Chickenkeeper

It's finished and up! Here's the link to the video, and I'll get the first post updated asap

None of the images used the game itself, it's all CG art with some post-pro (however most of the images include some assets extracted from the game, which were then manipulated and rendered in 3D software). There are a myriad of technical and practical reasons why it would be impossible to make KSP look that good, however there are some visual mods that can help a little, such as EVE and Scatterer.

As I'm finishing up the final shots I before I finish putting this thing together I thought I'd post another couple of development renders. Here's a little ocean render, including a bonus spacecraft shader test: Also a test of the parachute during the final couple of seconds of deployment: Neither of these images are representative of actual shots in the animation at all, they're just development renders. I'll probably put up a couple of teaser images from the final shots once I've finished with the compositing so you have an idea of what the animation will look like when it's finished P.S: I also finally came up with a final title for the animation, which is 'Angular Velocity', so I'm getting rid of the terrible old working title of 'Kerpollo 13'

I thought about that too when I started. I wanted to go for a quite realistic aesthetic, but unfortunately many of the existing KSP parts don't seem to translate well to that because they have quite cartoon-ish designs and proportions, and very painterly textures and shaders (for example none of the parts use reflection maps; only some specular highlights, with the exception of a few mod parts). In addition to that the ship had to be designed in a very particular way to make some of the shots work, and it didn't look too great with KSPs default parts. But after trying out this realistic look I think I've worked out a better aesthetic to go for in future projects, which consists of quite steam/diesel-punk part designs (lots of rust, metal patches, tape, old plumbing, like it's all made with weathered bits from a scrapyard) and slightly more painterly textures than the ones I'm using at the moment. That is basically what I think KSPs parts should look like, because at the moment I think many of the parts look too clean and 'high-tech' for the character of the Kerbals. That being said I think the models I'm using for this project will work just fine for now As for the texturing, thanks but I won't be doing any tutorials. If you want to learn about texturing there are already many resources online that will do a much better job at teaching you than I could

Quick update, I'm getting close to the end of the animation and rendering stage now, and in preparation for comp, correction and grading I've been practicing a bit on bits of shots and frames that I have laying around. Here's a recent experiment with light flares: As previously mentioned it's just an experiment, so the final shot will probably look very different. But it's been a while so I thought I'd give you all something to look at for the time being

Haha, that would be nice but I still have a lot to learn

I also made a heat shader for the spacecraft (with adjustable intensity) for the parts that might need to 'feel the burn': The solar panels look a bit off in the second image, but then again they would be long gone before any part of the spacecraft got that hot

Thanks . For things like the atmosphere it's best to leverage the power of render passes and post-processing to get the aesthetic you're after, rather than trying to get a perfect image straight out of the renderer. For mine I use both a volumetric(-ish) and a geometry 'layer', their colors controlled by a series of radial and linear gradients, rendered into their own separate passes and combined with the other passes in post, with the help of the terrain's alpha channel. (The specifics are secret for now but I hope this gives you some ideas ). Also the colors at the cost lines of the terrain was actually a side effect of using a green-ish transparent absorption color in the ocean shader, which causes the terrain under the ocean to become tinted with depth

A bit more work on Kerbins clouds: I think I've got them pretty much where I want them now, I would like to do more tweaks to the procedural maps but I need to keep them relatively simple to save on render time. Also the colour grading is only temporary, the final shots will probably look quite different to this.

Another little teaser image to help tide you over: As with all images thus far it's not totally representative of the final aesthetic and quality, but I think it still looks pretty cool (That Kerbin is also totally 3D, clouds and all. No photo-background cheating here )

Here's a little beauty shot I rendered while working on a tricky camera movement, to let you all know the animation's still progressing nicely: This image came straight from the renderer, so it's neither colour graded or colour corrected, but I think it's quite pretty in its own way

Thanks, I'm always learning with projects like this so all feedback/constructive criticism is appreciated

Quick update; the first of the four sequences is finished and rendering and the second is in progress. I had to do a little bit of experimenting with the first few shots to get some kinks with the rendering and compositing workflow ironed out, but after some tweaks to my alpha channels it seems to be all good now. I'll post a little teaser when I have enough completed shots, and maybe a couple of images too. Overall I would say it's at about 30% so far

Finally finished the texturing, any more changes (grunge, burn marks etc.) will now be done on-the-fly as and when they're needed Now on to the animation!

Finished the solar panels. They look quite pretty in the right light

I've been getting a bit more spacecraft texturing done, here's the current state of the Service Module: There are some pieces missing from that image, but they are just temporarily hidden so they don't get in the way. (Also I know that rivet doesn't quite line up, the panels rotation was just a little off when I rendered that image ) I've still got to finish the textures for the solar panels and command module, but everything else is going smoothly.

Thanks for the offer, but while there will be some subtitled dialogue I'm going to be using some pitch-bent radio transmissions for the voices for now. Not in this animation I'm afraid, it's just going to be the Mun and Kerbin at the moment.

Finally got the flythrough test done, while rendering I noticed there were some problems caused by the Displacement Rate being a little too high and the Refinement Shading Rate being miss-calibrated, causing some visual artefacts and unnecessary render time increases. But everything seems to be good now, so here's the final version of the test, with a little music added for effect: Now I can focus 100% on getting the spacecraft textures done, so I can finally start making some 'real' shots. (Until I get very close to the planet of course, volumetric clouds are going to be sooo much fun... *sarcasm* )

Oooh, the silhouette on the second image works quite well, perhaps you could brighten up the background a bit to increase the contrast?

I take it the plane is the CG bit?

Finished texturing the engine and some of the rest of the spacecraft. I'm also rendering an experimental flythrough of the Kerbin system at the same time to make sure the shaders are temporally coherent and the displacements or bumps aren't creating any sparkling or rippling artifacts. I should have that up in a couple of days, but in the meantime I'm working on getting the spacecraft textured and finished:

It is, I just put it there to set the scene. There's no point doing custom sound design for a render test

MODO actually, it's a bit of a hidden gem. It has much less low-level fuss than Maya while keeping most of the functionality, so for individuals or small studios it's perfect I originally wanted to use Blender to see how far I could push it, but its particles, rendering tools and interoperability between other software was too lacking. Particularly the lack of micropolygon displacement and inability to chain particle systems. I did still manage to get a prototype of the re-entry effect working though, using hacks and messy workarounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWDs21v74R0 They did, but this isn't an Apollo mission . The name suggests Apollo, the events suggest Gemini or Soyuz, and the spacecraft looks more like an Orion. I don't want to stick to historical events, they've been done before . Besides, solar panels make prettier debris

Thanks, I do actually have a range of scenarios which I would love to bring to life already planned out, and I would love to do as many of them as possible. As for turning the models into mods it's not impossible, I would most likely need to hand that task off to someone else so I can devote as much time as possible to animating . The main complication is that the models are very high poly (the spacecraft is ~1.5 million when subdivided, which is far too high for the game) so would need to be either carefully reduced or entirely re-modeled, and the latter would take quite a while.

Thanks