Star Trek Builders Unite 8: THE REBOOT

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Comments

  • So....how does one fix it?

     

    The Franklin model has the same problem.

  • Ryuu@AMcCFRyuu@AMcCF Posts: 668

    randym77 said:

    Is there a Voyager-era desktop computer prop available anywhere?

    It's kind of hilariously clunky by today's standards. laugh

     

    You need to close, disable, and then delete you EMH. You will find things will improve immensely then. wink

     

  • randym77randym77 Posts: 275
    edited August 2021

    TheCastellan said:

    to Randym:

     

    I got a few obj models there, and they, including the Franklin, has this annoying 'glitching' on the front of the saucers.

     

    Anyone know how to remedy this?

    I'm afraid I don't know much about DAZ Studio. If that was Poser, I would try normals forward or remove backfacing polys, but it looks to me like whatever renderer you are using doesn't like long, skinny triangles. Poser has that issue. The Delta Flyer model at SketchFab looks good...except the front window doesn't render correctly, due to long, skinny triangles. If that's the problem, I think the only solution is to re-triangulate the model. (Increasing subdivision levels generally doesn't fix this in Poser. Maybe DAZ Studio is better at it? Might be worth a shot.)

    I downloaded the Franklin model to look at it, and it seems like the problem is different with that one. There's just not enough polys to model the windows. The description says it's a low-poly version of a higher poly model, so I think what happened there is that he reduced the polys to the point that there weren't enough for the windows. It's not that noticeable, but someone who has some modeling skills could probably fix it easily enough. The license allows the model to be modified and redistributed, so if you can't fix it yourself, you might be able to get a friend to fix it for you.

    Alternately, there's always postwork.

     

    Post edited by randym77 on
  • You could try Edit>Object>Geoemtry>Triangulate, though depending on how the triangles were made that might not help, or it is possible to use the Geometry Editor to adjust the triangulation order (activate the Geometry Editor tool, select the problem polygons, right-click>Geoemtry Editing>Rotate Triangulation  of Selected Polygon(s)

  • randym77randym77 Posts: 275

    Ryuu@AMcCF said:

    randym77 said:

    Is there a Voyager-era desktop computer prop available anywhere?

    It's kind of hilariously clunky by today's standards. laugh

     

    You need to close, disable, and then delete you EMH. You will find things will improve immensely then.

    Very amusing, Mr. Ryuu.

    toonemh.jpg
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  • DodgerDodger Posts: 304

    TheCastellan said:

    So....how does one fix it?

     

    The Franklin model has the same problem.

    Yoire going to have to clean up the mesh in that area. It's caused by the super thin triangles.

    Sometimes you can hide it by adjusting the smoothing angle of the prop. In poser that's in the properties tab of the panel with the dials etc. I don't know where it's at in DAZ|Studio. But that's hit or miss.

  • Dodger said:

    TheCastellan said:

    So....how does one fix it?

     

    The Franklin model has the same problem.

    Yoire going to have to clean up the mesh in that area. It's caused by the super thin triangles.

    Sometimes you can hide it by adjusting the smoothing angle of the prop. In poser that's in the properties tab of the panel with the dials etc. I don't know where it's at in DAZ|Studio. But that's hit or miss.

    In DS it's in the Surfaces pane, per-surface - an on/off switch and an angle setting.

  • randym77randym77 Posts: 275
    edited August 2021

    I really think the Franklin model has a different from problem from the one on the Enterprise the OP posted. It's not long, skinny triangles on the Franklin model, it's not enough of them.

    The model is here, if anyone wants to play with it:

    https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/uss-franklin-c0b4e52abf0f4db6afa35a1cf9fb5c34

    Here's a closeup view of the windows, texture lined so you can see the polys. I made the skin material light gray and the glass material blue, to show the problem more clearly.

    The windows are round on the inside, but seem to be missing polys on the outside, so the window shape is incorrect.

    windowpolys.jpg
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    Post edited by randym77 on
  • GeorgehazeGeorgehaze Posts: 169

    I couldn't help but notice that, from the pic, you're still using DAZ Studio version 3.1..... Have you tried it in a more recent version? Or with IRay?

  • Tried 4, felt....too complicated.  I want something simple.  I mainly use aiko3 and hiro3 for humanoid figures.

     

  • randym77randym77 Posts: 275

    I have a feeling Dodger's Edosian is going to come in handy. Not only was there one in Lower Decks, there's a rumor that Arex could be brought in to replace Chekov (assuming the new movie is in the Kelvin timeline). They've said the animated series is canon again. And also that they won't re-cast Chekov, out of respect for Anton Yelchin.

     

  • genejokegenejoke Posts: 129

    I was under the impression another Kirk and co sequel was dead and they were going in a new direction for the next movie. Time will tell I guess.

  • Catherine3678abCatherine3678ab Posts: 8,311
    edited August 2021

    randym77 said:

    I really think the Franklin model has a different from problem from the one on the Enterprise the OP posted. It's not long, skinny triangles on the Franklin model, it's not enough of them.

    The model is here, if anyone wants to play with it:

    https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/uss-franklin-c0b4e52abf0f4db6afa35a1cf9fb5c34

    Here's a closeup view of the windows, texture lined so you can see the polys. I made the skin material light gray and the glass material blue, to show the problem more clearly.

    The windows are round on the inside, but seem to be missing polys on the outside, so the window shape is incorrect.

    It is working like the holes were made with boolean perhaps, a no-go for D/S. I removed the window glass and just looking at the mesh - it is fixable BUT 'twould be rather time consuming as a lot of tessellation would need to be added so D/S doesn't "fix" the mesh - and no promises that Hexagon will finish the job. In sections perhaps HOWEVER, in looking at some of the interior mesh, remembering the preferences for Iray, there is an amount of hidden "junk mesh" - unwelded mesh and well, it would be a project for sure. Also, because the mesh is changed, the uvmaps would also need to be redone. 

    My big question, are those hexagon windows supposed to be hexagon or round?

    Fixing the ship.png
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    Post edited by Catherine3678ab on
  • jestmartjestmart Posts: 4,449

    Your fix stil has lots of n-gons that Studio does not like.

  • Catherine3678abCatherine3678ab Posts: 8,311
    edited August 2021

    If you're referring to my post, those are not fixes. That is what it looks like "before" ... and yes, the model has lots of many things D/S does not like.

    Image shows how it looks in D/S compared to what it looks like in Hexagon.

    Post edited by Catherine3678ab on
  • randym77randym77 Posts: 275

    Judging from other images, the windows are supposed to be rectangular and round.

     

  • Okay, then with the fixes I have made [not shown yet], when smoothing is applied in Hexagon they'll be round. And then Hexagon will probably freeze so this is going to be done in parts.

     

  • Ryuu@AMcCFRyuu@AMcCF Posts: 668

    So, how many are familiar with the visual effect created for the old Star Trek Animated "life support field belts"?

    There is a little project that I was working on that featured the idea, which is what I was doing with these guys:

    image

    I was having to do each character's body parts piece by piece to create the effect I wanted--and the final results look really cool, although there are dozens of gaps and errors doing it this way. So, as you can probably imagine, it's a mind-blowingly tedious process!

     

    This morning, I saw a new product here--Alvin Bemar's Thickener Plug-In that will immediately and immensely make my life MUCH easier!!laugh

    No more gaps!

    No more tweaking to hide patches that aren't covering the figure like the field is supposed to!

     

    At the moment, there is an issue about the serial number not showing up in my account--but the instant I'm able to get the plug-in validated, I'm upgrading EVERYBODY on that ship! 

    Whoo Hoo!!heart

     

     

  • wsterdanwsterdan Posts: 2,343

    Ryuu@AMcCF said:

    So, how many are familiar with the visual effect created for the old Star Trek Animated "life support field belts"?

    There is a little project that I was working on that featured the idea, which is what I was doing with these guys:

    image

    I was having to do each character's body parts piece by piece to create the effect I wanted--and the final results look really cool, although there are dozens of gaps and errors doing it this way. So, as you can probably imagine, it's a mind-blowingly tedious process!

     

    This morning, I saw a new product here--Alvin Bemar's Thickener Plug-In that will immediately and immensely make my life MUCH easier!!laugh

    No more gaps!

    No more tweaking to hide patches that aren't covering the figure like the field is supposed to!

     

    At the moment, there is an issue about the serial number not showing up in my account--but the instant I'm able to get the plug-in validated, I'm upgrading EVERYBODY on that ship! 

    Whoo Hoo!!heart

     

    Have you tried just creating a geoshell, extending it outward a bit and colouring it to match the effect you're after?

    -- Walt Sterdan 

  • randym77randym77 Posts: 275

    Let us know how that Thickener plug-in works!

    I've often wished for something like that for Poser. I love dynamic cloth, but IMO it's not great for closeups, because of the lack of thickness. You can make dynamic clothes with thickness, but not many vendors do.

  • Ryuu@AMcCFRyuu@AMcCF Posts: 668
    edited August 2021

    wsterdan said:

    Ryuu@AMcCF said:

    So, how many are familiar with the visual effect created for the old Star Trek Animated "life support field belts"?

    Have you tried just creating a geoshell, extending it outward a bit and colouring it to match the effect you're after?

    -- Walt Sterdan 

    TBH, I'm not sure how to create a geoshell.

    What I had been doing was duplicating each figure over itself, then going into each of their individual body parts and slightly scaling up (no more than ~105%) the directions that are perpendicular to the direction of propagation (that is, for example of the DAZ3 Dragon: the Hip, Abdomen or Pelvis, increase the Xscale and Yscale amounts, leave the Zscale alone, since the Abdomen&Pelvis [for the Hip], Chest [for the Abdomen], and R&LThighs [for the Pelvis] are all in the Z-direction pathes -- or for the Arm, increase the Yscale and Zscale values, leave the Xscale alone since the ForeArm propogates in the X-direction path). You don't want to scale up any of the body-part propagation directions since that will just displace those copies of the body-parts in the duplicated figure. And don't touch the general Scale value at all until you reach the end of any propagation chain, such as the Head, the last Tail segment, or the final ends of Fingers/Toes.

    On some figures, a few body parts may propagate between major world axis (such as halfway between the X & Z axis), in which case, I had to split the difference to expand the Yscale to 105% and the Xscale and Zscale to something around 102.5%.

    There was a LOT of tweaking, repositioning the camera view, and experimenting to get the results I needed. Plus, despite doing all that, not all of the original figures were getting covered in view of the principle cameras I had set up around the Bridge--so I needed to have an ADDITIONAL duplicated figure! Fortunately, getting the Second Duplicate figures were simple, since the first Duplicates were already adjusted for their body-parts, I only needed to duplicate them, and then very slightly tweak their joint settings to get the proper coverage.

    I have heard about Geoshells, but aside from using them to attach other figures, like horns, tails and/or other limbs, etc, I'm not sure how to create or modify them. And since there was some software from an old Adesso drawing tablet that infected my machine with a mouse driver, which I cannot eliminate, that has killed my copy of Carrara on my system, I don't know if I can even try doing anything with Geoshells.

     

     

    Okay, so the Serial Number showed up yesterday early afternoon, and I immediately got started playing with it--and it works GREAT!.

    Unfortunately, I had to shut down when some thunderstorms came in for the later part of the day. But so far, the Thickening function is fantastic! It's easy to use, and very intuitive. There are two options to get from it--one is to create a static thickened object that has no joints or motions available (which is the one I'm focused on right now), and the other option creates a dynamic object (which I haven't played with yet, but also seems to be something I'll need to look at the instructions to figure out how to use ATM).

    The Millennium Dragonfolk, the Dakotaraptors, and many other figures were easily upgraded to their new effects. Copying the textures was the most important element to work on once the new Thickened object was created. Since all my original duplicated figures had the IRAY settings I wanted, all I had to do was copy those surfaces over to the new Thickened object, delete the old duplicated figures, and I'm done!

    Still a couple problems I still have to work around, but these are understandable and easily worked around....

    1) If you notice the pose of the DAZ3 Dragon's wings in my picture above, using the Thickening tool still left the underside wing membrane uncovered--but that was an easy fix: just make another thickened figure and slightly shift it down enough to envelop the membrane's lower side.

    2) the other issue I had was doing the Drago for G8Male--when I selected the G8Male figure, the thickener also grabbed the tail that was both Parented and FitToo the G8Male. Why is this a problem? The Thickening process creates a static object in the same shape, but were no Surface channels for the attached Tail or Wings--only the Surface channel for the Root figure is created. The solution for that is, I have to Unparent AND Unfit the attached figures--THAT now involves repositioning, and a bit of tweaking to manually put them back into position in relation to the G8Male figure. But once done, applying the Thickening process worked just fine like it did for all the other figures.

     

    Oh, and I did see one other problem--the scene that I had built is a pretty extensive job as it is intended to be a location used pretty heavily in my project (much like the Enterprise Bridge set). The architecture is the Commander Bridge set, and I prepopulated the stations with various dragons, draconics, dinoraptors, etc.

    With the original work I did of duplicating all the characters to each have their own Life Support Field effect (which involved making 2 Duplicates of each character), the total file size was between 7-8 Mb. The new work I just created, just Thickening each character, copying over the textures from the LSF figures, and deleting the original LSF Duplicates, didn't save me any memory. In fact, the file is now 78 Mb!

    Despite those issues, I REALLY like how the render is coming out, although I am definitely going to have dial down the emission value for the LSF effect applied to the Thickened geometries—they're a little too intense ATM. You'll see what I mean and be able to compare the results against one of the figures that didn't get changed: there is a 2nd Drago character that I haven't changed yet because of it will need to have the wings and tail Unparented, UnFitted, and repositioned again before Thickening them. I'll post the result here when the current test render is done in a few hours.

    Post edited by Ryuu@AMcCF on
  • Select your item

    Create>New Geometry Shell

    If needed the Parameters pane has on/off button for the shell, allowing you to hide groups or surfaces. It also has an Offset parameter which moves the surface in or out along the normals, the value is in cm. For something like this you would want a surface that shows when viewed at an angle but not (much) when viewed flat on, which may take some experimenting with the surface settings.

  • Ryuu@AMcCFRyuu@AMcCF Posts: 668
    edited August 2021

    Richard Haseltine said:

    Select your item

    Create>New Geometry Shell

    If needed the Parameters pane has on/off button for the shell, allowing you to hide groups or surfaces. It also has an Offset parameter which moves the surface in or out along the normals, the value is in cm. For something like this you would want a surface that shows when viewed at an angle but not (much) when viewed flat on, which may take some experimenting with the surface settings.

    Cool! Thanks, Richard!

    It'll have to wait until the current render is done before I can play with it, but I'll be sure to check it out.

    I'm currently seeing something rather weird going on right now with one of the figures and I can't figure out what's wrong. The oddity I'm encountering shouldn't have anything to do with the Thickening object or any of the work I did to make them, though. Indeed, nothing at all was changed for textures of the Root characters for the crew!

    This is the original render from before:

    But for some reason, one or two of the primary figures (Millennium Dragons--Dragonfolk) seem to have transparancies where there shouldn't be any such: the character who's supposed to be the Navigator [the winged, hornless Dragonfolk facing the console at the front of the Bridge], and possibly the character who's assigned to be the Sciene Officer [the wingless horned Dragonfolk, who is partially obscured by the console at the right of the render]. They're both showing as having normal, opaque textures for their Body Skins--just as they existed in the original work. However, I'm able to see the inside collar of the belt about the neck and the console in front of the Navigator figure showing through the body. I have no idea why this is happening....

    AND NOW I can't seem to post the picture I need to show!! angry

    Take THAT, strange-posting-glitch! I linked through my Gallery where you should be able to zoom in to see the oddity. cheeky

     

    00011-Bridge Scene-Dragonship Wyvern Cruiser Arrives--001.jpg
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    Post edited by Ryuu@AMcCF on
  • randym77randym77 Posts: 275

    The ones with "lfie support fields" do seem to be transparent, though it's more noticeable with some than with others.

    Not sure how the thickener plugin works, but it looks like they share a material, so if the field is transparent, so is the figure?

  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,902

    TheCastellan said:

    I got a few obj models there, and they, including the Franklin, has this annoying 'glitching' on the front of the saucers.

    Anyone know how to remedy this?

    It is an issue with ngons which are polygons with 5 or more sides.  Daz Studio requires that a model be either all triangles, all quads or a mix of the two.  However, each modeling program/suite works differently and will allow for things that Daz Studio will not, and that is ok, as long as the model stays within it's native environment.  Once you want to convert from the native format to another, regardless of what program you want to convert it for, things can start to get messy.  Sadly, that is just the nature of the beast when it come to converting models from A format to B format.  So the only way to fix it is to take it into a modeling program of your choice, and either fix the issues manually by finding all ngons and reconnecting each vertex (the dots) until you get quads or triangles, or simply tell the software to triangulate the whole mesh.  The triangulation step is the easiest but it can greatly increase the "weight" of the mesh.  So what may be 150,000 polygons with maybe 150 ngons among them, would become 300,000  polygons or more, depending on how the ngons are triangulated and how many sides they were to begin with.

  • And I'm not going to recommend Hexagon for this task.

  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,902
    edited August 2021

    Ok, just found the easiest way to fix it, using Silo at least.

    First off, forgot this little trick in Silo and you can do this in any modeling app, just not sure the steps.

    So from a purely Silo perspective...

    1. Go to the Selection Menu > Select Special Geometry  > Opt (which is the options in Silo for that feature)

    2. On the option window for Special Geometry, Choose in the drop down box " Faces with sides > " and then type in the number 4 in the box below - This will automatically highlight all polygons with more than 4 sides

    3. With all ngons selected, go to "Modify > Triangulate"  and those polygons will become a handful of triangles.

     

    I merged all parts of the model and discovered that there were still some ngons for some odd reason so you will have to repeate steps 1 and 3 again as Silo will remember your selection for step 2.

    So after that, you can scale and export the model and it will work just fine in Daz Studio.

     

    EDIT to add...  this is messed up!  Daz Studio will read the surfaces form the OBJ file but Silo will not.

    Post edited by Mattymanx on
  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,902

    Catherine3678ab said:

    And I'm not going to recommend Hexagon for this task.

    I noticed something odd in Silo when I tried to manually fix a few polys and that is the whole model is not properly welded so single polygons or groups of them are not connected to the ones next to it and so it wont subdivide correctly.

  • Catherine3678abCatherine3678ab Posts: 8,311
    edited August 2021

    Mattymanx said:

    Catherine3678ab said:

    And I'm not going to recommend Hexagon for this task.

    I noticed something odd in Silo when I tried to manually fix a few polys and that is the whole model is not properly welded so single polygons or groups of them are not connected to the ones next to it and so it wont subdivide correctly.

     Correct, it's not welded correctly [for our programs]. I kept using the utility to weld dots that are together but that didn't fix all the issues. There are co-planar faces but not exactly findable individually to replace them. By the time I had enough tessellation to keep the windows more or less square and spherical - way too much mesh to even dream about trying to attach it back to the ship. A few sections at the back I had heavily edited to remove mesh hidden inside ship and/or to unit it to other sections and was receiving grand cases of déjà vu. IF I were seriously wanting that particular ship I would tackle the matter by remaking the entire ship - preferably from blueprints.

    Post edited by Catherine3678ab on
  • Ryuu@AMcCFRyuu@AMcCF Posts: 668

    randym77 said:

    The ones with "lfie support fields" do seem to be transparent, though it's more noticeable with some than with others.

    Not sure how the thickener plugin works, but it looks like they share a material, so if the field is transparent, so is the figure?

    The upper picture of my post showed my original efforts, where I was tediously expanding the body-parts of dupicated figures and applying transparencies to the dupes to get the effect to surround non-transparent "core" figures.

    The Thickening plugin essentially replaced all that work with a single figure surrounding the "core" characters (everybody's "duplicated figures" got replaced except for the second DragoForG8M--who is barely in the picture anyhow--because of the hassle I had with the DragoForG8M near the center of the picture). I was able to get similar, and overall better results by applying the same transparency textures to the Thickened figures--except for the weird effect on "Mr. Checkhov" and the other guy I circled. Somehow, their "core" figures acquired a transparency that I can't account for.

    RealLife™ kept me from following up on this the last few days, but I'm planning on revisiting this issue as soon as I can. It's really weirding me out.

    Mind you, I'm not disappointed with whatever is causing it. In and of itself, it looks like it might actually be a rather cool effect on its own, and there are situations I can see it being very useful! I certainly want to be able to figure out what's causing it and to be able to reliably repeat it again in the future, but when I want it to.

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