The integration looks great.
Is the noise generated by the rendering perceptible on the screen ?
No, at least not at this resolution. (160x80)
Also, this is 16-bit graphics, so color precision is fairly limited.
I’ve got access to… a fairly large… render farm, if you want to push any maya or houdini scene files my way 
if that will help. i can check what all files i can take, if you send me blender files i can export them into maya for you, and have everything rendered in one or two hours. also if you want any texturing or modeling or lighting help, i do that for a living
I’ve been a bit busy this last week or so, I haven’t been able to do much with this, but maybe this weekend I’ll be able to get things working better. Apologies for the delays.
The projet is made with 3dsmax and Arnold Render, do nt know if we cam export/translate the material profiles in maya.
In all cases I can put the max and textures files in the repo.
Not worked on effects yet, a bit busy too ^^
3dsmax works perfect! that translates to maya as well as arnold so if you want to send those files over when theyre ready to render, I can convert them and have them within the time it takes to render a single frame
I just pushed the project.
Feel free to test if it’s ok.
Ok, it now lights up with you turn it on, and goes extra bright when a clash occurs.
Plus, I’ve worked on optimizing the code quite a bit, which makes it work a lot better when the saber is on and has a lot of other things to do.
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Nice work, do you need additional renders/effects to achieve your goals ?
At the very minimum, I need to make the battery monitor work somehow. I would also love to have some electric spark effects that could be in a separate layer on top of the spinning crystal to use make the clash effect better. There may also be other effects than on/off/clash that are worth making special animations for. Finally, I’m thinking that it might look better if the crystal was rotating slower, which would require more rendered frames. (Or slower frame rates)
While this stuff is really meant to be just a proof-of-concept, I want it to be compelling enough that people will want to stick one of these displays in their saber.
As an alternative, the sparks could be rendered into the image just like the high-brightness stuff is right now.
Yes indeed, I no longer had it in mind.
- For the battery, I’ll post suggestions around a holo screen in front of the animation.
- For the sparks, do you imagine statics sparks that flashes (like a retinal persistence / thunder) or animated sparks (like plasma) ?
- For the frames, maybe @wywyatt can make a render batch with double frames and a better quality ?
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Well, my original idea was to have the sparks be in their own layer, the crystal would flash bright very briefly, but the spark animations would last a little longer, but then die out, like an AC arc, sort of like this video:
The sparks in this video lasts really long though. I was thinking more like 100 to 500 ms or so. (I guess it depends on what looks good…)
Another way to do it would be to make it look like residual static electricity which would generate a bunch of tiny sparks between the crystal and the surrounding metal. Or maybe that should be part of the base layer?
The idea is to have a few different animations to choose (randomly) from similar to how clash sounds are picked randomly. I’m hoping that the combination of a smoothly rotating animation and the spark overlays will give the display a very dynamic look.
However, please remember to ty to limit the number of translucent pixels in the overlay animations. Pixels which are 100% opaque or 100% translucent are much faster to render than the semi-translucent ones.
I could maybe run it too, assuming it’s possible to do without coughing up a bunch of money for the software? I don’t have a render farm, but my computer is fast and I don’t mind if it takes some time.
It’s very challenging for me, but let’s try !
Note that sparks will certainly have a glow part to appear believable, meaning semi-translucent pixels. 
To handle the transparency, what format is preferred (alpha layer, black) ?
Ideally PNGs with an alpha component.
3 Likes
Holy shiny metal batman!
Guess I better get the tools ready for use…
(You have a V3 board, right?)
1 Like
omg I love that chasis, it is so beautiful, did you make it urself? If so, how much for one?