[Kvaalen]

I finally got an idea for this challange that I liked. :p

My plan is to have a huge swarm of ships flying over a far away city while destroying it and the front ships passing by the camera.
In between the city and the camera I'll probably have a country area and in the background I'll probably have hills.

So here is the a wip of one ship, It's only the basic shape.
I haven't yet decided if I want one kind of ship or a couple kinds, I guess I'll decide depending on how much time I have.

[Kvaalen]

Another view:

[Kvaalen]

And a wire frame view:

[Kvaalen]

Here are some of the buildings that are going to be in the city.

I needed very low poly buildings (since they are going to be far away) so instead of modeling the windows (or using a plugin) I made rectangles and wrote a Javascript that creates the texture or at least a template for the building texture.

It's a very simple script and I may as well share it, so Click here to get it!

If you need any explination, just ask.

So here is the resault

[DigiMatt]

cool design..
I think it would look cool with an army of those ships and then a big mothership hovering above

I guess your done with the city thing now, if not you could have checked out Eki's new CityGen plugin, looks very promising.

//Matt

[Kvaalen]

Thanks for the idea of the mothership, I like it!

I tried out Eki's plugin but there were some things I didn't like:
It didn't give windows and stuff like that any surface of thier own, some of the roofs that it beveled were beveled too much causeing the top polygon to overlap it's self, it's not free and I hate the annoying things he added to the demo, and most important of all, these buildings are going to be quite far off that I don't need anything better (the CityGen would make way too many polys).

I'll be posting a pic sometime soon so you can see the basic layout of the scene.

[Kvaalen]

Here is the basic layout of the scene.
It's supposed to be summer time, so that is why the grass is brown, tell me if you think it'll look better green or something.
I'll be making the grass look more like grass (and not like muck),
I'll be adding many more buildings, maybe a highway, and I was thinking of hills in the background. What do you think?

[DigiMatt]

Looks swell Kvaalen,

I think you should stick with the brownish grass, and some mountains/hills in the background would be very nice..
Perhaps a few smaller buildings scattered out around the scenery would be nice too.

[Kvaalen]

Here is a little update, I put more buildings in and put them further away (there are 38 buildings now). I also improved the grass a bit.

Do you guys think a tree on the left side of the screen will look good? (Don't worry, I'm not going to add a fence and a Skytracer sunset :p.)

Does the scene have to be completely done in LW? Or can I make hills with a different program and apply them as a backdrop?

[Kvaalen]

Oops, I forgot to ask, what do you guys think looks better, the buildings far away or closer (like in the picture before)?

[TheEndless]

I'm liking the further away shot...

[Kvaalen]

Thanks Endless, I guess everyone prefers the farther one, so I'll continue with it.

[vertiis]

more more more more

u could add some antennas on those buildings...

v.

[Kvaalen]

I was thinking of antennas too, I'll probably put some in.

Soon I'm gonna post an update with more buildings and some fog. I also made a very low poly object to put instead of the fighters temperarly, so You'll see a swarm of them too, for the finall render I'll replace them with the actual fighters (which you should see updated soon).

[Kvaalen]

Here is an update, added buildings, fog, a swarm of the lo poly version of the fighter that will be replaced afterwards (the final fighter won't be red), and ray traced shadows.

It took 7 hours 20 minutes and 19 secondes to render the grass with the ray traced shadows .
I konw the shadows are too dark, I'll fix that in my next update.