Progress on the Atlantis gate room:

Amazing! Thank you so much for sharing this with us!

Sweet!

That's coming along really good! Can't wait to see it finished!

Adding the lights and the metal filigree to the central staircase:

AWESOME!

Even better close up. Look at those beautifully beveled edges. I often find that to be the hardest part. Keep them coming!

That is Amazing and another Silo User to boot!!!

Why does Atlantis need a gate room? By the last season, most of their travel was done in space ships.

True, but space travel took time. The StarGate spanned those distances instantly.

Thanks for the support, guys!

flibbits posted at 6:23AM Fri, 15 July 2016 - #4275889

Why does Atlantis need a gate room? By the last season, most of their travel was done in space ships.

Earth folk never would have even gotten to Atlantis without the stargate. Midway station depended on bridging the Pegasus gate system to the Milky Way gate system. And, as HBorre noted, gating is much faster than traveling by ship. Atlantis did have a stargate, so the model needs to have one.

My question is how many gates were sized to be usable by the Furling, and where were those gates located? Or did the Furling only have gates to accommodate guests?

Modeling progress: railing for the balcony near the conference room doors; I'll also make railing for the control room balcony and the skybridge connecting the control room to the commander's office.

By the way, your dolly will load into the scene at the red cross near the foot of the main staircase, facing the stargate, with the default main camera facing the staircase. Dolly will be sunk thigh-deep into the floor, because that central dais is four steps higher than the base floor. I considered placing the dais surface at Poser Y=0, but I feared that Poser newbies would fail to move or hide the construct (ground plane & skydome), and so the base floor level would be buried.

...and railing for the control room balcony and the skybridge:

Made a conference room door (behind Silo guy); I'll UV-unwrap it, then duplicate it along the conference room wall.

Interior wall surface of the circular conference room, and one of the eight doors.

UV-unwrapped the railing for the balconies, skybridge, back stairway, and jumper bay stairway. Also unwrapped the conference room wall and door.

Forming the skylight vaults at each side of the stargate, and their windows:

That is looking really good. Will the conference room doors rotate open like they did on the show? And yes, the stargate was extremely important in Atlantis even though they had access to the ships. It's was Universe that rarely used the actual gate. :)

Yes, the eight doors to the conference room will rotate to open, in synch - assuming I can rig it correctly. Likewise I'll try to rig the two sliding doors to the intra-city transporter (the trapezoid-shaped elevator-like thing).

Started on the geometry for the central window. The light grey pieces on the right side will be extruded to form the wall; that's only partially done. The horizontal lines in the glass won't show -or at least shouldn't- in a render; those lines are just cutting the glass surface into quads for UV mapping. I hope to get the tiny mosiac pattern on the glass using an image map. The glass will have thickness for rendering with caustics enabled.

Nice. I wish I had your talent. Have you seen the new Atlantis season 6 comic books?

No, didn't even know season 6 existed, even in comic book form. I have seasons 1-5 on DVD. I don't have TV service (or a TV), but I can watch DVDs on a commercial monitor.

Current state of the central window - not UV mapped yet, or I'd have tried projecting that yellow/red mosaic pattern onto the glass.

Having UV mapped the window and wall, I projected the yellow/red stained glass mosaic onto the glass surface. Bear in mind that this is only a Silo screengrab, not a Poser render; it shows alignment of the image map onto the mesh, but there is no lightcasting, ambient occlusion, caustics, bump, etc.

Atlantis gate room progress: I'll need to make a lot of cutaway panels strategically placed to allow for Poser camera access.

I have the Silo perspective camera setting on the main stair landing, looking up to see the lower part of the jumper bay shaft.

I've been UV mapping, and applying some rough test maps in Silo to check for UV strain, and check scale and alignment.

More UV mapping work, checking alignment of Alterran text etc.:

Silo guy in the intracity transporter - the doors are ghosted so that you can see inside:

The exterior balcony. I don't have the geometric pattern for the windows yet. I'll need to make exterior wall pieces above and below the level where Silo guy is standing; that will allow for renders with this camera perspective.

Nice. That is really looking good.

I deleted the main stairs and rebuilt it, because I realized that the steps have projecting front edges. I deleted and rebuilt the filigree trim on the bannisters astride the main stairs. For the third time, I deleted the gate window and rebuilt it, this time to match my geometry to RogueDragon's gate window stained glass.

I'm debating what to do about the columns with umpteen "chiclet" lights; the low-poly versions will just have areas which glow, as seen in the previous posts' screenshots. I'd prefer to use columns which have chiclets which actually project outward, but that will add significantly to the poly count. I suppose that I could save out both versions, and everybody use the higher-poly version if your machine has sufficient memory.

Poll for all who intend to use this: Are you 64bit? How much RAM does your machine have?

Texturing maps:

2D drawing is not my forte', so I'll gladly abdicate those to anyone who wants to contribute. RogueDragon's stained glass are an immense help. I'll need to gather templates and zip them up to work from. I could use the gnomonic navigation line pattern seen on the floor of the gate dias (does the rest of the floor have that?) Bump or normal map for those control room "piano" workstations would be useful - I haven't got the mesh formed yet, though. The bump pattern for those little squares where the bannister filigree strands intersect. Monitor images - there are several monitors in the control room, and what they display would be specific for a given situation. Pretty much anything you can think of which will need a particular texture or bump.

Regarding a holo room: Perhaps the best way to deal with this is to switch furnishings; default would be the conference room (table, chairs, and monitor on a stand), alternate would make it the holo room (control podium). The holo room will need a special effects mesh for holographic projection, so I'll add that, and I can also make materials to make a doll a refractive ghost.

column with 3D chiclets:

I like the column with the chicklet lights. The lights on the column definitely projected out where the stairs were inset. Both of my systems are 64 bit and I'll be happy to tackle any texturing you want to send my way. I haven't done that in ages but it would be fun. The floor had a pattern to it, I remember that and there are tons of reference images online to follow.

I prefer the 3D chiclets too. A major reason is because I foresee that the 3D chiclets will cast light not just outward but also back onto the column, whereas the version which is just a masked material area of the column surface itself will not. I can minimize the polycount increase by removing the backside polys (already done!) and deleting any chiclets which are on the other side of the set's walls. I'm installing chiclets now, but I'll keep a copy of the low-poly column on the hard drive in case it's needed.

I'll also put together a pack of templates, and post a d/l link when ready.

The columns now have 3D chiclets! 4.368 of them, totaling a little under 75,000 polys. Of course, any camera shot will only see a fraction of them.

Here is a download link for several templates Atlantis templates 02 for anyone who would like to contribute texture maps.

Plan view of the set:

I've been UV mapping -often UV unwrapping- everything, and equalizing the scale of the separate pieces of wall, etc. By golly, we might actually get this finished.

wall sconce light:

template for wall sconce:

Some more Atlantis templates: Atlantis templates 02

Got em. But many overlap, what program are you using to generate the templates?

I used UV Mapper Pro 3.5c to make the templates.

If the overlapping pieces are different colors, then they are different material zones and do not affect each other. For example, the central hall ceiling (lower than most, because it is under the main stair landing) is under and overlaps the mezzanine level ceiling template.

But they are different material zones, so what is applied to the central lower hall ceiling will not conflict with what is applied to the mezzanine ceiling.

Similarly, the robin's egg blue areas of the dias map shows flat/horizontal areas (dias floor and step treads). The stair riser template (green and red) overlaps, but they are different material zones; you can draw lines onto the dias map and ignore the stair riser maps. Use the green and red stair riser maps if you want to make your own Alterran text masks, and ignore the dias, bannister, and bannister light templates.

If this method grates on you -everybody has their own way of doing things- I'll soon be able to send "final candidate" OBJ parts if you want to make your own single-material templates. Alternatively, I could try to get UV Mapper Pro 3.5c to output single-material templates, but I don't know if it does that, or how to do so.

This evening got started on a control room piano...

If I select the other four material zones and slide them out of the 0-1 UV block, I can get a template of just the single material zone for the dias, ramps, and stair treads. Pain in the rear and high potential for screwing up an OBJ, though.

OK, I realize that it's only easy for me because I'm already intimately familiar with the geometry, and the floor templates are particularly confusing. I made separate templates for:

[_] dias, ramps, and dias step treads

[_] main landing and its step treads

[_] "ground level" floor (to the sides of the gate dias) and the lower halls, with the mezzanine floor template superimposed (but different color)

download link -> Atlantis floor templates

My intent with the combined 1st floor & mezzanine template is that you can either make a single map which would be used for both floors, or you can make separate maps for each floor.

Template for the ceiling material zones (cliick the magnifying glass icon to enlarge it - it's 2048x2048)

If it got reduced by Photobucket, then download the 2048x2048 template from Dropbox: Atlantis ceiling template

The mezzanine level ceiling template is overlaid onto the 1st floor halls ceiling template, with the intention that a single "gnomonic navigation lines" texture image should work for both.

Here's where the ceiling sections are located in 3D space:

Ok, got it. Having the images for reference will help and it will be easier with a model to test them on. Been a while since I've textured anything like this. :) I'll start playing this week. :)

@Kendra: As time permits, I'll get some OBJs (floors, walls, ceilings) packed up so you can check your texture placement. I'd need to do some geometry extraction to get simplified templates of the stargate, but that's on my list.

Here's another texture project for any takers: apply the constellation glyphs to the triangular buttons of the DHD, and/or make bump/normal maps for the decorative geometric patterns of the "piano" surfaces and the little grey end panels of that low profile monitor. Also need B&W circuit board style masks for those control crystal tablets. Hopefully, I can get the "piano" workstation OBJ posted this evening. I'll also make a workstation without the DHD; it will simply have more control crystals. The mapping will be the same.

From top to bottom, these are the DHD buttons (need star pattern glyphs), control crystals (need B&W masks with circuit board type paterns), keyboard keys (already done, but feel free to improve), and the piano body with the low profile monitor at the top of the last template.

Aaaarghh! I have one too many rows of buttons on the DHD; ignore the three triangles in the top row; those have now been deleted.

OBJ download link: floors, ceilings, gate, and piano

Templates for the stargate:

@Anybody who may be planning on doing a bump/normal map for the "piano" workstation chassis: hold off, I need to make corrections which will require re-mapping the mesh. I need to add the gently glowing orange panels on the rear of the chassis. While I'm at it, I will change how the mesh is broken up for UV mapping so as to avoid seams across areas where we would want bump mapping. That will make it easier. You can go on and do the star glyphs for the DHD triangular buttons, the circuit patterns for the control crystals, and the keyboard keys. But for the piano chassis, wait for the revision.

updated OBJ download link: ancient workstations

chassis template:

corrected DHD template:

workstation "pianos" in the control room:

From a TV screengrab, I noticed that there is a light panel trough alongside the main steps. In other words, there is a gap between the side end of each step and the bannister, with a glowing strip in that gap. Since the main staircase is so prominent, I want to correct that. If I do, I'll need to re-map the stair risers for text alignment.

Question: Should I also re-map the gate dias, the main landing, and all of the step treads (all of those horizontal surfaces) so that they are all UV-projected in correct relationship to each other? If those navigation lines also go over the stair treads, then it would make texturing easier.

This is the proposed revision to the dias/stair remapping; what do you think? (the four loose triangles are the side skirts of the ramps leading from the gate dias down to the rear hallways)

Download link for OBJs and larger (2048p) template of the remapped dias and staircase with new troughlights

From DVD screengrabs, I see that this other type of sconce light is used beside the balcony doors and within the control room. I'm referring to it as the "sconce pillar".

Template for sconce pillar:

Note: The glow panels of the wall sconce and the glow panels of the sconce pillar share the same UV mapping, so only one "circuits" texture will be needed; both light types will use the same glow panel map.

Looking good. I'll download and play some tomorrow after I finish my daughters wedding photos. I should have a completely free day if the nearby fire doesn't get worse. :)

Hope it's not to be sold after! Copyrights! Remember Copyrights!

First test renders... I imported some pieces into Poser. Still haven't finished breaking up the set into what will be separate Poser props (to allow for hiding walls, etc for camera access).