The Twin of Evil (for all you Qui-Gon lovers) please respond to this thread.

Well we are talking about it but I dont know anything final has been decided but I may be the production designer for Second Strike. And Star Ship troopers is one of my inspirations for one of the scenes i it. not completely sure and I have to finish reading the script of course =P. But it is sure to be intense. =)

 

Sorry for the NE-glect!
More soon!!
(hopefully)

Kenobi Maul, speaking of neglect, POST MORE ON RoEK!!!

There WILL be a pick up on posting when summer decides to roll around.

~Padawan Kenobi~

 

I'm going to make the assumption that by "gritty war movie", you are attempting something in the Saving Private Ryan vein. You've also mentioned Starship Troopers as an inspiration.
Ok, let me break it down for you. Starship Troopers is probably the worst representation of the military I've ever seen. Even taking into account that it's several hundred years in the future, they have absolutly no tactics, no strategies and the weapons are totally idiotic. The "Mobile Infantry" (infantry is inherantly 'mobile') has either Space M16's or Space Nuclear grenades. Nothing in between. For some reason, they reversed back to echelon tactics, sending hundreds of charging morons up a hill into what was perhaps the dumbest enemy I've ever seen. To give you an idea, an M16A2's maximum effective range to a point target is 550 meters. After 300 years of advances in weapons, I would assume the Starship Troopers rifles could fire similar if not much better. So why did they stand 2 meters away from these critters unloading magazine after magazine into them??? What happened to tanks?? Todays Army could defeat those critters by taking a wall of bulldozers and running them over while they attempted to stab with their little pincer claw thingies. Ok, I've vented on Starship Troopers enough, though there is much more! My point being, Starship Troopers was not anything like a modern military. It was bubble gum Hollywood. 99% of the movies that come out or books that come out about the military are pure drivle. Courage Under Fire, The Generals Daughter, Starship Troopers, they were all hard for me to stomach. If you want a good reference for the military in action, watch Three Kings. Without a doubt the best movie about the modern military ever made, and most accurate. Hopefully this msg will help the cast and crew of Second Strike take a serious look at what they are doing, because you walk a thin line between bubble gum and looking good.

 

Twentylevel,

did you read the book Starship Troopers? It does much more for explaiing how the MI works in Heinlein's mind. The movie, granted, was flashy and wouldn't do much for a "modern tactician". Heinlein has his points, though.

*S* and Regards,

JaysDicta

 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Geneva,Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Shawn PTH:
You have a very good point there and I agree. And I think Second Strike will be the answer to your dreams. Undoubtedly you will be seeing more about it in the future. There have been some tentative conversations about the project heads and its looking like it will be allot of fun to do not to mention allot of work! This project right now is so huge its not even funny. Im sure there will be tons of positions for people to work on it and help out what ever their specialties may be.

-Shawn Sagady
Special Effects Supervisor
Prelude To Hope

Oh yeah. Second Strike will hit a LOT of things that have been lacking in a realistic overview of the SW universe. The big baddie is well . . . sadistic, and the good guys are, well, less than perfect. And NO LIGHTSABERS!

But Shawn's exactly right about the amount of work that'll be needed on this thing. Luckily, I don't think it will be NEARLY as effects intensive in non-space scenes as PTH has been, but it *is* going to be a LOT longer than any fan film done thus far, and some of the effects (like some complicated swoops shots) will be quite difficult. Hopefully, though, we can get the filming done this winter and just have to deal with post-production from there on.

But, hey, who am I kiddin'. This'll take forever.

--Nathan Butler
Co-Writer, Prelude to Hope
Co-Writer, The Jedi Wars
Writer, Second Strike

 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Geneva,Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Shawn PTH:
Well we are talking about it but I dont know anything final has been decided but I may be the production designer for Second Strike. And Star Ship troopers is one of my inspirations for one of the scenes i it. not completely sure and I have to finish reading the script of course =P. But it is sure to be intense. =)


Just finish reading the script, m'man. There are a few places (like the flashback to a previous Ferri'sol attack) that give plenty of room for carnage in interpretation, but a lot of the rest is really precisely planned out (and you know how much goes into making the nuances flow and echo and all that stuff). What I'm interested in seeing is how you guys pull off some of the blaster and knife wound effects, especially the ones Plitar and Klope get in Act III. But if anyone can pull it off, it's CCP!

--Nathan Butler
Co-Writer, Prelude to Hope
Co-Writer, The Jedi Wars
Writer, Second Strike

 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Geneva,Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Twentylevel:
I'm going to make the assumption that by "gritty war movie", you are attempting something in the Saving Private Ryan vein. You've also mentioned Starship Troopers as an inspiration.
Ok, let me break it down for you. Starship Troopers is probably the worst representation of the military I've ever seen. Even taking into account that it's several hundred years in the future, they have absolutly no tactics, no strategies and the weapons are totally idiotic. The "Mobile Infantry" (infantry is inherantly 'mobile') has either Space M16's or Space Nuclear grenades. Nothing in between. For some reason, they reversed back to echelon tactics, sending hundreds of charging morons up a hill into what was perhaps the dumbest enemy I've ever seen. To give you an idea, an M16A2's maximum effective range to a point target is 550 meters. After 300 years of advances in weapons, I would assume the Starship Troopers rifles could fire similar if not much better. So why did they stand 2 meters away from these critters unloading magazine after magazine into them??? What happened to tanks?? Todays Army could defeat those critters by taking a wall of bulldozers and running them over while they attempted to stab with their little pincer claw thingies. Ok, I've vented on Starship Troopers enough, though there is much more! My point being, Starship Troopers was not anything like a modern military. It was bubble gum Hollywood. 99% of the movies that come out or books that come out about the military are pure drivle. Courage Under Fire, The Generals Daughter, Starship Troopers, they were all hard for me to stomach. If you want a good reference for the military in action, watch Three Kings. Without a doubt the best movie about the modern military ever made, and most accurate. Hopefully this msg will help the cast and crew of Second Strike take a serious look at what they are doing, because you walk a thin line between bubble gum and looking good.

Worry not. According to the project's Director (Devon Read, yet another PTH alumni), the script that I wrote based on our earlier "Saving Private Ryan"-ish idea is closer to "Three Kings" than SPR. We've pretty much taken the "gritty" and changed it from super-gore (i.e. often senseless gore, a la SPR at times) and given the film an overall "dark" feel instead of trying to force that feel with gore and badly-executed SPR/SST action. Like I said in that tutorial on script writing, I think the story and the characters are the driving force to setting the tone, and everything else in the story. Since that's the case, expect 2S to be VERY character and story intensive, and to really push the limits of fan films without having to degenerate into senseless violence or overdone Horror-movie effects work.

--Nathan Butler
Co-Writer, Prelude to Hope
Co-Writer, The Jedi Wars
Writer, Second Strike

 

Wow. Well i think what was lost in that was that I was looking at Star Ship Troopers as reference for Design. Not for tactics or anything youve mentioned. That is all done by the writter and the director. I am merley saying that the look of the technology and some of the shots used in the movie are insiprations. Fear not though when it comes to tactics because of the nature of this movie we will be paying allot of attention to the details.

-Shawn Sagady
Visual Effects Supervisor
Prelude To Hope

 

That's fresh coming from You-Know-Who's Padawan!

 

POST #200!

 

"Fresh"?

~Padawan Kenobi~

 

Hey!
I am very new to CS2.2,so i have a few questions:
1.How can i add more than one motion file to a biped??

2.How can i get more motion files than these from the program??

3.Does anyone know what i need for motion capturing(a lot of money??)!

4.By rendering a character(with an movie as background)how do make the shadows??

5 and last one oes anyone have a version of
a stormtrooper and an pitdroid or is planning to make,please let me know!!

I know,many questions,but i am realy confused!!

Thanx!!!!!

 

\\'ould you like to "super-size" that order?? Whew, lemme take a sip of this tasty beverage before diving into this one.....Ahhhh. Ok

1.How can i add more than one motion file to a biped??

I'll have to reply to that one at a latter time cuz I cannot remember right off the top-o-(V)y head.....

2.How can i get more motion files than these from the program??


Hmmm, well I found some for free at Viewpoint data labs a while back, but I cannot find that link, maybe go fish around there. Also try to search for .bip files, or (V)otion capture files. Thats \\'hat search engines are for

3.Does anyone know what i need for motion capturing(a lot of money??)!

It depends on the type of motion you want. In max you an assign button as motion devices IE: you can tell (V)ax that your mouse is the X and Y axis's and tell it to record your motions. you can add the letters "a" and "s" as the Z axis, and move your object for a more control over your animation. But for motion packs like you are using in (V)ax, they use those fancy black suits with all the ping-pong balls over them

4.By rendering a character(with an movie as background)how do make the shadows??

Make yourself familiar with the Matte map. It is the one texture you will use for ALL your composite effect. I could write for ever, and I have typed about this in other threads before. Read ever thread when you come here, even old ones if you are new, cuz you may learn somthing!! But real qucik. You need to make a "virtual set" in max. Place a plane for the ground and use boxes to represenmt the objects on your movie, building etc. Make them about the same size and distance as in your movie image. Got into material editor, and click standard for material and select Matte. inside that rollout select receives shadows.add lights to your scene similar to the ones that were in your filmed scene. when you place your objects in the scene, the "virtual set" will receive the shadows, and since they are mapped with the Matte texture, it will show in your movie file. I have said this a bunch, but if you goto http://www.geocities.com/mistrfinga, http://www.geocities.com/mistrfinga, under movies section, I have done a few of those, and you can maybe get an idea of how to do it.

5 and last one oes anyone have a version of
a stormtrooper and an pitdroid or is planning to make,please let me know!!


We are working on a PitDroid, and I amready posted reguarding the stormTrooper, read that there, I am getting sore fingers from all the post replies!!!!


3Deeez Nutz

-=(V)iSTRFiNGA=-

 

Thanx for the tips!!!!

Bye

 

The link to quite a few of Viewpoint's free .bip files is:
http://www.viewpoint.com/freestuff/ktx/index.html http://www.viewpoint.com/freestuff/ktx/index.html

The page has AVIs of each (using the dancing baby) so you can see how what the file does, exactly.

 

HI !
I have another question:
How can i copy a biped(example the battledroid)!
When i select the whole biped and clone them only a foot or an arm goes with and is still attached at original biped!

Please help!!
Thanx

 

Sounds like MISTA almost did that CS tutorial he never wanted to get involved in.

MO-CAP....forget about it. My current knowledge of the market to date place any and all such systems out of reach of any normal user. They are in the 10's and 100's of thou$ands. And they can be very buggy b/c they are such complicated systems. Last time I went to SIGGRAPH last year there were a couple at the show they never got to work.

SWMA has an excellent Stormtrooper, and maybe a Pitdroid too. I have a couple Pit Droids but neither is ready for upload quite yet. And we plan on taking the stormtrooper models and updating them real good.

 

Well, Maniacos, I think I may have a solution. Please not that I am far from being an expert, this is only a conclusion drawn from what I did when I had to re-save Viewpoint's .bip files in MAX3.1 after being informed that the .bip was obsolete. As well, I'm not that great at writting documentation so this is going to be VERY brief.

With your chosen mesh loaded, select Bip01. Click on the Motion tab and make sure Footstep mode is selected. Move down and you should see standard Windows icons for "Open" and "Save". Click the "Save" icon and name as you wish.

Again, I'm sure there is a more appropriate way of doing this. This is simply what works for me.

Sha

 

You understand me wrong,what i mean is to copy copy(clone)a mesh with a biped attached,simply muliply my characters!!!

But Thanx for answering

 

Hi,

I'm pretty interested too in CS. I made some animations with the Battle Droid linking several free form files (a couple of "loopable" march files followed by the stop). I had also the same doubt (how to load more than one) and I found (but I forgot) a way to do it. Look for "loop" in the help.

Wrt cloning I had no problem cloning the battle droid, just select both the mesh and the biped.

Highly detailed models are good for close views, but if you intend to do sequences with lots of droids or stormtroopers then a lower res version would work much better (unless you have infinite RAM)

QUESTION1: I do have problems if I want to resize the droid and the biped, as the biped does not resize the same way meshes do ... does somebody now how to do it ?

QUESTION2: How do you reduce the number of polygons of a mesh ? I.e. is it possible to take the battle droid or the stormtrooper and apply a modifier which reduces the number of polygons and thus improved system behaviour when playing with lots of meshes ??

Wrt the Stormtrooper, I copy this from a post I made:

"there is in fact a model with biped already applied, and it works pretty good. I think it uses the model at swma.

I made some animation tests (dancing baby) and I'm planning to use fighting against the battle droids.

I found the model at:
http://neptune.spaceports.com/~swarma/objects.html http://neptune.spaceports.com/~swarma/objects.html

There you will find models (based on swma) of:

-stormtrooper
-imperial officer
-c3po (this one could be updated)
-darth vader (this one could be updated)
-admiral ackbar
-han solo

This could be a good starting point to update Vader or C3PO, which are promising but lack realism (e.g. Vaders head, or C3PO details)"

Jose

 

To Jose!!

Have you tried the stormtrooper(biped)???
Cause when i try to give him a motion file,MAX give me an error.

So,I would like to know,if you had any problems with it!!

Bye

 

Yeap, I tried the Stormtrooper with biped and it worked. I loaded a bip file without problems.

I used Max 2.5 but there shouldn't be a problem if you use Max 3. I'll try anyway if I find some free time.

Jose

 

Hehe looky what i found, anyone know where the rest of the story is or if its archived somewhere?

 

Hey, I found it!!!

No it's not in an archive, it's not finished yet.

~Padawan Kenobi~