displacement was just for fun...

normal mapping also for fun, but for all the little details. i figure i could have a relatively cleaner mesh if i used normal mapping. because if i did keep all the indents then i have to worry about where all the vertices are going to connect to and they'll end up making a giant loop around the entire body because there's no place for them to end earlier....

only the gun, jetpack, and shield have normal maps applied to them. the wings don't, because they didn't look very good.

the wings are just seperate objects parented together....

forgot to mention the wings have been rigged so now they can open and close using set driven keys on some control curve

ah yes... environment.... *whistles innocently*


anyway, it appears that i can't do what i'm wanting to do

i tried making particles emit light by instancing a point light to them but it failed.... which means the gun can't draw in light using particles...

:headbang:

i guess you could make them glow with a blinn...

making the particles glow is no problem

i can just assign a shader that will show up in mental ray and boost the incandescence and add glow (although in my experience the glow doesn't get saved when its on a transparent part of the scene which makes it completely pointless and i'd have to find a way to do it in post)

the problem is getting the particles to emit light so they light up the scene.

as you can see from an exclusive attached picture the particles (emitted from a surface emitter) glow but it doesn't look right because they dont light up the gun


edit: wrong render

since the point lights that get instanced to the particles don't emit light i thought to just make my own simulation of it with some point lights attached to a motion path that would cycle through the path.

this is what it looks like:
http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...59373_2092.jpg

despite the actual gun being in the center of the light rig there is a concentrated bit of light on the ground that isn't directly beneath the gun itself.
http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...59374_7452.jpg

this is a result because only ONE of the lights got set to intensity of 200 and the others stayed at 1 due to me thinking that i was changing all their intensities at once.
apparently selecting all of them in the hypershade and changing the attribute on one does not affect all of them.

also, trying to create a control object to control their intensity does NOT work because intensity is not an attribute one can link to using the Connection Editor, nor is it an attribute that shows up in the Attribute Spreed Sheet, or as an attribute that can show up in the channel box.

hence, mass changing the intensity of all the point lights is impossible, and this solution should and will be abandoned.

in fact, why don't i just make it easier on myself and make this a daytime scene and make it less dramatic....?
oh right... night time is better :headbang:



why do particles not emit light?
and why is intensity not an attribute?

could you do this with a bit of mel?

yes... yes i can....

i can change them all, but i really don't like hard coding stuff... i'll have to figure out how to do it properly at some point so it works for any point light

I thought you wrote AI algorithms for a living?... I was studying AI for a little while in my C# course, and trust me, MEL has nothing on it. Just pick up a book on MEL, or check around online. MEL isn't that bad. You should have it in no time.

yeah i am raised as a programer since 4 years ago (i have no idea what i was doing before then....), and so i don't like hard coding stuff because it's not very useful. making the code general and work for any sort of lights, is more desireable..

MEL isn't too hard, i'm just lazy.......

ok, well i went to area autodesk and figured out how to change all the intensities of all the pointlights i have selected.

currently the UI i built for it was whipped up in a few minutes and is totally lightweight and bare.
can't do all the things that you normally would for a light's intensity (why would you want to assign a texture to a light?)

quick update.
been dreaming about writing a script to mass change all the lights. and got a new internship so... bleeeeeh

for what i have it does what i want. as for being usable by others it's probably far from it

http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...42399_2760.jpg

http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-...42405_6354.jpg

requires more work on the lights,
and also the particles in front of the gun should be swirling inwards... i suppose i should put a goal in the center and use the vortex field

I don't think you even need all those lights. I mean, if all those little glowing particles were so close together, then wouldn't they appear to be more or less one source of light?

Textures for a light, gobos maybe?

As for changing all the intensities/properties of the lights at once just select them all and use the attribute spreadsheet, everythings in there.

Gect: you're probably right, i probably dont need all those lights, but the particles start off far enough to make me think i need more than one

didn't i say i already tried that? the attribute wasn't there nor could i link the attribute to a custom one in a control curve

The intensity attributes not there?

Are you sure? Just made a scene with 10 point lights in there, selected them and went to the spreadsheet, and its there...???????

Picky