Crumpet's Weblog

Non realtime stuff

Thu, 20 May 2004 06:54:15 GMT

I have begun playing around (again) with non-realtime renderers. I am enjoying the quality of the output of these.

To the right is the same space ship shown previously but with a few lights added and rendered with a ray tracer. I spent a fair but of time modelling the lights exclusively for ray-tracing. Paying attention to detail on things like lenses on the lights. So for example the spot lights on the front and the Nav lights on the side have clear glass covers over them so refraction ec. can play a small part. The Nav light is interesting in that it is actually a red light behind a round clear glass lens.

I also went to painstaking trouble to have the cockpit illuminated by a small map light. I modeled the small map light which looks similar to the air vents on a commercial aircraft and sits on the ceiling between the two seats pointing down. I used a cool green instead of the standard red map light because I thought it looked more like flouresent style lighting (?!) and also there was enough red lights in the scene.

As I said, I am enjoying playing with this and u can expect more images to come

WSS Tip

Thu, 20 May 2004 01:00:12 GMT

We wanted to have a webpart in a WSS site to stream the contents of a file out. This is so a custom website header webpart could be produced but have the content modifyable.

The problem comes as the webpart has no access to anything as you would expect. A quick work-around for an intranet is to lower the trust level on the WSS site, i.e. in the web.config file under

<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <trust level="Full"/>
    </system.web>
</configuration>

This way the web part is allowed to open up external files and read them. I wouldn't recommend this for internet sites however.

Milkshape Tutorial: Creating a hollow hull

Tue, 06 Apr 2004 03:01:55 GMT

Added a tutorial to demonstrate how to get hollow hulls in Milkshape 3D. This tutorial demonstrates creating a simple sphere with a window to its insides.

Check it out here.

Comments, suggestions and links from other sites welcome.

Sat, 27 Mar 2004 01:23:35 GMT

I have made the skin much more light and bland. I guess there could be some highlights such as scuff marks but my skills need to advance a little bit before I can get into some of that stuff.

Sun, 21 Mar 2004 19:08:36 GMT

I have put a preliminary skin on it so the programmers can get it into the 3d engine and have a play.

I went for engines in separate pods rather than the conventional engine in the body since the fins aren't going to be able to steer it in space. The idea is the pods can independently control roll and pitch to steer the missile around.

The fins stayed on even though not used in space for a couple of reasons. If the missile is fired in an environment where there is atmosphere, these could be used making the missile multipurpose I suppose and the make it look mean!

for the skin I would like to make it more detailed. Have a few details on it like health warnings :) and other usual placards that might be found on such a device. Also the general colour scheme and a bit of dirtying up, I guess these would stay on a craft for a while before being fired and hence should collect dust etc. in that time.

The second picture shows how a cargo vessel may have a few of these missiles tucked away for self defense purposes. I wouldn't expect a cargo vessel to be armed with much more than the smallest compliment of defenses, but my fighter ship isnt ready yet.

Sun, 21 Mar 2004 01:28:18 GMT

Early version of a simple space ship lauched guided missile. Requirements were < 1000 polys.

I just have to skin it to call it finished

Sat, 06 Mar 2004 04:30:58 GMT

This is a very early version of the single place fighter space craft to compliment the cargo vessel. It will have hard points on the wings for the detachable lasers and missiles as well as small twin engines tucked in against the fuselage body.

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 08:09:18 GMT

Art rage is now available from Ambient Designs.

This is a very cool free little paint application. For "real" painting which I first saw a few months back at Microsoft Tech Ed. They had this running on some Tablet PC's. Reason enough to buy a tablet PC I reckon :)

To the right is a sunset sorta thing I painted up in just a few minutes while experimenting with some brushes.