Thread: November Entry: Pocketwatch

Originally Posted by Redrobes

Yeah, I dont know if your monitor is brighter than mine but its very dark. I would think with the tech to make that watch with holograms and all then they ought to be able to fit a decent power light source.

Hand reached down and hits the super luminosity dial...

Could point. That would be a bit of a detriment if the navigator/pilot had to turn down the lights whenever he/she/it wanted to use the device. Unless of course it was invented by a species that had some form of Dark Vision or something and couldn't handle anything much brighter...

Originally Posted by Ascension

Awesome idea! Might want to brighten up the blues a bit more still...really make 'em glow. Might want to add in something like sunrays coming down from the clouds but in reverse going from the gem up to the planets...like a laser light show thing (but not too bight). Very nice.

Agreed on both. The former should create an emissive texture effect to borrow a video game term. The latter would help mentally connect the hologram to the watch/projector.

Final shots; included the recommended glow (don't ask me why it changes to a pinkish color over the wood...) and volumetric lighting.

Also included is a high def rendering (1080i), zipped so I could post it; just a simple rotation of the camera. It's a DivX avi, so make sure you have a codec that can play it. It's not perfect: the colors are muted, the objects shake around, and the shadows are missing... still worth a look though so you can get an idea of the space.

Thanks everyone for their awesome suggestions!

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The pictures are really dark again. I think you are getting the red because it isn't a true glow and instead looks like a lightening layer or something which is strange.

The video is also really dark, but what I could see was very sweet! I love the reflections in on the pocket watch. Very cool.

I was actually hoping more to see the display moving, particularly the little ship icon, but the fly around is good too.

yeah, i'm back home on the desktop and I see what you mean... I'll try transferring the files over and adjust it on this monitor since it seems to match everyone else's better.

Originally Posted by RPMiller

I was actually hoping more to see the display moving, particularly the little ship icon, but the fly around is good too.

yeah, its the best I can do for now I enjoyed working in 3D, so maybe with some more practice we'll get some fancier animations

[UPDATE]
Looks like everything switched over nicely (laptop has 3DS Max 9, desktop 3DS Max 2009, was a little worried) and its much more obvious how poor the lighting is. *cracks nuckles* lets see what I can do here.

I've only animated in Poser recently and AutoCAD way back in the early 90s. I really should get back into it again. Maybe after the semester ends...

Good to hear the transfer went smooth. Can't wait to see the changes.

Ta dah!

pretty much fixed everything that was wrong. RPMiller, I think you were right about the glow; I had it on a sort of "dynamic" mode where it was basing the glow off of the rendered pixel color. That might be nice for other effects, but was messing up my scene. Switched it to a static blue glow, and applied a separate effect for the green glow to differentiate the two.

Also, was able to fix my wobbly video render by converting to a targeted camera so even as it changed position, it would always face the same point. The video also has shadows now, since my desktop set-up has the beef for it. Quality is still kinda meh... but I'm using the free DivX codec which maxes out at 80% quality, so kinda expected it. Total render time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

And of course, everything brightened up now. If it looks dark, I'm going to guess its you at this point, because this monitor is calibrated from my digital photography

[Edit]
Added the "lights on" render from before to keep everything together.

Just putting the WIP pic in a separate post to ensure its the thumbnail used. Carry on!

### Latest WIP ###