*** Carmen Rizzolo proudly presents *** My interpretation of... The USS Enterprise 1701 D A really, really big object for Imagine 2.0 December 9th, 1992 -- INTRODUCTION ----------------------------------------------------- Hi. -- ABOUT THE OBJECT ------------------------------------------------- Well! After weeks and weeks of hard labour, slicing and disk access, it's finally done! I'm releasing this object into the PUBLIC DOMAIN with no strings attatched. I claim no rights or responsibilities to this object. That means, it's yours to do with as you please. It's not COMPLETELY accurate. But it's darn close. The part that I like the least is the neck. It gave me the most headaches. The front of the neck does not fan out into the bottom of the saucer correctly. Unless this section is very well lit, it's pretty hard to notice. I know this is a real lame excuse, but of course, you're welcome to try to improve on it if you want to. :) * The object is about 1.65 megabytes in size. Easily twice as large as any object I have done in the past. And very likely more than twice as complex. * I made over four megabytes in scrap objects (Pieces and parts, crucial for creation. I'm not talking about the left-overs of slicing) in the process of creating the object. * There are probably close to 5 hundred windows. * There are 146 individual parts that make up the Enterprise ship. * This object -DOES NOT- use -ANY- IFF images for brush mapping. This uses a great deal less ram, and makes setup time for the end user a great deal easier. Could you imagine sifting through nearly 150 objects, looking for parts with brush pathnames to fix?? * The Enterprise object -DOES- use textures, however.. It looks for it's textures in a drawer named "Textures" inside the drawer or disk that your Imagine program is in. It uses only the textures that come with Imagine 2.0, so everyone with Imagine 2.0 with it properly installed should have no problems here. * This object -DOES- rely heavily on Imagine 2.0's "phong dam" feature, and will most likely look terrible if rendered in Imagine 1.1 or if converted to another object format. * Unless you've got the patience of a tree (or a 68040), DON'T RENDER IN RAY TRACE MODE!!! There are many thousands of tiny, tiny faces in this object. Inside a global world size large enough to give it room to fly in, your rendering would be slowed down to a crawl. Walking from one end of the galaxy to the center would be more productive. * The Saucer section does not seperate. Sorry. -- ADDING TEXTURES TO THE OBJECT ------------------------------------ If you load the object into an editor, you'll probably notice it is structured in a very odd way. Fear not, there is a method to my maddness. There are THREE axis you should know about. The main axis, called "NCC1701D" is the parent object of the entire group. The "NCC1701D" axis is the parent of two other axis. One is located above the ship, and the other is located below. Each have dozens and dozens of yellow lines spouting from them. Here's the deal: All of the solid grey bulk of the ship is a child of the upper axis (Named: "GREY"), and all the other parts (Lights, engines, phaser arrays, etc.) are grouped to the lower axis (Named:"OTHERS"). This grouping method serves a utilitarian purpose. Explained in the next paragraph: If you want to add a texture to all of the grey area of the ship, normally this would be very difficult. You would have to select each grey object, and add the desired texture. Instead, enter PICK OBJECTS mode, and click on the upper-most axis of the group. It's called "GREY" if you want to get it via a requestor. Enter GREY's attributes, and add the desired texture. Be sure to activate the APPLY TO CHILDREN button, and your texture will alter only the grey surface of the ship. Amazing, isn't it? I thought so. If one owns a texture package called ESSENCE (By Apex Software), you can use a texture called SOLID, and instantly change the colour, reflectivity or filter values of the entire grey bulk of the ship. -- ANIMATING THIS OBJECT -------------------------------------------- If you want to animate this object, read the Imagine Organizer that is included in this archive. Then you will know what to do with the object called "NCC-1701-D.fake" (Also included in this archive). The .fake object included in this archive, if you should decide to use it, includes the following details: * Photon Torpedo * Upper and Lower phaser arrays of the saucer section * Boxed-in areas of the left and right nacelles, and the main body of the ship. Of course, you're welcome to add to or take away details of the .fake object as you require. -- ENJOY! ----------------------------------------------------------- Have fun exploring the final frontier! If you have any questions for me, you can reach me at (619) 573-0285. I do do this stuff for a living (not spaceships, but 3D graphics for video), if you need to get some nifty graphics done. Special thanks go out to Brad Pennock for his encouragement, and to Marlin Schwanke for his critical eye. :) Even more special thanks to the late Gene Roddenberry and to Paramount Pictures (Pleez don't sue! I'm not the first to do this!) for their incredible accomplishments. Greetings to David Ebner, Robert Van Buren, Noam Ben Ami, Rinaldo Petterino, Steve Crippen, and to the rest of the klan in the FidoNet's Amiga_Video echo (Where I can also be reached).