[WIP] Star Maps Revamp

[DarthParametric 3,777]

If you want to try your hand at animation, I was thinking the other day you could maybe swap out the ball for a set of rings, kind of like a gimbal:

 

[CarthOnasty 214]

5 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

If you want to try your hand at animation, I was thinking the other day you could maybe swap out the ball for a set of rings, kind of like a gimbal:

 

This is something I've put a lot of thought into, yeah. Something that feels a bit more spacey/futurey than a low-poly sphere. I really like that gimbal idea, I could see that working really well. I'm not up to par on animation, but could be a good way to learn.

P.S. Initial UV. These always change as I develop, but here's a start. All the tris and quads led to a bit more unwrapping that I would've preferred, but I refuse to have stretched textures. 😎

[Sith Holocron 2,473]

6 hours ago, DarthParametric said:

If you want to try your hand at animation, I was thinking the other day you could maybe swap out the ball for a set of rings, kind of like a gimbal:

 

 

12 minutes ago, CarthOnasty said:

This is something I've put a lot of thought into, yeah. Something that feels a bit more spacey/futuristic than a low-poly sphere. I really like that gimbal idea, I could see that working really well. I'm not up to par on animation, but could be a good way to learn.

Interesting concept.  I do wonder about something though: When the movies have to eventually be remade to show up this new Star Map, how will you sync the different star map centers in the following movie when morphing through the different planets?

 

[CarthOnasty 214]

1 minute ago, Sith Holocron said:

When the movies have to eventually be remade to show up this new Star Map, how will you sync the different star map centers in the following movie when morphing through the different planets?

 

Ask me in a year. 😜

[DarthParametric 3,777]

The animation should actually be pretty straight forward. I'd put all the rings as child of a null/dummy. You can use that to control the height, as per the original animation. Then each ring just needs a rotation on one axis. Each ring should be rotating on a different axis. The real trick is getting a smooth continuous loop. I know Max tends to get a bit derpy trying to do that with linear keys.

As to the video, you'd set up a DLG that has an animated camera that rotates around the map and a script that starts the map animation so that everything is synced. Then in a video editor you'd just crossfade between each clip. Honestly that should be the easiest part of the whole operation.

Edit - As an example:

Although I noticed that compiling the model and then importing it into Blender the animation didn't quite loop smoothly like it does in Max. You'd need to test it out in-game to see what it looks like there I guess.

Also this is not the gimbal style of animation where each successive ring is a child of the former. You can do that if you prefer, although the current starting positions would need to be altered in order to get all three rings in gimbal lock.

rings_temp-kotormax.mdl.ascii

 

Edit 2 - And if you want a gimbal style version:

 

rings_temp-GIMBAL_VERSION-kotormax.mdl.ascii

[CarthOnasty 214]

@DarthParametricNice! Thanks for these! I'll play around and see what works.