TRON - VEHICLE - Conor

Conor

I'm going to do an update on the original Encom chopper. The plan is to make a game-grid version and to modernize it to match the aircraft in TRON Legacy.

References below - concept coming soon!

Conor

At the moment I'm favoring the 3rd tail design and the bottom nose design. The rotors won't be like blades, they're just a big TRON disc floating on top of the chopper. I'm trying to incorporate some of the new costume design themes (angular chins and thin light-lines leading to circles) as well as the typical hollow-cylinder elements seen in the bikes.

Baddcog

Looks cool, I like the bottom tail and nose best.

renderhjs

maybe having different kinds of intersecting lines (red lines) could be a way of making things look more interesting.
Like thin and thick lines, or red ones and more bright orange yellow ones. Your design has a constant line thickness which makes it a bit bold to me. Like in comic art different types of line thickness can make patterns and graphics more appealing.

Conor

Version C is the latest one. I think I'll work with that basic layout and do a little more experimentation before I finalize the design.

Conor

I'm quite happy with the design now. Still got 254 triangles to play with - I'll probably use most of those for effects like a blurred rotor-pattern and shooting effects. I'm going to try to do the tail-rotor hole with alpha texture rather than polygons as I think the 1024 poly budget is more restrictive than the 2x512 texture budget.

fearian

Very nice! I love the design, A nice mix of old tron and new tron :P

hawken

looking awesome!

Conor

Oh no! Featured in the community re-cap before I've done the texture.
Here's the final model and UV layout.



The main body of the vehicle will use 1 512 map, and the second map will be for the rotors, muzzle-flash, bullets and explosion effects. I'm hoping to animate it shooting at something.

Conor

Blocking out the major texture features like the lines and decals. I'm largely working off the new Recognizer as reference.





Still have to add some texture detail, specular map, and various effects.

duncan

Sick as man. I am looking forward to the FX. It is good to see another Melbourneite in here.

Conor

Thanks Duncan - do you work at one of the Melbourne studios? I used to be at Tantalus.



Texture's finished. Now to work on the in-game shot and beauty shot. Expect explosions!

renderhjs

I like the transparency pattern idea but I think that the main body could use some more color variations. It looks like a gray scale map that was tinted. For example it could have some patches that are 1-5% more blue, or dark

duncan

Yeah man, I am working at BigAnt studios. What a small world. I was chatting with a mate at work you might remember him from the old Tantalus days. David Morrissey, anyway he tells me you teach at RMIT, way to go. I studied multimedia there before getting into the games world. I have to say when I have had my fill of games I am keen to teach there. You are probably not in the same division but do you know Arthur Michalopolus? Great guy. and he taught me 3D. Anyway Sorry I should have sent this in a private message but I hate those things.

On another note I dig the chopper. Any plans to animate it?

Conor

Renderhjs - I know what you mean about the lack of variation. I've adjusted the contrast slightly to improve this, however I don't want to mess too much with the color as I'm trying to stick closely to the recognizer's color scheme.

Duncan - Yeah I know Arthur, he was on my iPhone games course last year!

Latest update - ingame shot...

SHEPEIRO

nice would be cool to use the spec map to introduce dertails on the underside when shooting lasers....

Sammuelsama

amazing texture and nice beauty shoot

Conor

Shepeiro - I'll probably try an environment map for a turnaround animation, I think that will look better than changing the specular.

Sammuelsama - thanks, that's the in-game shot though. Beauty shot still to come.

roosterMAP

you level of creativity is astounding.

Im especially intrieged by your pipeline. I'll try to do it myself. I have a great engine model that needs a home. (http://plaza.ufl.edu/rooster/img/rocket_engine.jpg).

If you have any advice for me, plz tell.

Dani

Verry nice, loving the whole design. Simple yet effective can't wait to see the beauty shot.

ps: is this your own engine or is it just a photoshopped hud? seeing that you got some experience with making your own games at your site I would guess its actually coded but I'm not sure.:poly121:

MattQ86

The tiny text in the lower left says "mockup". A game where you play as a helicopter chasing down light cycles would be fun though...like a tron version of chopper vs chopper from GTA IV.

Conor

roosterMAP - thanks, glad to hear you're enjoying the progress :-)

Daniel.C - This image is a combination of render and photoshop, not realtime. However I am currently experimenting with a flight-sim/combat game in Unity, so this HUD mockup was actually an exercise in practical HUD design with a real game in mind, albeit with a Tron flavor.

MattQ86 - yeah that would be fun. I'd like to do a sci-fi chopper game sometime.

Addieo

Really like that alpha pattern for the blades, will that rotate eventually? Amazing beauty shot. Really shows off your piece.

Conor

Editor view done - now on to the big one, the beauty shot.

Byren

Looking really sweet. I love the subtle hues in the metal

Grindy

Nice work Conor! I like the fact there's a pattern in the glowy bits.

Can't wait to see the beauty shot.

duncan

Looking good Conor. (not really helpful, but positive )

Arkhange

Nice work on this vehicle !
Here are some constructive crits
Maybe you should add some color variation in your texture, it looks cool so far, but I'm sure that with the different tone and hues variation (on the metal plates etc...), it'll look more even more badass ! I know that you've take the Recognizer as reference but I find it really monochromatic...
I see that you have already achieved your mock-up and editor views, so if you just must retake those shots cause of the texture just ignore me and my comment
Anyway, I like the rotor treatment on your copter, really Tron style
Great work

Grindy

Conor, how did you plug your luminosity map in 3DS Max so it shows alright in the viewport with [ Smooth + Highlights ] selected? I've plugged my luminosity layer into the self-illumination map slot while in [ S + H ] mode and it won't do anything while showing the standard maps in the viewport or it will blast way too much when showing hardware maps in viewport.

Here's a picture of what i'm talking about :poly141:



Any input on this issue would be greatly appreciated!

Conor

Grindy - self illumination won't show up in the realtime viewport unless you make your material a DirectX shader. A simpler solution is just to render your scene with antialiasing and filtering turned off. Open the render setup dialog and in the renderer panel for the default scanline renderer uncheck antialiasing and filter maps - that way you'll get a render that looks just like a viewport grab, but with all the maps (illumination, reflection etc...) working.

Here's some test renders from an animation I'm working on...

Grindy

Thanks for the answer Conor, I can stop banging my head on the wall on this issue.

:thumbup:

kouotsu

It looks kind of like a water faucet, lol. Looking really nice -- I love the texture you have going on inside the glow. Only thing I can think to add is giving the cockpit glass some kind of detail. Maybe some reflection from the glowing parts onto it?

Conor

Beauty shot, with added reflection :-)



It's a still from the animation - hopefully I'll get it finished in the next couple of days and put it in my submission.

Grindy

It's looking great man! Really like the simplicity of the environment too, it just works pretty well.:thumbup:

jmiles

really turned out great dude.. really love the extra touch of reflection, and the explosion particle

MattQ86

Excellent entry. I'm looking forward to the animation.

Conor

Thanks for the comments everyone. The animation is still in progress - I won't get it finished for the competition deadline but I'll keep working on it anyway. I may have attempted too much with this but it's going to look cool once it's done :-)

Joshua Stubbles

Yeah the reflection and particle stuff looks great. Definitely looking forward to the animation

Conor

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diX_iY6wgPE[/ame]

Joshua Stubbles

Hah! Nice work man
Could you possibly write up something about how you did the light ribbon again? I've tried doing stuff with the general idea you talked about but have gotten less than stellar results.

Snex

@Conor

looks great, you have to teach that stuff next year. have you listened to the Legacy OST?

Nate Broach

Dope! wow man you went all out. This looks great. Well done.

hawken

very nice!

jmiles

yeah this turned out mega dope for sure great stuff!

Conor

Joshua - this should help...

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neyPavamOO0[/ame]

Snex - are you at RMIT? We're planning to include a low-polygon option in the 3D character Maya class this year. I really enjoyed the Daft Punk Tron soundtrack. The music in my video is a dubstep combination of the main Tron theme from "The Grid" with the strings from "Recognizer".

Joshua Stubbles

Conor. Thanks man! I'll give this a view in a bit

Grindy

Sweet! Great job man!

Arkhange

Really nice viedo Conor, congrats for this awesome moving finish !

Snex

@Conor

Nah I wont be at RMIT, the low poly option would be great, you should use the Pre Dom War rules as a base, just change the theme. All I have been listening to recently has been the Legacy OST.

Joshua Stubbles

guess my max sucks or something but I have mad issues when trying to animate the UV data, especially if I try to tweak it in track view. I'm also not getting perfect alignment with the object the node was attached to, even though I gave the trajectory spline 100 iterations. Might just have to give up on this one. Thanks Conor, I appreciate the help.

Conor

Joshua - you need the iterations to be 100 only if your animation is 100 frames long, more if it's longer. My trails also didn't line up perfectly - but with a bit of motion blur you can't really see the gaps. A key every 5 frames was enough to keep the trail reasonably close to the tail for my animation.