the net to see how it would look.

[Taranis]

Cool Nice to see you get back to this

[Dannage]

You brought Arthur back to life... I applaud you sir! Dag would be proud of you...

I don't remember any mention of this being 3D in any context, but I do remember when Film 88 or whatever it was (When good ol Barry Norman was doing it, and why not?) I do remember him mentioning that the reason the animation looks so smooth in some places was that they were animating 26 frames per second, which was a new and challenging thing in those days...

Course I could be remembering incorrectly, I am, after all, ancient...

Good mesh, don't forget to build arthurs little box on a stick... :D

[Kev01590]

Course I could be remembering incorrectly, I am, after all, ancient...

Good mesh, don't forget to build arthurs little box on a stick... :D

If you're ancient, that makes me prehistoric!

Thanks for the kind words (about the model, that is!). I hadn't intended to do inside the cockpit yet, but maybe I will at some point.

Thanks.

[Dannage]

Ach, Mr Benn isn't that old... Now if you'd had Andy Pandy on your avatar, I'd have worried... :)

[Kev01590]

Ach, Mr Benn isn't that old... Now if you'd had Andy Pandy on your avatar, I'd have worried... :)

Glad I didn't go with Bagpuss then! :D

[SakuraTakeda]

good to see you at it again :)

[Kev01590]

good to see you at it again :)

Thanks. Like I said in an earlier post, that's down to you for giving me the incentive to start it up again. Unfortunately, now that I've got back into it, we're off on holiday in a few days and I won't be able to do any more until we come back. No access to my computer for a week!

[Glazy]

Glad I didn't go with Bagpuss then! :D

You could have gone with Muffin the Mule but I hear that's a sexual offense !!


Superb work on this ship, Starchaser is a fun movie !!

[SakuraTakeda]

anything new? -pokes-

Dont give up on it now :P

[Dr-Timelord]

I wanna go watch the movie now :(

[Kev01590]

anything new? -pokes-

Dont give up on it now :P

Hya,

I haven't given up on it... honest! It's sort of finished, but I've realised that I need a faster computer for all this 3D m'larkey so I've been doing a lot of overtime to get enough dosh to buy a new one (or major upgrades to the current one).
In the meantime, I've made one or two other pictures with it. One thing I did do is to make a stereoscopic picture with it. We use stereo workstations at work, so I rendered two views from slightly different angles, took them to work and stuck 'em on the workstation. It looked pretty good. evil_genius_180 let me try it with his downloadable Enterprise model, and that looked damn good!
I've now combined those images with two space images I got from Celestia (if you like astronomy and you haven't tried Celestia yet, give it a go Celestia: Home (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/)) and they came out pretty good too. I can turn them into anaglyphs and stick 'em on here if you like?

I've just been looking at your Optimus Prime model. Love it! Especially the rich colours. And I'd love to know how you did all that without UV mapping too. Gotta make sure I read your tutorial. Loved the film too. It's been a while since I saw a film and couldn't get it out of my head 'cos I liked it so much. Kept expecting the trucks I passed on the way home to transform into Optimus Prime! (I really need a holiday)

Here's a couple of quick images. One against a wormhole style background I found on the net and also one of the anaglyphs I had at home (hope you've got red/blue glasses!)

Keep up the good work.

Kev

[Taranis]

wow that second image is mad .. how is it done?

[Kev01590]

wow that second image is mad .. how is it done?

Sorry, I've no idea. I found the wormhole image on the net and just blurred my model on top of it.
If you find out how it's done let me know too! :)

[atemylunch]

Interesting project,

I have to admit I did enjoy the movie. And was very glad to see it available on DVD. (Look it up on Amazon).

Funny to see how these things go full circle, the original ship was CG then inked over. In the end credits there is credit given to a cg company(I don't remember which?). The ship appeared to move a little to well for traditional animation at the time. Has anybody made any of the other ships?

[SakuraTakeda]

I've just been looking at your Optimus Prime model. Love it! Especially the rich colours. And I'd love to know how you did all that without UV mapping too. Gotta make sure I read your tutorial. Loved the film too. It's been a while since I saw a film and couldn't get it out of my head 'cos I liked it so much. Kept expecting the trucks I passed on the way home to transform into Optimus Prime! (I really need a holiday)

Thank you ^_^
The textures were all done by hand and I used planar and cylindrical mapping. Still havent gotten the UV mapping down pat so I may pass it to a friend to re-texture. I think the colors are very close to accurate and while the flames arnt an exact match, their very close. Once I can get to my PC again I'll upload my tutorial to my PSP and get it up in the tutorials section. It covers the mapping techniques I used, how to get the base coat of blue and red (both change shades depending on lighting conditions. Its's gotten in the way of the Gunstar, but its worth it I think. ^_^

you should do a comparison shot with both our Starchaser ships. I think you've done a great job with yours :-D

[brad sevn]

nice one mate