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The Truth Can Now Be Told - Mysterious Machines

purpleivan

By purpleivan
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Kernel Kraken

Kernel Kraken

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On 12/10/2017 at 1:31 PM, purpleivan said:

Dark Star style.

"We saw one the creatures talking to what looked like a fuel tank with a bunch of buttons on the front, then it just exploded"

EDIT: going idiot style :WHY YOU NO MAKE MOAR SHOP PHOTO

Educated Style: hey, I was wondering if you had any projects in the making. If life has gotten in your way or something has come up, it's okay. Stuff happens. :)

 

Edited by TheMadKraken2297
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purpleivan

purpleivan

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Another shocking revelation of how American astronauts photographed evidence of alien creatures on the moon, that describes the tale of how close to disaster they came when interacting with these strange beings.

This new photo was passed to a member of the press at a meeting with a man called I. B. Merrymaker. The meeting with Mr Merrymaker (wearing a long trenchcoat and dark sunglasses) took place at night, in a dimly lit parking garage. He described himself as working for the NASA photo manipulation department, as the head of pixels and poxels.

After handing the photo and a debriefing transcript, in a brown envelope to the member of the press, Mr Merrymaker made his way to a stairwell. The member of the press stated that moments later he heard the sound of clinking bottles, accompanied by muffled laughter.

However he believed this was unconnected with his source and in no way affected the veracity of the materials passed on by him.

WAx2W9f.jpg

The transcript read as follows.

"We'd dismounted at station 10 and John was setting up the high-gain on the rover for the TV camera. While he did that I started taking a set of panorama photos standing about 10 feet to the right of the rover.

I'd just taken one shot of it with John standing at the front and I swung around to take another with him on the left and Stone Mountain in the distance on the right and I catch sight of this thing hurtling through the sky towards us.

It sorta looked like a rover, it had wheels on it and seats with a bunch of these little guys in suits strapped in 'em.

Strange thing was it was upside down, no idea why.

Those little dudes were hanging upside down underneath it and the wheels were pointing skyward. That darn thing shot straight over my head, cleared me by about 10 feet. So I leaned back as far as my suit let me, to get a good look at them creatures on it as it went past.

There was a bunch of 'em, the photo showed eight, and they were all grinning like the cat that got the cream and I swear one of them was giving me the thumbs up.

Well as it passed overhead I could see that that rover was in a roll and by the time it hit the surface it had righted. Well what I mean to say is it was landing on its wheel. I guess that was lucky for the little dudes riding it.

After it hit the ground it headed off towards our flag and just before it got to it, it swung around to the left to head West. It kicked up a hell of a lot of dust and sprayed a load of it on the flag.

I watched that thing head off in the direction of Kaht crater for a little while, but I had to get back to the plan for the EVA, so went back to finishing the panorama.

By the time I was done that thing was just a dot heading across the surface with a trail of dust behind it, heading for the horizon."

Edited by purpleivan
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purpleivan

purpleivan

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1 hour ago, Sorabh said:

This is art! I don't have enough words to praise you! :confused:... I am using paint.net, but  I just can't get the shadows right.

Thanks!

For shadows what I usually do is to use the one in my screenshot that the "kerbally" component of the image is taken from. Then I adjust it (levels etc.) so that i'm left with something approaching a pure black and graphic of the shadow, that I can then lay on top of the Apollo image. This I can then adjust the alpha/brightness of, to make a decent match to the colour and brightness of shadows in the photo.

After that I'll tinker with the edges to give it the look of being on a rougher, more detailed surface than that in KSP.

Finally I add any larger scale distortions as an attempt to match undulations in the terrain in the photo.

Occasionally I'll need to recreate the shadow, for example if there's any nasty stretching of missing parts, but even with these I'll have the one in the KSP screenshot as reference.

 

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purpleivan

purpleivan

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Another report was released this evening, detailing American astrounats' encounters with strange alien beings on the Mun, during the Apollo mission.

The latest report was recieved by this reporter in an envelope marked "Do not open until April 1st 2019", slipped under the door of his office.

In addition to a photograph showing one of these beings, the envelope contained a transcript of the debriefing of one of the astronauts.


"We'd been at Station 2 for about 3 minutes, Dave was collecting samples around a boulder and I'd started on taking a 2nd pan at the site. I was a few shots into the pan and as I turned towards the rover, I could see one of those wierd critters.

We'd come across them on EVA 1 and although they kind of freaked us out, they seemed essentially harmless, more curious than anything.

I started to walk towards the, er... the creature, it had it's back to me, but I wanted to get a closer look and some more pictures. As I approached it started yanking on part of the Rear Payload Pallet, looked like it was trying to take a souvenir.

Before I could get to it, to prevent any damage, it seemed to give up and bunny hop off to the North. While I checked on the rover to see if there was any damage, I lost sight of it. The only thing I could see wrong with the rover when I examined it, was that some of the Sample Collection Bags were missing.

Dave was still busy collecting samples around the rock and didn't catch sight of the creature until it was heading away from us. He told me he'd found scuff marks and small boot prints in the regolith around the rock and some strange looking material underneath it. He bagged some of it and later the guys at the Lunar Samples Lab told us that it seemed to be some kind cookie dough.

I guess that creature was trying to keep the place tidy and didn't have anything to put it in."

Lg81NHh.jpg

Edited by purpleivan
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Zaphod12

Zaphod12

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So this is why Apollo 18 was kept secret from the public...it wasn't only alive moon rocks, but actually sentinent beings.

It all makes sense now...

 

Conspiracies aside, this is some pretty dank good editing

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Zhetaan

Zhetaan

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@purpleivan:

I think I'd have said the envelope ought to be marked, 'Do not open until July 20th, 2019', but I admit that April 1st is a nice touch.

Speaking as one with absolutely no photo editing experience whatsoever, this is very impressive!  Out of curiosity, I notice that only sometimes, the Kerbal helmets, suits, and gear have a distinctly 'clean' look even after editing--I'm certain I'm not using the right terminology, so my apologies for that--but my point is that for example, on this most recent photo, I didn't find it difficult to pick out the Kerbal, but with one a couple of pages back that involved a craft trying to claw a Saturn IV-B, I took a couple of seconds before I remembered that our program didn't use claws.  It was easy to see after that, but that second or two of indecision followed by a 'Wait, what?' is what you want, I think, so what I was wondering was whether different subjects cause that much more difficulty in making the final product look realistic.  Is there a technical limit to how well you can combine two photos?  Again, it's very impressive--I especially liked the very first photo where you took the time to add the second astronaut to the Kerbal's visor reflection.  You have an amazing eye for detail.

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purpleivan

purpleivan

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I think the issue of the kerbals looking "clean" in comparison with the Apollo gear is largely due to the difference in the materials of the two species of explorers.

The Apollo gear has a lot more surface detail, in particular surface undulation, due to the materials that formed the outer layer of the suits and to some extend the vehicles as well. At the end of the day the Kerbal suits and vehicle parts just don't have as much detail on them, to break up the surfaces and so look a bit plasticy.

In partular that big round goldfish bowl helmet of theirs does give then a rather unrealistic (if amusing) look, in comparison with real astronauts.

I try to get a pretty close look in some ways, such as blurring the kerbal gear slightly where approriate and even adding some noise to them, in an attempt to match that in the Apollo image. That's on top of the lighting, occlusion and shadow tweaks to try to match the scene.

One other thing that occurs is that the lighting of the helmets in particular (being white with little detail) often goes into saturation across a large area. That's the pure white patch in the mid rear of the helmet in the last image. Not much I can do about that, other than redraw (or render) the lighting of the helmet. It's possible, but it would take a bit too much time for me to justify.

Another thing that makes the kerbals stand out a bit is the difference between the reflective properties of the Apollo and KSP gear. Most of the kerbal stuff tends to look like a dull plastic, compared with the mixture of materials in Apollo gear. Again making alterations to that is a bit more than I'd be prepared to do. If nothing else I'd make a lot fewer of these images.

That last issue is one that I find I'm fighting with myself over from time to time. For example in the image below I wanted the smiling kerbal face (couldn't resist) to be visible through the visor, even though it make the little guy look a bit unrealistic in comparison with the Apollo suit.

iHpO5Dx.jpg

Something I'd like to do (but one of the many, many things that I don't get time for) is to make a fairly accurate Apollo style suit texture set, including normal maps, for our brave little explorers.

Possibly once 1.5 is released and wonky normals on the male suit models have been fixed, I might take a look at that.

As for "is there a technical limit..." like most things it's all a matter of time. Given enough (big bucket loads of it), the kerbal gear could look a pretty much perfect match for the scene.

Edited by purpleivan
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qzgy

qzgy

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On 8/20/2018 at 12:25 PM, purpleivan said:

Something I'd like to do (but one of the many, many things that I don't get time for) is to make a fairly accurate Apollo style suit texture set, including normal maps, for our brave little explorers.

This seems like an interesting project. I dont know how to do texturing though...... :/

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