Esinohio's Blender farm

[esinohio]

More testing and having fun with the Blender importer.  Special thanks to Starwhip over here, he showed me a really neat way of turning the default texture into one that looks more metallic while still keeping the original texture intact.

Here we see a flight of Blades in routine maneuvers somewhere high above the KSC.  The Blade is made by SpacePlaneAddict and can be found here.

 

[SaturnianBlue]

Can you do a render of my PT Boat? Here's the link to the download.

[esinohio]

51 minutes ago, SaturnianBlue said:

Can you do a render of my PT Boat? Here's the link to the download.

 

I'll give it a shot, loving the torpedoes and depth charge details.  Looks nice!

Edited December 21, 2015 by esinohio

[esinohio]

Having fun with SaturnianBlue's PT boat.  Only a basic testing render to get some things worked out prior to a final go.

 

 

 

[SpaceplaneAddict]

Oh mighty and powerful Blenderrenderer, show me the ways of how to make a render....

[esinohio]

9 hours ago, SpaceplaneAddict said:

Oh mighty and powerful Blenderrenderer, show me the ways of how to make a render....

  Sure!  Not sure how to approach this though.. hmm.  A lot of it really depends on how much fiddling in various programs you're comfortable doing and of course your Blender experience.   Thankfully a lot of great information is out there on Youtube to guide you once you've got Blender installed. 

  A great place to start if you're not familiar with the interface at all is over here at https://cgcookie.com/course/blender-basics/ .  It's a quick 6 part video showing the very basics of the interface and how to add simple objects.  Pretty sure you don't even need to register to watch the videos.

The shortlist of awesome Blender YouTube people that produce great content: 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_47ItRT9U4nnElhSK8JcmQ   Alimayo Arango (Ali) --  Great basic modeling tutorials. He is a great place to start playing with Blender.  Simple cars, planes, spaceships, and even some character modeling.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOKHwx1VCdgnxwbjyb9Iu1g  Blenderguru  --  Great tutorials covering all aspects of Blender.  They range from the beginner to the advanced.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdioEctcBLd2nw2aQkl8msw  BornCG --  His 51 video Blender tutorial series is very well done.  Includes a lot of great information on many topics.  Great place to look when a modifier is giving you problems.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG8AxMVa6eutIGxrdnDxWpQ  CG Geek -- Another great set of tutorials on many topics.  Let out your inner nerd following the various Star Wars tutorials, fun fun!  He also does some general landscape stuff that could be useful in your renders.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgG4R2IQv9cB5aYoLRLKQig  Oliver --  More awesomeness.  Lots of great stuff here.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWUNJX8nRfmnA1QaP4B0I_Q Sardi Pax -- Probably my favorite in the bunch.  He does go a bit fast but the tutorials as well done and cover all sorts of interesting parts of Blender.  The space scene tutorial will let you make some quick planets and terrain.  It's a great one to follow along with and once you're finished you'll be able to use those techniques to make your own planets in Blender or some nice generic moon lke surface.  Find it here. 

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Starwhips video that shows a time lapse process for setting up an import.  (Seriously, he's been super helpful! check it out!!)

Good Stuff!!!!

 

My basic process

1. First thing is doing the actual import and inspecting the model afterward.  Normally there will be all sorts of scaling issues and textures are still flipped.  Now I repair the errors.

• Scaling problems:  Some parts will clearly be out of whack.  Usually if its too big you need to scale the part down by 0.8.  If the part is too small then scale up by 1.25.  A few parts are off by exactly half, like some SAS modules, so they need to be scaled down by 0.5.      (Select the part, press S, enter number above and press enter.  You can always eyeball the scaling and use the mouse to change the size if the above is off)
• Texture problems:  Currently all the parts import with the texture scaling flipped but that is usually an easy fix.  Might have to make a quick video on the process to flip the UV's, it's a quick process but kind of difficult to explain.
• Next unneeded parts are deleted (launch clamps, etc)
• Model is saved in its fixed state

    2.  Move your camera, adds some lights, and presto!  You have your craft in Blender ready for rendering.

• After moving your camera and lighting into position you can adjust the background to be transparent like Startwhip shows above (~ the 1.46 mark in the movie ) or add whatever you'd like to it.  Personally I like to save the imported model into its own Blend file and start a fresh one for my scene.  The model then gets appended from the other Blend file.  This generally makes is a ton easier to make a scene using several models.

Ok, that is the BASIC process.  Once you get the process down for the import it goes lightning fast.  Then comes the somewhat daunting part of actually coming up with something to put your craft into.  This is where those various tutorials linked above came in.  I broke the scene down into parts and hunted for tutorials on the various bits.  How to make a mountain for the background, how to make a grass field, a road/runway, etc., etc...  Or like in Starwhips video above you can slide your model on top of other pictures using Gimp.  OR you can use a combination of the two to get neat effects.  Like below:

   

The PT boat scene in Blender.  Boat is on a simple plane that has an image of the water breaking across the bow of a boat. Original image for reference.  Renders into this:  (Black background should be transparent, imgur thumbnail problem?)  ((Top down shot would work here as well with no further editing, just match camera angle from original shot and presto... pictured below))

 

Then I made a water sim in Blender and colored it somewhat close to the pictures water, like so:

Next it was into Gimp to do some basic (I'm far FAAAAR from an expert) merging of the pictures.  Not happy yet with the result but you get the idea:

Of course if I really really wanted to stretch my "Blender legs" I suppose the entire scene could have been done in Blender.  The base layer of water would be easy enough but the object moving through it and causing a wake gets into some more advance but really really COOL features in Blender like Dynamic painting, multiple scene layers, compositing, etc.  Difficult, not impossible.  It would certainly make that picture pop if the water breaking were actually a 3d object and not a flat plane.

I'm not sure I helped much but feel free to shoot me questions anytime and maybe we can figure it out together.  Do you think a longer video like Starwhips might help? Maybe we could walk through one of your craft together here in the thread so everyone who wants to do their own could follow along?

Oh... SAVE OFTEN!!!!  Then save again...and again...  Blender does like to crash sometimes.  Save before renders especially!  

Edited December 22, 2015 by esinohio

[Starwhip]

4 hours ago, esinohio said:

Scaling problems:  Some parts will clearly be out of whack.  Usually if its too big you need to scale the part down by 0.8.  If the part is too small then scale up by 1.25.  A few parts are off by exactly half, like some SAS modules, so they need to be scaled down by 0.5.      (Select the part, press S, enter number above and press enter.  You can always eyeball the scaling and use the mouse to change the size if the above is off)

There are numbers? I've been scaling them by eye. :/
Tip! Select the part, then hit spacebar. Type "Select all of this part." If your transform origins are set to "Individual Origins", with this setting he..r..e.

Spoiler

Alert! You can paste screen-captures directly to the Forum, apparently! Nevermind. False alarm.
Anyways! This lets you fix all the scaling issues on parts of that type at the same time.
I'm a bit astonished by how nicely that image with the PT boat merges with the render. I'd have thought the perspective would be off, but it's pretty good.

Edited December 22, 2015 by Starwhip
Oh, bah. I thought it worked. The image was there. :/

[DMSP]

@esinohio Would it be alright if you rendered the TEMSTAR Bock?

Craft link is here: http://kerbalx.com/DMSP/TEMSTAR-Block-Soyuz-2-1V

It's modded with Tantares and Tantares LV.

If you can't do that, could you do the Kelta-1?

Craft: http://kerbalx.com/DMSP/Kelta-1

And for the one you do, could you please render the fairings metallically? It would be awesome.

 

Thanks!

[esinohio]

8 hours ago, DMSP said:

@esinohio Would it be alright if you rendered the TEMSTAR Bock?

Craft link is here: http://kerbalx.com/DMSP/TEMSTAR-Block-Soyuz-2-1V

It's modded with Tantares and Tantares LV.

If you can't do that, could you do the Kelta-1?

Craft: http://kerbalx.com/DMSP/Kelta-1

And for the one you do, could you please render the fairings metallically? It would be awesome.

 

Thanks!

I'll give it a shot here as soon as the holiday fun dies down a bit  

[DMSP]

7 hours ago, esinohio said:

I'll give it a shot here as soon as the holiday fun dies down a bit  

Thank you, and have fun!

[esinohio]

Having fun with some procedural planet creation.  A work in progress of Laythe. Imgur link

 

[esinohio]

And yet more fun with the work in progress Laythe now alongside Jool.  Jool needs a ton of work with another layer or two of cloud detail and some maybe some slight bump for texture.

Edited February 18, 2016 by esinohio

[0111narwhalz]

That Laythe looks too... Land-y. Where's the vast oceans with tiny sandbar-islands?

[esinohio]

11 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

That Laythe looks too... Land-y. Where's the vast oceans with tiny sandbar-islands?

There is a good reason for my land heavy Laythe!  It goes back to my long standing love hate relationship with Laythe stemming from a single mission waaaay back in the early pre 1.0 days of KSP.  My screwy piloting had me smacking a probe into those vast oceans repeatedly and for some wacky reason (pilot stupidity) I just seemed to repeat that damn piloting error over and over until I finally hit land.  So I probably error Laythe on the side of more land mass now when creating it since apparently I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if I tried! Haha!  At any rate it's made to be animated and I think it was just subconscious coincidence that it ended up on the more land heavy side.  I might reduce the intensity of the clouds as well so the smaller island chains become more visible.

 

[esinohio]

Having fun with freestyle renders in Blender.  Freestyle can make some interesting blueprint or line drawing effects.  Below is a work in progress of Jon144's Kelaz 85T "blueprints".   Missing the dimension information but coming along nicely for a stylized effect kind of thing.

Edited February 25, 2016 by esinohio

[Columbia]

Those look really amazing, esinohio! Great work!

I have a slightly ambitious request; If it is possible, could you recreate this scene;

Using these ships?

Attacking fighter (Messerschmitt Bf 109): https://kerbalx.com/Columbia/Messerschmitt-Bf-109G-6

Bomber (B-17): https://kerbalx.com/Columbia/Boeing-B-17-Flying-Fortress

Thanks in advance!

[esinohio]

1 hour ago, Columbia said:

  /snip

Using these ships?

Attacking fighter (Messerschmitt Bf 109): https://kerbalx.com/Columbia/Messerschmitt-Bf-109G-6

Bomber (B-17): https://kerbalx.com/Columbia/Boeing-B-17-Flying-Fortress

Thanks in advance!

Well that looks like a lot of fun to do.  I'll give it a go here as soon as I finish up with Jon144's mega dump truck.  Should be able to get started today (2/26) sometime for sure.  The only problems I see are on the B-17 with its shells in the rear and making up the engine cowlings.  I can recreate those and try to give them the look of the other structural panels around it.  Should come out looking fairly close to stock.

Always had a fondness for the B-17.   My grandfather was a belly gunner in one so I grew up seeing the pictures of his plane as well as hearing the stories about his experiences during the war.      

[esinohio]

More fun with Jon144's Kelaz 85T Mega Dump Truck.  Here we see Jeb on Duna posing in front of his dumptruck full of ore while Ike looms in the daytime haze. (Click for fullsize)

Concept design

Edited February 26, 2016 by esinohio

[esinohio]

A quick one while I work on the B-17 / Me. Bf 109 scene.  Here we see Jeb taking a BZT X34 LandSpeeder for a spin through a Kerbin desert.  

 

[esinohio]

A B-17 begins to take shape (bare metal and unpainted).  Just testing here really with a quickly thrown in background.  I think it's coming along nicely.

Edited February 28, 2016 by esinohio
Fixed error in test phot

[esinohio]

More fun with the B-17.  

[esinohio]

/queue_dramatic_music

"People of the Kommonwealth. Do not interfere.  Our intentions are peaceful.  We are the Brotherhood of Steel."

A quick render of the Kyrdwen.  A great replica of the Pyrdwen Brotherhood of Steel airship.  Find it here:

https://kerbalx.com/juliaorven/The-Krydwen

Just need some Vertibirds and it's a party.

[Columbia]

It looks great so far, @esinohio!

How is the progress on the render?

[esinohio]

12 hours ago, Columbia said:

It looks great so far, @esinohio!

How is the progress on the render?

I'm back on it!  I got a little wound up in finding out the exact issue the previous scene was causing in Blender.  I'll get the new one setup here very soon!!!  

[esinohio]

Having fun with a basic camera track in Blender.  The track itself was horrible and needs to be redone since the rover "slides" a few times but the concept is pretty neat. 

 

Next I need to put this awesome rover in my driveway.  I mean who doesn't want Selfish_meme's awesome Duna Rover in their driveway?  Duna Rover

Sorry for video size, how can I hide this behind a spoiler now?