Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => Arts & Talents => Topic started by: DragonClaw on April 22, 2010, 09:11:48 pm

Title: 3D FS NodeMap
Post by: DragonClaw on April 22, 2010, 09:11:48 pm

So I spent the last three days after work working on this. Seemed pretty simple to do, but it took me longer than I thought it would.
    Day 1: Figured out how to model the damn "cage" around the sphere... that was a pain. Used a combination of modeling tricks in LW and a plugin. Thought it would be easier... Also added star background.
    Day 2: Building nebula background on 2d planes out of Lightspeed's Nebs, creating alpha images for transparency so stars are viewable. Created transparency procedural texture on a flat plane for the grid. Placed all the nodes. Rendered a 12 second animation overnight for kicks.
    Day 3: Built the line model and all the text along with the black connector spheres. Placed them. Fiddled with some image processing in LW until I liked it...then rendered this!


(http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/2347/nodemap1080p.jpg)

Download .tga : http://www.mediafire.com/file/jezonmikzky/nodemap1080p.tga

So that's it! Netted myself another background image to cycle through... and I may attempt to recreate a CB Anim using this in the near future. We'll see  :nervous:

Any constructive feedback is welcome. Also please let me know if I got anything wrong... I triple checked but who knows...


P.S. FPrime is awesome. I'd recommend it for any Lightwave user, if you can afford it :) Well worth the investment. Makes setting up scenes and testing surface settings 10000x easier and faster.

[edit] Noticed I missed Procyon /facepalm. Re-rendered and fixed.[/edit]

Title: Re: 3D FS NodeMap
Post by: Galemp on April 22, 2010, 10:12:34 pm

I made one of these in 3DS Max years ago, but having one  in Lightwave is good too! Well done.

IMO you could pick a better background image, one a little less overwhelming.

Title: Re: 3D FS NodeMap
Post by: Rodo on April 23, 2010, 06:46:32 pm

I like it, you should definitely think about making a cbanim out of this.

Title: Re: 3D FS NodeMap
Post by: DragonClaw on April 23, 2010, 07:29:31 pm

Thanks for the feedback. Toned down the nebula quite a bit and brightened up the text and nodes ; I agree it looks better.

(http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/3391/nodemap1080p4.jpg)

Title: Re: 3D FS NodeMap
Post by: watsisname on April 25, 2010, 02:42:09 am

I absolutely love it, great work!
My only suggestion may be to try a color other than black for the connector spheres, since they're hard to see where the background is dark.  But perhaps it's not really important to see them. *shrug*
I would love to see CBanim's with this as well. :)