New additions to My Vehicle Fantasy and a VR version

Tagged: animation, Blender 2.82, projects, updates, Verge3D 3.1.1, volumetrics

This topic has 7 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 9 months ago by illussimo.

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2020-07-02 at 3:57 pm #29573

illussimo
Customer

Lately, I wasn’t participating much on the forum. My mind was preoccupied with things happening around me due to the Corona crisis.
However, I found some time and solace in adding new scenes and features to my vehicle fantasy.
Come, enter this fully autonomous vehicle and have a careless ride during this unsettling time!
You can also try out my VR version, although it still has an (HDR-)lighting problem when changing scenes. (I will make a separate post on this issue.)

I have tried to find the right balance between performance and looks in a mixture of mid and low poly geometry. I hope in upcoming versions my vehicle will be able to walk around.
It is important that it also works on Apple devices, so I left out shadows and limited my use of textures. I go more for overall atmosphere than for realism so, for now, I’m fine with that.

Here are also the 2.82 and Verge3D 3.1.1 versions of Faun da Gamba, and Card Deck Theatre. You’ll find that everything looks smoother and more atmospheric than in previous versions of Verge3D.
So many improvements have been made under the hood. Developments are happening so fast.
Let’s see what Blender 2.83 and Verge3D 3.2 will bring us. Certainly even more creative freedom.

All of you, take care and stay well,

Simone

2020-07-02 at 4:24 pm #29582

Yuri Kovelenov
Staff

Hi Simone,

Awesome improvement! It’s getting better and better!

Chief 3D Verger | LinkedIn | Twitter

2020-07-03 at 12:16 pm #29617

Al Sande
Customer

I see I have some work to do <g>… Very nice, Simone. I particularly like your scene (the northern lights are expecially nice as I grew up in northern Canada and your scene reminds me a lot of that). I will have to go back and explore some more as I’ve only just had a glance at it so far.

Al

2020-07-03 at 1:28 pm #29624

illussimo
Customer

I’m so glad you liked it and it brought back memories of this exceptional phenomenon. (Especially now it is nice to travel in our minds.)
The possibilities that Verge3D offers for artists are endless. It’s so nice we inspire and learn from each other on this forum.
That’s how things develop.
Thanks

2020-07-04 at 12:35 pm #29636

Al Sande
Customer

I had a chance to explore this a bit more yesterday – and I had no idea of the detail/depth of this project when I made my initial comment… You’ve done a lot of stuff I’ve only read about so far but have given me a few more ideas about what I think want to do with this technology. My “vision” is a variation on some kind of virtual amusement park of sorts (you’ve already been on a helicopter ride which is like a rudimentary proof of concept) but I am still just exploring the basics… I’d really like to get into VR but maybe next year as I’m on a retirement budget.

As I was moving between scenes (something I’ve only attempted in my projects once, mostly unsuccessfully!) I couldn’t help thinking that if it was possible to do “background loads” things would be so much quicker. Although I know it’s not the same thing, I kept “seeing” something like the old MS-DOS task switcher (which wasn’t a multitasker!) but it would preload the next scene allowing it to be ‘stuffed’ into browser somehow. I’m sure if it was possible Yuri would have sorted it out :)

I think I just dated myself as an oldtimer! In any case, I enjoyed exploring your app and will head back there again to explore some more…

I’ve experimented with a few different scenes on my blog although I wouldn’t call these finished – more just results of “learn as you go”. If you’re curious, you can check them out at https://sande.ca/wp/category/3d-scenes/ although they might be a bit slow as my host is not a top performer ($$)… There is another helicopter one there as well as a flying airplane and a couple of basic scenes/models made with photogrammetry.

Al

2020-07-05 at 3:53 pm #29687
illussimo
Customer
Hello Al,
I had a look at your playful, videos and enjoyed the flights. You have done so many different things with Blender and surely will be able to achieve what you have in mind with Verge3D.
In answer to both your question here and the one on my VR version post:
- You can preload several textures for the background or objects and call them as needed with Puzzles. You can switch textures on the fly or, what I often do, is working with the mix shader node, add a value node to it in Blender and switch the value to either 1 or 0 with puzzles. This switching works really fast. Of course, there is a limit to that. (that is one of the reasons why I have split my vehicle project into two parts).
- I saw that you could do a lot by optimizing your textures: Use good quality JPGs instead of PNGs (except for Normal maps). Don’t use too large textures, max 4K, and in many places, you might not need image textures at all. Also, you could make use of more backface culling in your materials. You will find that your projects will load and compile faster and you could easily extend them.
- Mikhail made a good tutorial on optimizing for WebGL.
As for the animation actions you are looking for:
- I suppose it could be done. With Puzzles you can easily play just a part of an animation, play it slower faster, backwards and so on. You can tween the camera position to any empty have it look at a specific object or any empty in space. I use this a lot.
- Having one animation trigger another shouldn’t be a problem but I still have to try that out myself.
Several roads lead to Rome in Verge3D, that is what makes this a fantastic journey of exploration. But travelling without a roadmap in a complex environment might lead to nowhere.
So, besides the Verge3D user manual, Mikhail’s superb tutorial series will help to find the most pleasant roads in the right direction.
I started making a tutorial on creating versatile environment-spheres that also could have helped a bit, but at the moment I have to go back to working on a children’s book project. The tutorial has to wait a little while.
I hope so far this answer has been helpful,

Simone

(By the way, I loved the “On Alert” animation with the sea lions, the lighthouse and sounds. It’s a little jewel. Did you also make that in Blender?)
2020-07-06 at 1:10 pm #29726

Al Sande
Customer

Thanks for the tips, Simone -they’ll come in handy for future projects. Most of my “work” (I use that term loosely!) is in and around animation as that’s where my primary interest is with Blender and 3d – but the web content (with Verge3d) is something I’ve enjoyed learning about but have a long way to go.

I’ve done some work on optimizing some of my scenes. The first major one I started, still a work in progress and unpublished, loaded quite slowly so I watched the appropriate videos and have done some optimization of the models and shrunk the textures from 4k to 1k as well as combining a lot of them into single texture per model – but there are still lots of things to do, maybe even doing another optimization pass at the models. I did get the load speed down quite a bit, though. I’ll explore the backface culling setting – thanks for the tip!

I suspect that my major problem is one you’ve probably stumbled upon – I have a lot of irons in the fire! Part of that is that I’m still trying to get better with Blender (that will always be the case!!) so am always trying things out – and have done quite a bit of work this year on sculpting and retopology (much more work needed!!) as well as nodes, baking textures, etc… Many of my “organic models” have particle-based hair so unfortunately will likely never see the light of day in Verge3d (although I’ve been experimenting with making “hair cards” as a stand-in). You more than likely saw my experiments with photogrammetry as well (some of which made it into Verge3d tests – but the number of vertices generated have to be dealt with through either retopology or decimation and/or remeshing).

I had a lot of fun doing the “On Alert” animation in Blender – and used a few things other than the standard animations (like using several noise modifiers on the camera rotation to simulate the “rocking” one would get when filming from a boat, using an ocean modifier to drive the waves, and volumetrics for the fog as the whole thing lives in a big cube!) I was fortunate enough to have visited the lighthouse in question so had some reference pictures and a good choice of soundtracks from the videos I recorded as I’m a big believer in “intellectual property” rights and either make all of my own stuff or try to attribute the creators properly…

I suspect my biggest hurdle in using Verge3d is that I always tend to think in things in terms of animations – and the 3d scenes are a bit of an afterthought so aren’t necessarily optimized for that. I’m still trying to sort out all of the things I think I need for where I think I want to go with this (is that vague enough?) – but my primary goals are to learn new stuff, do interesting things, and have fun. Unless someone decides they want to pay be something to do this, those goals will probably stay the same… Fortunately for me, Yuri gave me a break on the Verge3d license fee last fall so that I can afford to experiment a bit without generating any income.

We’ve probably hijacked this forum enough (sorry Yuri!) but I’m sure you’ve presented enough tips to justify all of the words!! I’ll take these to heart on my upcoming projects… Thanks!

Al

2020-07-06 at 9:00 pm #29739

illussimo
Customer

It’s great to have you onboard Al. It’s nice and helpful that you share your experiences. By the way, I’m sure we would all love to have volumetrics work “out of the Puzzles box”.
Enjoy your Verge3D journey,
Simone
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