What do i use to render ships?

[Randallw]

Had nothing to do so started learning to make ships. Discovered I must have downloaded DoGA L1 last time i felt interested, so had a look at that. Seemed easy enough. Thought about using L2, but noted that it wouldn't let me render, so I changed to wings. Now I am going through the manuals introduction and it says to export the model to whichever program I have to render it. What should I use to render the model?.

[Ragnarok-X]

I suggest you to either get Maya (commercial), 3DSMAX (commercial) or go with l3 of DoGa, which features a good rendering engine.

[TurinTurambar]

You can render in all 3 versions of DoGA.

Under <Display>, click <Rendering Properties> to set your size, then click <Display> again and click <Rendering>.

Simple as that.
Turin/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif

<EDIT:> Oh, and then right-click the render and "Save As" either a jpeg or .png to upload to the forum (Bitmaps don't work here).

[pathfinder]

Another (free) render engine is POV-RAY. Not sure what it can import.

[Hugh Manatee]

also blender is pretty powerful once you get the hang of it.

[Ed Kolis]

Art of Illusion?
www.artofillusion.org (http://www.artofillusion.org)

Has a great renderer (though you have to re-specify the render settings every time you start the program http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif) and you can export to .obj which can be converted to .x for use with SE5/Starfury!

edit: and I just found out about a cool Art of Illusion script which lets you create something, assign procedural displacement maps to it, and then use the script to convert the results of those displacement maps to REAL triangle meshes suitable for export into games like Starfury! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif Remember those Metroid beam cannons I submitted to the imagemod? Those were made with AoI procedural displacement maps to do the "details" (I didn't want to do all the detail of modelling them) - but it seems that now I could actually export something using that texture as a Starfury or SE5 ship model! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Randallw]

I'll try one of the free ones. I didn't realise the artists around here actually paid to register DoGA so they could render.

Edit: and perhaps they don't. I don't know why it says you have to register to render in DoGA 3. I think I'll use DoGA, all I want to do is make ships not artwork and it seems simple enough (once I make some more parts)

[Ragnarok-X]

As mentioned im using Doga l3 and i dont have to pay to render. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Randallw]

Yeah, i've spent this afternoon learning DoGA 3 and I just started with MetaSequoia for new parts. I can see how others made their ships. Basically I want to work on the terran sovereignty ships here

http://www.shipschematics.net/cgi-bin/startrek/others.cgi

[Ragnarok-X]

Could you please provide a link to download the tool you mentioned, and maybe a link to a introduction or tutorial ? By now i only used the standart parts. I once downloaded a part libary, but it majorly sucked to set it up, so i gave up. In fact you had to do a render for each part, then create big thumbnail and incorporate it into doga, in addition you had to rename each "part" so it would show when adding parts...

[Urendi Maleldil]

POV-Ray is the best. But you need imagination 'cause it doesn't come with a modeller. It's all script.

Moray's a good Windows modeller for POV-Ray. (I'm not sure what's out there for Linux or OS-X) But it's shareware and there's a nag screen if you render a lot of scenes.

sPatch and hamaPatch are good spline modellers that export to POV-Ray. hamaPatch also exports .x files.

[Ragnarok-X]

RandallW, take a look at my thread, named "rate my shipset" or something. It includes a lot of models and textures done/applied with DoGa. Its actually pretty kewl, especially my second post has a pretty blasting picture, at least imho.

[kerensky]

Could you please provide a link to download the tool you mentioned, and maybe a link to a introduction or tutorial ? By now i only used the standart parts. I once downloaded a part libary, but it majorly sucked to set it up, so i gave up. In fact you had to do a render for each part, then create big thumbnail and incorporate it into doga, in addition you had to rename each "part" so it would show when adding parts...




A link for Metasequoia can be found on the DoGA English home page under the "Usefull Tools" heading.

[Atrocities]

Randallw said:
Yeah, i've spent this afternoon learning DoGA 3 and I just started with MetaSequoia for new parts. I can see how others made their ships. Basically I want to work on the terran sovereignty ships here

http://www.shipschematics.net/cgi-bin/startrek/others.cgi



Get the new parts - making parts is a real PITA (Pain In The ***).

Making Federation style ships is very difficult and you must "cheat" to do them. But when you pull it off, it is a very rewarding feeling.

If you want to see what can be done in DOGA, also visit my web site and or the Star Trek Mod web site. (Links are in my signature below)

[Randallw]

Get the new parts - making parts is a real PITA (Pain In The ***).



Is there somewhere I can get ST parts?. I made a warp nacelle but the banding didn't export.

[Atrocities]

I do not know of any where you can get Star Trek ship parts for DOGA. I have had to make all of mine myself, and they are just very basic parts.

[Randallw]

right, well i found the links in the other thread. put a question there.

Edit: incidentally, the models I make now, will they be usable in SE5?.

[jbmetrics]

Has anyone tried to use Electric Rain's Swift 3D Ver. 4.0 for making models?