The ship motion is right apart from the amount of thrust and the size of the
boosters. i.e. boosters light up according to their position and direction
only. The way I see it that's accurate enough to fool most people.

The camera isn't moving, the ship is rotating on the spot in zero-G. It's a
very unusual movement so that's why it's so hard to figure out what's
happening! :) The ship should gain a net motion when the rear boosters fire
because of how much bigger they are, but like I said above I don't model
that.

The plates that make the hull use a normal map, like the one I used on my
winter entry to the irtc. I've improved it a little since then, but for this
animation I actually don't use a normal map. That sounds like a
contradiction, but bear with me: I render the ships texture to a seperate
image, with all the panel bumps, dirt, colour, logos, and windows on it. So
when you map that texture on it looks lumpy, even though it's flat and
doesn't have a normal map! This makes it render much faster than a normal
map, which is in turn much faster than actually modelling the panels.

But in answer to your question: the panels are based loosely on a normal map
that's kind of like this: normal { cells }. I've modified and scaled it, but
that's the basic effect.

--
Tek
http://www.evilsuperbrain.com


"John D. Gwinner" <joh### [at] cornelledu> wrote in message
news:3e7e2b95$1@news.povray.org...
> I love the hull detail.
>
> The boosters look nice, although I'm not quite 'sure' that the ship motion
> is proper given the booster firing, but I think that's because the motion
is
> so complicated.  If I watch one booster (i.e. the front) it looks perfect.
> I take it from your description it's correct.
>
> Some of the boosters seem to 'overlap' (the side / wing boosters) some
which
> would impact a net upward motion, and the tail booster is going too, but I
> assume the camera is locked on the center of the ship.  Maybe if there
were
> starts / something to gauge movement against it would be more obvious.
>
> Anyway, nits, again I just love the hull detail.  They seem to be
different
> plates.  How did you do it?
>
>      == John ==
>
>
> "Tek" <tek### [at] evilsuperbraincom> wrote in message
> news:3e6e6c04@news.povray.org...
> > This is an animated version of the still I posted on p.b.i
>
>

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