Never mind that...show us what you got.
please

...uhm... nope This time it has to be perfect. I started it again last night, I guess it will be ready some time today or tomorrow.. I already prepared a second scene to be rendered to a friend's house, so I guess I'll keep em coming one every couple of days.

I misread this as "I prepared a second scene AT my friend's house" and I pictured a render of you sitting on the sofa watching TV with MER in your friend's living room! (Sorry but in my impatience to see the final output I am afraid I am being a bit silly - thanks so much for your hard work on this!)

After you're done rendering the room, you should work your way out to the JPL campus, then all of Pasadena . How long would that take ?

Seriously, amazing job and I can't wait to see the render. I've enjoyed following your progress.

Guys..... you ready?

here it is then.... a 50-hour (!!) render, still a bit grainy, but think it's good enough to count as a final render...



Click on it to see the full-res render at 3400x1912. As a reminder what you see in this forum is all gathered in one place in my site: http://www.nicksotiriadis.gr/?page_id=287

Now it's time for everyone to comment! Including the ones that didn't so far A new render is already under way...

Me, pointing to this render: "So this UMSF user spent the last few years modeling the MERs in incredible detail."
Some people in the room: "And...did he succeed?"
Me: /confused
Me: "...that's not a photo, that's the render."
I think you succeeded.

WOW!

What's this taped on the wall?
Click to view attachment

EDIT - just noticed the other poster... wow! (Don't worry, after all your work I won't spoil the surprise. I wood grant you that at least. )

Awesome. Love the painting taped up to the left.

I don't know exactly what this poster is, but I saw it in many reference photos I had. I guess it's some kind of calibration tool. As for the other poster, credit goes to ElkGroveDan, also member of this forum

This is incredible.
Very, very well done.
And nice poster

(clunk)

That's my jaw dropping to the ground.

Nick, you are the Master!

That is simply unbelievable and well worth the wait. Every time I look at it - it takes my breath away! Just unbelievable!!!

This just made me giggle a bit A final "wow"! Really amazing work!

...not just yet! A lot of renders coming up... Hold your appetite!

Fantastic, superb and stunning ! Scooterlord, you are truly 3D magician.

PS: to make it even more real like I'd maybe rotate some wheels not to have them all in the same position .... just suggestion.

Really, really beautiful!!!

Just two suggestions, if it's not too late:
1. The blue sheets on the ground seems to be reflecting too much light on the IDD.
2. You told before that the room looked too big in relation to the rover (here), but with the current proportions the rover looks bigger than MSL. My suggestion would be to make the room bigger again and put the camera closer to the rover.

As for the suggestions above... The reflections are made automatically after the materials are created and I assure you that the materials are quite accurate. As for the room, it seems right, its not an actual depiction of jpl building -it would take ages to render- but it seems right

...so here we are again with a new render... I hope you people are as excited as I am



click on the image for a full-res render (64-hour render this time). I have already started the next one

Gorgeous, and dramatic composition too. Looks like she's contemplating making a run for it...

John

I don't know, what I can say!
Superb work!

Woah!
The effect from the opened door is just great!

Scooterlord, these models are awesome. And also awesome is the time you invested in this: since 2006 ? 6 years, cool.

thanks guys... I think you will all enjoy the render coming up in the next few days - that is when it's clear enough to post. It will be the first of such to be posted I am already excited, let alone I feel so proud for the first two renders. I can't wait till I am all done and post to the 3d graphics forums... I can assure you it will get frontpage in every single forum it will posted on. Hopefully, this will also lead to some kind of business proposal... Oh, well, we'll just have to wait and see..

It's interesting to compare these renderings with the original JPL renderings that we're all familiar with. Those looked very cool at the time, but now I look more closely I see that all the electrical harness details around the body, under the solar panels, are "painted on" in those images. It makes the intricate 3-D details of scooterlord's model all the more impressive in comparison.

John

Well, John,
I guess the JPL's 3d artist's (or 3d team's probably) job wasn't to ACCURATELY reproduce the model, but make a representation of the mars rover, what it does and how it works - and they totally succeeded in this. Adding more detail than that would be a waste of time for the needs of the animations. I also don't know what deadlines they had, if they worked closely with the team or even if they got ready cad plans to use in the animation - I would really love to know actually. The 'painted on' cables you mention were very successfully placed textures - they created quite a good illusion of the cables if you ask me. Let alone that technology in the 3d field progressed from then on.

What I mean is, they did that for a JOB and successfully pulled it off if you asked me. What I did, I did for MYSELF, and besides all the problems I encountered - from lack of reference, I don't think I would bother this much if it weren't a personal challenge. I am positive that I had good references and knew how things worked from the beginning - or even better if I actually were there at the rovers' design phase, not only I would have a model more accurate, but maybe I could provide help in it's design - if it agreed with the engineers that is . Just good reference would save me more than half the time I spent.

I have to say that I realized how things on the rover worked with all this time I spent. It's cool to finally realize what that axle was doing there, what those thingies actually were. I was REALLY impressed with the devices that held mini explosives to cut the cables off - once it was mentioned, the reference I was staring for hours finally made sense. Or the protective covers on the pancams of the mast. Or the metal connectors that keep the rover closed. Or the strange film on the idd that is extended at first and then is rolled back. AWESOME STUFF. Maybe I made wrong choices in my life... or to be more exact my country didn't give me the right opportunities.

edit: I forgot to mention that the COOLEST of all things is that it became so accurate, that I designed many things without knowing their purpose, but when I actually knew what they did, they matched perfectly for their purpose, like the black holder that keep the mast down, or the connectors on the wings, or the hga that is perfectly held on its base

Actually - it was one guy. Dan Maas, of Maas Digital. He was finishing his undergrad studies at Cornell at the same time he made it. And it's now nearly ten years old. Technology, and software, have come a long, long way since then. It was made the same year the 2Ghz Pentium 4 came out - CPU's are now an order of magnitude faster, and RAM an order of magnitude cheaper. Technically - that was a very very long time ago.

Having since been involved in a similar project ( the MSL animation ) I now have a level of appreciation for just how astonishing Dan's work was at the time.

I certainly didn't mean to criticize Dan Maas's work, which was and still is mind-blowing. The fact that I'd never noticed till today that those details were "painted on" his model shows how effectively he used the resources he had.

And I too have learned a lot about how the rovers work and were built from just looking at scooterlord's renderings. They're so awesome that I've just looked more closely at them than I ever did at the photos, I guess.

John

Oh - I didn't think it was a criticism, I just want to pick up on Scooters point suggesting the MER animation was done by a couple of teams.

I am excited, now you're opening the hangar doors and (perhaps) will we see this jewel roving on martian soil?

yes... you actually might

..first time for a render of the spirit rover shown 'curled up'. Admittedly, the wheels seem a little odd, but if you take a peek at reference photos, it looks exactly as it should.



Click for a high resolution render as always. From this point I will render fullhd close-ups of every single side of the spirit and let it render as high sample as it can get. We're going to see some clarity!

Comments welcome as always...

Now you're beginning to fold it up - a whole bunch of strange little bracket, bolt, lumps, pyros and bumps will make sense

Being really picky here...

You've left the hold-down bolts in the cleats of the wheels (small chrome components) - it's just a hole once the rover is off the lander.

Some of the cables going down the front strut toward the front wheels sneak under the metal along the top, and then cuts thru the end of the strut as it turns down to go to the wheel itself.

Great eyesight! I completely forgot to turn the cables along with the front wheels; in the renders the wheels are facing straight, they are nicely done. Plus, I didn't know the chrome parts from the wheels were removed - and noone mentioned that so far, although they have been there for some time It's exciting to see that you people struggle to find differences compared to the real thing

edit: DAMN, now I noticed the cables going inside the metal parts.. I was looking at something else.. grrr... This usually happens with all these damn objects. I turn layers on-and-off to sort them out and always something is left out :/

The above image is fixed!



plus, here is a new render...

Gorgeous !

I love that closeup.
Nick, just one detail on that render - top right, bottom of right solar panel, there is white wire that should be IMHO attached with black tapes, but all tapes are under that cabel, directly on the panel.

Pospa, good observation....

..BUT, those black things aren't exactly sticky tapes. It seems that it's an adhesive surface that sticks to the bottom of the panel and the cable sticks ON it. It will make more sense if you compare it to some original reference.

I am currently modeling a rear-top view of the rover, just so you people have something to expect!

The following renders are planned:

a) Close ups of everything on the rover
- Each one of the tools on the idd (mossbauer, rat, microimager, apxs)
- HGA
- Sundial
- Mast base mechanism
- Mast Head
Render from front hazcam
c) Render from top pancams
d) Two renders on Mars

As for the Mars renders, I found a few good reference photos I can use to photo integrate the rover, but I can only do that from specific angles and with the lighting on this reference and to be honest I am not that happy with that. The original plans I had for the martian atmosphere don't live up to my expectations either, so I will have to model a small territory on mars. I tried programs with geo-height mapping that can produce good results, but not good enough for the resolutions I am aiming at. Anything less than perfect will look out of place compared to the quality of the rover, so I cannot fake anything. It has to be done so that it looks good, so I guess I am going to use some 'plain' rock-less ground. Other than that I made a few test renders, and I can get the atmosphere and colors look right, so I guess It will look cool in the end..

Looking forward to that, while enjoying all your renderings.
Keep then coming!!!

BTW...why only two renders on Mars?

Well, it's not restraining, it's just what I had in mind so far... Right now in the background I am trying to make the martian surface. I have already tried several programs, but no luck so far.. I am messing with the rocks atm :/ Tough stuff

You can always use some of those Spirit's Husband Hill panoramas for background can't you?
Beautiful work so far.

...as I said in a previous post, the backgrounds will:

a) look out of place because of the different resolutions
constrain me at specific angles
c) constrain me at specific lighting conditions..

Actually - you could put the rover at almost any angle you wanted within a panorama - you just have to put it in the right place to match that angle (or vice versa) . As for resolution - yes, the Pancam images are low res compared to what you're doing....so you just render at a resolution to match the background.

This has been done before : http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/spe...Effects/spirit/ and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/spe...ts/opportunity/

This is where experience really kicks in - you need to start rendering multiple passes - a shadow pass, an AO pass, a diffuse pass etc etc - then you recomp them all together in post.

I can totally understand if you don't want to go to all that effort - but that doesn't mean it's not possible.

I have done several successful photo integrations in the past:

http://scooterlord.gr/newours/images/fiat.jpg
http://scooterlord.gr/newours/images/honda.jpg

..the problem with the spirit is that the file IS HUGE to manipulate. I have already created hdri for the lighting/illumination/reflection from panoramas found on the web, but the faceplates I can create aren't the ones I am looking for. It would take a lot of trial and error to make it look nice and considering that the file takes about 3-4 minutes just to start rendering, it's a no-go. Let alone that in the resolutions I am aiming at, besides the passes (just 2 actually, one normal one without the ground + shadow map and one shadow map only with ground) it would need a lot of photoshop in order to make the shadow drop correctly on the bumpy ground.. and I don't even want to think rendering for 60 hours and then the angle doesn't match precisely for 5 degrees...

..trust me, I have my reasons to model my own, just wait and see

heh... I think it will come out nicely... I found a way to randomly rotate and place rocks on a surface, here is a test render:



..it's just a RANDOM surface (which is too bumpy for my taste for the final render), with a quick texture and a plain black texture with a bump for the rocks, and atmosphere is not set at all.... so, it's just a random test, but thought I'd share. Comments welcome as always!

Anyway, its 3am here, tomorrow I'llbe leaving for Italy where I'll spent my whole week, I'll leave the pc to render stuff here, but I can't promise I'll be able to post till next week

Hello everyone,

back from my trip to Rome and back to my normal life. Here is a new render for your pleasure. edit: Click for high resolution render as usual



A new one is coming soon, this time at resolution 5400x3038 from an angle looking at its side, I'll let it render until tomorrow before I post, it has already been rendering for 86 hours...

Hi Nick, its beautiful as usually - real joy to observe whole upper deck in such a sharp details.

Q: on the righr front solar panel, near the outer joint to right rear panel, there is white piece of some wire connection to photovoltaic cells that is a few mm above them in the air, throwing shadow. Is this on purpose or just some remnant?

Yup, my bad.. Theres always something that escapes your attention. I'll have that fixed sonetime latee

New MONSTER render (5400x3038)! As always click for the huge render and let it load... 3mb in size



Still expecting your comments! I am glad that people look at it so thoroughly and still find errors In that beautiful render looking from under the wings, there are a couple of errors, will have them soon fixed as well, the render was SO beautiful that I assume most of you were left out of mind to look for the errors, hehe

I think most of you will be pleased with the next render to come...

Well, this took less than I imagined... I hope many will be pleased with this one, so I want to hear about it! Click for a high resolution dirty rover

Stunning, a triumph! ILM or Weta digital would be proud of this. It is an amazing piece of work and clearly a labour of love.

Edit: What is so evocative is that this is a astronaut's eye view of what coming face to face with the rover on the surface of mars would look like.

So the only problem with the rover on the Spirit panorama is the shadowing. You're still rendering it like it's in a big open room with loads of lighting etc etc. On Mars there are two lighting sources... the sun (and because we're at 1.5AU, shadows are a little sharper) and the diffuse illumination from the sky (which backfills the shadows and is the main source of the beige tint to everything). You need to get those shadows right to make the rover look like it belongs on the surface.

Take your cue from the few rocks big enough to be casting shadows on that image.


Also - you have the wheels being quite shiny and reflective. They have a slight, very diffuse specularity to them, but almost no reflectivity. I'd dump the reflectivity all together and just have a specularity - you'll save some render time at the same time.