Rendered Mouse

[DisWiz]

I thought some people on here might find my newest hobby a bit interesting to look at. I've recently been spending more time in 3Ds Max and I've been working on a Space Mountain model. It's taken about a month to get this far but I'm really excited how it's turning out.

 

I have ideas and hopefully plans of doing other attractions and renders (not all necessarily Disneyland). But for the moment I'm working a lot on Space Mountain and learning a lot as I go.

 

You'll see in the pictures the lighting will look different, sometimes dark and sometimes bright (hopefully not a huge difference). I'm still playing around with the lighting in the scene a lot. I'm still not 100% satisfied with the daylight lighting that I have going on.

 

 

But enough chit-chat here's some pictures of the progress!

 

Tell me what you think.

The last part that I was able to finish last night, the glowing red sign. I think it turned out great! As you can see I've only worked on this half of the entrance into the mountain. I'll just copy this side and rotate it for the other side which shouldn't take long.

Ooooh the entrance to the mountain is beginning to take shape! Complete with blue glowing lights!

Here's a shot of the pillars from the opposite side of the mountain entrance. The green cylinder is my scaler.

Here's a view of the upper-queue. Mainly I was looking at the support pillars in this shot to see how they turned out with a newly added bump map.

Here's an early render of the cone of Space Mountain. I eventually redid the entire cone.

Here's a render with the cone completed, I think it looks really good

Edited July 25, 2011 by DisWiz

[the ghost]

Thats impressive. The individual detail put into everything such as the pillars is extremely impressive. Awesome work.

[Vekoma Fan Boy]

Very nice! Did you buy 3DS Max or are you using an Autodesk Student license? I've been thinking about getting myself a copy from the autodesk student community, but I don't want to waste my time to install it, It took SIX HOURS to download and install AutoCAD Inventor 2010. And I only installed the Inventor part of it. Never mind the AutoCAD Mechanical part. Though I'm thinking of installing that at some point.

[DisWiz]

I'm currently using my friends license for Max '08 since he doesn't use the program. But I'm looking into getting a student license quite soon. (As I'm not sure his license is legit).

 

Or I may be able to get it free from my University for the major I'm in (Information Technology), I just haven't gotten the right information of who to talk to at the moment.

[Vekoma Fan Boy]

If you have a school supplied email you can just go to students.autodesk.com and register there, if you don't you can invite an instructor and all he/she needs to do is supply some information proving that you are a student. (What I did, since high schools generally don't give their students school emails.)

 

 

Also, I'm a bit confused as to why IT would be using 3DS max, I use Autodesk Inventor because I use it at school, I go to a vocational school and take Engineering Technology as a career major.

 

I actually got to design a couple of parts for a robot and have them made on a 3D printer for a competition me and my friend are going to tomorrow. (Expect a photo TR!) My partner and I actually got out of regular class work to build it. Our shop teacher was actually the one to tell us about the competition, while everyone else in the class was building balsa wood bridges with AutoCAD and MDSolids, we were building a robot.

[DisWiz]

The only reason we would have access to 3Ds Max is that the 3D animation program falls partly under the technology area. Although they mainly use Maya from what I know. (I'm currently in the process of hopefully assiting my University's Animation department from the IT side)

[DisWiz]

Hey guys sorry about the lack of updates.

 

I set up a blog so that it's easier for me to link to from multiple sites.

 

So take a look at it and tell me what you think of how Space Mountain is coming along.

 

Please see post below, blog has been upgraded to a website.

Edited July 8, 2011 by DisWiz

[DisWiz]

Ok it's been a very long time without an update, sorry I've forgotten to update this thread.

 

All updates can be viewed here:

 

Space Mountain 3D

 

Let me know what you think, as a lot of work is going into this project and I think it's looking great!

 

Currently I'm working on the station and I'm about ready to add details and textures to the scene.

[Coaster Cow]

This is still one of the better projects going on right now, regardless of pace. Absolutely fantastic.

[DisWiz]

^ Thanks for the kind words, it's been a very fun project to work on.

 

It's been two weeks and there are two new updates for you to view. A lot of details have gone into the station so check it out:

 

Space Mountain 3D update

[DisWiz]

I've been able to get a lot of work done on this during the past week. The station is pretty much done and I've begun to light the scene.

 

Check it out:

 

Finished Station and Lighting

 

Feel free to give feedback or ask any questions you have about this project.

[Coaster Cow]

The detail in this is astounding. I do find it hard to give feedback because I don't know the system at all. Could you give a little explanation on how you do this? It looks ridiculously complicated.

[DisWiz]

Sure no problem.

 

To do this I'm using 3D Studio Max (kind of a lesser of Maya which is used a lot in the industry in animation). All I do is create shapes, apply textures (either colors or images I've made in photoshop) to those shapes. I can also add what's called bump maps which keeps some objects the perceived texture, like how the floor looks like it isn't perfectly smooth. This is one of the things that the eyes understand what the material is. Because that's how we really tell is by how the light reflects because it can tell us if it's smooth, or has bumps and so on.

 

Then I add lights to the scene (which I'm currently doing). After that is ready I will animate the objects in the scene. Once everything is looking good I will render it. This is where the computer churns out a picture for every frame of animation, it calculates the objects and lights in the scene and what the camera is looking at to decide what type of picture to make.

 

It's a really cool process and the only reason I've kept working on this project is because the results keep surprising me with how good they look.

 

So in a nut shell that's the process, it takes a long time. I've been working on this off and on since June '09. I might be able to get it done before the year is up which is my current goal.

 

Thanks for taking a look at the project.

[DisWiz]

Two new updates this week for everyone's enjoyment. They're both on the website and one is a new YouTube update video that shows a newly animated sequence. Check it out and enjoy!

 

Space Mountain Update

[AJClarke0912]

I would really like to comment more in this thread, but I never know what to say! All I can ever say is "this looks fantastic!" but in different words each time.

 

This really is fantastic.