Hey folks -- Here's a still from the animation that was causing me such trouble before. It's just a test and the model isn't finished, but I thought I'd share with you all and welcome any comments, as usual. (All RDS 5.5) Dex

sweet! I cant wait to see what happens. I think its pretty cool how a little model can spring to life with something even so small as a camera swinging around it.

I like all your space models, AzChip. Very cool.

Chip, Great model! I can't wait to see the final one either. I do have a couple of points, though, not to rain on your parade, but because sometimes it's hard to get a fresh perspective. 1) The texture on the ship looks like it was run through MPEG-4 compression a few times. I think a much higher quality, perhaps even procedural texture would be just the thing. 2) That font doesn't really fit with the scene. It's so Arial. :) Maybe a more futuristic, dirtier looking font would be the way to go. Overall, though, I'm excited. How long is the render time gonna be? Hoborg

Thanks for the comments, folks.... And, Hoborg, NEVER worry about raining on my parade. That's why I post these things here; to get feedback! The shader IS procedural. It uses Eric Winemiller's squares for the panel look (which is where the mpeg squared-out look is coming from -- I see it now that you mention it) and it also uses Eric's noise operator with a narrow z scale using local coordinates to give that streaked, dirty look to the surface. I'm going to be breaking up the surfaces more with some real geometry as time permits. Bits like the pipes and greeble stuff near the bay give a sense of reality to a model, I think.... I thought about a different font, and you're probably right. I was going for something that would be readable from an approaching ship so they would make sure they wound up in bay 4 instead of bay 3 or whatever.... As for what happens -- someone steals a ship from bay 4 and in the process blows the spacedoor out.... This frame took about 15 seconds to render. I did a 10 second test render at 720 x 480 x 30FPS approaching the "city" with the bay door opening. It took my new machine a little over an hour to render. I was just blown away by how fast that thing is.....