Hey everyone, working countless hours the past few days to finish the topside of the mars rover. Here is a sneak peek of what's coming.. a few glitches on the colored parts of the sundial there, (fixed for next renders) but other than that.. I think I'm happy.



I want to ask again, I am looking for a few reference images of the jpl that held the rover in, I want to make the room just for lighting purposes, if someone can help please contact me.

You're not the only one! Correct me if I'm wrong, I see also solar cells bump mapping; incredible...

Fantastic, ... as always.
Regarding sundial - is it just optical illusion or my bad eyes when I see black sphere on the top to be a bit deformed, not perfectly sphereric?

Thanks for your comments, once more..

...regarding the sundial, it's a perfect sphere, it's the angle that shows it a bit deformed. Now that I see the render it looks like the black material it's made of needs to be smoother, I'll have it fixed as soon as I get home.

..as for the solar panels, it's not bump actually, it's what usually appears in most programs as 'specular' map. I also have them coated with a thin layer to fake opalescense, however it need a bit tweaking.

To be honest, the lighting in this last render doesn't do it good justice, but, wait till you see it complete. Oh, boy, you're gonna love it! Slight details left on the top surface to be done.. in a couple of days I'll be done with the top surface.. then it's the body, the cables, the hazcams.. and I am DONE!

I STILL need a couple of photos of the room the mer was built! Anyone? I suppose it's not classified since there are all these photos on the web. I just need schematics of the ROOM (or photos, whatever, I'll make it out). I just need to know the volume, where it has doors/windows and how the lights are placed in the room.

Hi scooter...
the colored paint chips on the corners of the sundial are not in the right corners...
here is Spirit on Sol 6 (very clean!)
Click to view attachment
Your model is just beautiful!

hello there...

I took the colors from here:
http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/mars-hiddencolors.htm

and here is explained that the colors changing according to which planet the rover is on..:
http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/mars-hiddencolors.htm

Nevertheless, if it's way wrong, it's easily fixed.

The color differences in other images (a pink "blue" chip for example) are due to use of a NIR filter instead of red. The above image posted by PDP8E should be your color reference. Here's a ground RGB image taken by pancam:

Hi scooter,
Here is an image from the creators of the sundial. The picture is most likely flight hardware or a backup.
More info can be found on the Cornell site.
The PANCAM has many filters, some make for interesting false color images of the color targets.
As an example the blue target is highly reflective at IR (making it look red or pink with certain filter combinations)
Click to view attachment

As you can see, this image correlates well with MER images using the RGB filters!

That website is nothing but conspiratorial nonsense. You should ignore it entirely

ok, will do so, I have already fixed the colors. I just finished the lga, moving on to the cable holder that stands beside the hga..should be completely done with the top surface of the mars rover in a few hours...

In the meantime and since a lot of you are viewing, I would need some help in case someone knows about the material. If not.. more pairs of eyes are better than just mine




In the above picture I have named the materials of the body 1 & 2. The first and second reference photos are from the mars rover documentary and it's the best I have to make the texture. The third is from the jpl website. Its obvious that the lighting is different that's why they look so different, however, I cant figure out whats going on in the first picture. Seems like there's some kind of wire in the tape on material (1)? How come it reflects a lot more than the material marked as (2) that seems to be the more reflective of the two in the 3rd reference photo? Any ideas what materials are those?

Hi Nick,
First, your model is beautiful!

You presented 3 pictures

Picture 1:
the shining left '1' looks like an exposed edge of underlying honeycomb material (decrease weight /maintain strength).
the dull right '1' looks like an epoxy based over-tape to seal the honeycomb edge
the dull lower '2' looks like a variation of the epoxy based over-tape

Picture 2:
looks like the same epoxy based over-tape as seen in picture 1(1-right)

Picture 3:
the dull '1' looks like the base metal of the craft ... (anodized aluminum ?)
the shiny '2' looks like kapton tape, reflecting the (distorted) image of a person in a bunny suit

Is there a MER engineer out there that can shed light on Nick's question?

PDP8E... number 1 & 2 material is THE SAME in all 3 pictures, meaning in picture 3 the dull 1, is the same as the 1 material in the first two pics...

The first two pics show the same thing at a different angle, so I can only assume that the 'shining' 1 material is only shiny when is hit directly with light (aka it's bump shows)

As for the number 2 material, it's clearly shown in the first picture that it's kapton tape, but it's strange. Did they cover the WHOLE rover body in kapton tape? I think I read somewhere its a great dust sealant, but I think NASA would find another way instead of sealing it this way. I could be wrong though! Most brilliant things come from the simplest ones..

I would appreciate if someone that took part in the creation of the rover told me what kind of materials those two are, and of course reference photos would help a lot!

They LOVE kapton tape. I'm sure some of those guys tie their shoes and hold up their pants with it.

LOLOLOL! I liked that...

..back to the project now, I attach an UNCOMPRESSED png render that took 15mins, I am too tired to let it any more, it's 5:30am here, I've been working since this morning almost straight...

..what you should notice (thats why I mentioned uncompressed, for the ones that will d/l and zoom - or zoom with their browsers) that the copper-like tape has the small grid slightly showing, but when direct light hits it, it glows like the above pictures I posted. As for the rest kapton-taped body, I put some kind of foil underneath and above it the usual "kapton texture" I use - you can even see that it's stripped. I am happy with the results. For the final model I will add POLYGON imperfections (like bent tape that go out of the body, etc)

here we go:


Comments/suggestions welcome, although I think you'll like it as well.

ps, I kinda got in touch with a company that makes 3d and started a test project - architectural stuff, I hope my portfolio helped, and HOPEFULLY it will lead to a mutual agreement. It's not the job I was dreaming for and will not leave my current job either, but until something better comes up, it's welcome Thought I'd share, since some of you might care for my concerns.

Hey there...

I've been busy lately with a freelance job I got, today -hopefully- I am done, but I've been working a bit on the rover as well... here is the final texture I ended up with and I'm sticking with it.



...what do you guys think?

Surfaces in the center of walls are OK, but "frames" around should be closer to gold color, just with less reflection - more mat.
... only personal feeling ... its too violet / pink ... IMHO should be more goldish.

well, I am using my close-up photos and they seem like it this way. the material found online in the jpl library has washed out colors..

Having seen similar hardware in person - I concur with pospa - the non wrinkled surface shouldn't be pink. It should be a muted, 'matt' gold color.

Well... good news everyone!

looks like I am almost done.. will probably be FULLY done by tomorrow. Of course, it will take a while until I deliver my first FINAL render. Besides having to do a few optimizations on the textures, etc, I want the first batch of renders to be INDOORS. I have good reference of the room the new curiosity rover was photographed, so I will start doing that; not a lot of details, just a few, I mainly need the lighting and reflections of an indoors place, which also leads to HUGE render times. I realized this last week that I had to mess with that indoor project (which was an utter failure btw)... a 1200x800 render took more than 10 hours to clear up on my pc. Oh, well...

As pospa and djelisson suggested, I turned the body of the color to gold, made a LOT of changes, additions, etc, and am almost good to go! The main thing that needs taken care of, is the cables of the body, along with slight details on the whole thing, I need to take a good look to see what's missing, etc. I've been working 6 hours straight since I woke up this... ahem.. evening, will take a break and probably go on until I leave only a few things for tomorrow. And tomorrow I will also probably start to model the room. Considering I want it to be made rough I HOPE I am completely done by the end of next week!

PHEWWWWWW... hope all goes well, I got separated with my gf because of this project - to which I will dedicate this, and hopefully we'll get back together. I urged myself into the project the past 10 days in order to avoid my personal life..

Anyway, enough with that as well, here is a wip-render, ground is wrong - put an image of a few square km of real life ground :/ , colors are wrong (and it's been photoshopped as well), taking good renders in outer mars will be tough, but for now on it's just to give you an idea of what's coming...



Comments welcome as always..

ps looks like I am missing a small metal thingy at the top left corner next to the small antenna there, will be added later on.

Looking really really good Nick!



....also seems to be missing a big metal thingy near the front - the Pancam Mast Assembly????

Looking forward to the final render....

GOOD EYESIGHT! lolololol

...in the pictures the rover takes itself, the mast is not shown, it's like a hundred pictures taken all around stitched together.. but no mast LET ALONE THIS IS A TEST RENDER

Hi Scooterlord
Awesome render on the model.

As a handy reference, here's a comparison between your deck-render (left) and a clean-deck view (of Spirit in this case).
In the version on the right, the HGA, LGA and PMA are all or mostly removed.
Before anyone mentions it, of course we are not worried about colours either at this stage.
Lighting and textures will fix that.

Remember that there are tiny differences between the two vehicles, and you match up pretty well on your version.
Click to view attachment

I did notice a few very small missing items of the deck, so I hope that you can compare and match them up to your impressive standards.

Can't wait to see the final results

What a cool thing to do!

...however the rover you are shoinw is the opportunity and not the spirit I am modeling (unless I got the names wrong off the internet). There are a MILLION differences just between them. I have a top deck version of the spirit and it matches pretty nice I might say However, this render was like.. put a camera randomly on top of the rover and hit render. Didn't mess up with details like focal length, distance from the deck, etc.. it just HAPPENED to look accurate...

So, you can't compare between these two photos, but you can compare my render to this:

http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins...2_L456_crop.jpg

I stand corrected, that is Opportunity. d'oh! ....just wanted to see if everyone was paying attention

OK, here's a side-by-side of all three. There are a number of things, common to both rovers that are not represented on your model.
I'm not picking them out or being picky either. Your model is fantastic!

Click to view attachment

...please do tell the differences you can see!

edit: ...besides cables that are on a different layer

I've circled a few things that are either missing or are extras in my quick to the eye comparison.
Some may be illusions on my part of course Some may be apparent on actual photos and not in the rover's deckpan.
Some items may be caused by lighting on your render which has made features appear/disappear.
You said that cables were on a different layer, but there did seem to be one specific cable missing compared to the others that do appear to be all there (large circle top right).
Click to view attachment

It's all such minor stuff that in most cases it's not worth worrying about.

I did note that the NASA logo looked a little distorted but that is probably the render angle.

I found a double couple of minor differences from Spirit image (light-blue circles):
Click to view attachment
Not missed pieces, simply small size/shape differences...

Don't know about anyone else, but every time I see one of those overhead views I look at all those hinges along the 'wings' and shudder to think what might have happened if one of them hadn't worked...

Great model scooterlord, and I'm sure you're finding everyone's input very useful.

...I fixed all of the above. In the process of multiple selecting, deleting, merging, etc, a few cables were abandoned for like a couple of months, eg the cable on the top right, I was sure I modeled it (I found its curves) but had deleted it a few months back! LOL...

....anyway... big news today...

I AM FINALLY DONE! FINALLY! I mean COMPLETE DONE. I did everything. Every little detail. Now, since I had problems with my textures, a few might be missing, so the first batch of renders might have a few artifacts.. I also realized that my problem with the textures can be quickly fixed with a script, I already posted in another forum about that, if someone helps me there, I will have the materials fixed in no-time! (my brain is fully overloaded atm, can't spend time learning how to script).

I just started my first render in the background, but just so you know what to expect.. I am posting this... I know there are a few artifacts here as well, they are already fixed. Plus, I already started a rough model of the room it will be rendered in. Well, here goes, its grainy, but.. OMG, I even exceeded my own expectations! I am SO excited



Expecting just positive feedback from now on Render in the background is 3840x2160, it's 4:30am here, I'll probably post tomorrow after work..

Wow, that's really quite beautiful.
Can't wait to see it with the IDD and Hazcams in place

Congratulations!!



EDIT: Like the following posts mention, I initially thought it was a reference photo as well. Cool.
Deserving of six wheels!

You know, when I scrolled down here and saw the picture above, I immediately thought: "whoa, this is a nice reference photo - scooterlord can really use this for his rendering project!!!"

Then I saw who actually posted that image...

Awesome work scooterlord. Just awesome. Can't wait for the final renders...

Scooterlord, when your renering appeared on my screen I was sure to see another assembly picture and full-res version reinforced this impression, due also to grainy photographic effect. This result is above the (already high) expectations, bravo!

Edit: Pando wrote almost same comment in the same moment (!) but I decided to not change because this reinforce our impression...

Well, here it is... Don't mind artifacts, angle, lighting, just a beta (yes, we reached beta stage render before the final ones... ENJOY MY HARD WORK

Click to view attachment
Admin Edit: The inline file was getting a little too big for the Forum. It has been reduced in size/res slightly above.
We recommend going to Nick's superb render available here 1.17mb. Hey and check out his Mars Rover Project webpage for all the details.

...it took 15 hours to render this, it's very grainy, it would need at least 20-30 hours more until it cleared up -which is way too long, so I stopped it. This is a test process now, I am reviewing the artifacts.. again, some cables turned bad, many metal surfaces. Looks like I cannot automate the whole process, so I am taking surfaces one-by-one now, I won't sleep tonight unless I am fully done with itm I can't be working on the same things again and again. I want the rover's materials to be fully tested now that I am done applying materials. Just ONE bad surface (amongst the 30.000 + 15.000 instances) will ruin all the rest, inside instances, etc. I need to be extremely careful, test and save every little while to be done with it. Looks like no time to continue modeling the room.

Plus, I am going to mess with a new version of the renderer I am using, the last one caused SERIOUS artifacts to my model, so I switched back to an earlier revision, however that particular one and above included a very serious tweak that will save LOADS of rendering time (for the ones into these stuff it has pre-tesessalted displacement, which makes the extra polygons in the beginning rather than optimizing through the process which can save tens of hours of rendering). So, that's about it.

OMG that is so incredibly beautiful…words escape me. I am so in awe of your talent!!! The sputtered gold metalised kapton looks fantastic.
Nasa decals on wheels appear reversed?
Wish I could ship you a ton of Lipovitan-D
Seriously looking forward to the final render

nasa decals reversed....nice, never noticed this, it's because the wheel is instanced and mirrored, will be fixed in the next render.. I've been fixing the bad instances for the past 4 hours now.. I am about to be done.. hopefully once and for all!

BRAVO!!!

Glorious ! All together now ...
Dedication, documented...

...and here is a fairly clear render of the never-before-seen rear side of my mars rover model. The LGA's material is fixed for the next renders... it was far too shiny... I will also tweak the body material a bit. For now I need to sleep... hopefully, later on tonight, I'll work on the room and lighting... should be able to start rendering finals this week! Expect to see a lot of renders.. though they will take a while.. this render was done in 14 hours (1920x1080) and it barely reached 9% of the recommended (quality-wise) render progress. Just imagine how crisp it can be! Thankfully, the materials I tweaked one-by-one yesterday, all stayed in place, although chrome seems strange reflecting just the 'blue' walls..



Comments welcome as always..

Very, very impressive!

Wow Nick, that is a beauty.

OOOOH! Can't wait to drive it out of the showroom!

Really awesome job, and it's been a privilege to witness your progress over the years.

One more render.. this will probably be the last test render. Took 17 hours to render up to this point.. and it just started to become clear... I did those just to see what's going on with the materials, as you can see a few artifacts here and there (micro-imager texture problem, mossbauer repeating scratches, etc) that must be fixed. I am already modeling the 'showroom' as someone stated above. It won't take long till it's done and THEN you'll see how good it will seem. People not into 3d have no idea how much better can this thing look. HEAPS better. 3d is all about lighting and reflections and here I have nothing; just an empty box lit from above. And still looks this great, just by reflecting itself. Just hold your appetite for the renders to come

I love the cut cables on post 338 image. Had the cables not been sucessfully cut, we would have been permanently teathered to the lander. Really great Scooterlord.

Thanks... one of the toughest things to sort out... here was my reference... I realized a lot of thing by looking at this photo... other than that I couldn't understand ANYTHING from any other reference..





edit: uhm.... does anyone know where I can get the pictures found on the walls here?

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA13389.jpg

So, more "non-test" renders to come ? I can't wait !

The emblems on the wall of High Bay 1 in JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility represent all the missions (spacecraft and instruments) that were assembled in the SAF, regardless of which high bay was used. I think they are all one-offs and not the normal mission patches. Probably best bet would be to contact JPL direct, I'm sure the Media Room must have photos of each.

..I can't get a hold of myself! I started the first FINAL rendering at 3400x1912. It's been working for 15 hours now and sure needs AT LEAST 15 hours more before it's clear enough to post, but know this...

O M G!

This render is absolutely stunning! Now, I AM HAPPY. 5 years well spent, hehe..

I am just going to share an early version of the room the rover is rendering it to increase your appetite... The room has a few objects added, but the tone is the same. White and bright, like the jpl room -it's actually based on it- and it also serves the purpose to focus on the rover. I wonder how many of you are anxious to see the final results!

That looks familiar...

Click to view attachment



Seriously, looking forward to the next set of renders...

I was thinking more like this...OR...that one of Doug's 'Science on a Sphere' shows had escaped:D

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment

grrr... I just noticed that the room looks way too big compared to the rover... 20 hours just gone to waste.. GRRR.. I'll start over :/