328 replies to this topic

[Mandolin]

I am rebuilding my cab just for this, that's its power. This is a masterpiece my friend, thanks to you and all the collaborators of course.

Edited by Mandolin, 11 April 2019 - 11:39 AM.

[drpinballdoc]

Hey man, Peter Docter here, not very active on the forums, but i am on the Junkies Facebook Page (if you have facebook, check it out!) I was working on a header for the page and just NEEDED to leave you a message here that your work, is, grade AAA, FANTASTIC! I play Whitewater like every week and still can't believe how good it looks!...love the fact that you keep working on it, until you think it's perfect, and that's what the end result is, awesome realism and a true joy to play! Also love the info you give about Blender and the whole creation of the table. Looks like this is going to be a another Flupper gem! keep it up man! Greetz. Doc!

[joys]

Well normaly i dont post here so mutch BUT, Dude holy s**t this is goldlike absolute brilliant fantsatic .. i have no words for this peace of art!!!!!

[flupper1]

It has been a while since I did an update, so here it is:

I started converting the Blender renders to VPX. In the past I already used a technique called "project from view" UV mapping, but only on a part of the table and I always sort of guessed the camera perspective.. For those of you who do not know what UV mapping is: google on " uv mapping", I can try to explain but the web does that better. You can see the UV map as the coordinates which a 3d program (like VPX) uses to texture a primitive. Project from view UV mapping uses a neat trick: you can use the view from the Blender camera to generate the UV map. Maybe a picture helps, here is on the left the 3d model in Blender of the apron of Totan and on the right the UV map in an overlay of a 3d render of Totan:

What that allows me to do, is to export the 3d model you see on the left to VPX, with the rendered image on the right as the texture in VPX.

 

But there is a catch: if you don't get the camera view right, this can look strange in VPX. This would be the case if the camera in VPX is different then the one in Blender. Some time ago I discovered how to replicate the exact camera setup as VPX uses in Blender. Again, a picture:

VPX does in fact not change the camera view to get a good view of the table, it rotates and changes the table to fit the camera. You can see for instance in the image that the apron looks warped, that is caused by the layback setting.

 

So for Totan I configured the Blender camera and the table to exactly replicate the VPX view. When rendered that looks like this (4k images, btw not all objects are visible because I am starting with a part of the objects for now):

 

 

You might say "sounds nice but show me a VPX screenshot of that, then I believe you that this works as you say..."; allright, here it is (4k image, taken on my cabinet):

 

Mind you, this is still early days, I just started with the conversion from Blender to VPX (so there still are lot of strange things in this screenshot), but to show what you are seeing:

- look at the pinball bats, the rendered plastics on top of the bats are properly transparent and the "special" lights properly show through the plastic

- the apron is the 3d model from the beginning of this post; you cannot see that there is no 3d geometry for the insert cards, but it still looks as it should

- the playfield itself is a flat primitive with holes in it; it also uses the project from view method; this is now possible in the 10.6 beta (a primitive for the playfield)

- the two plastics on the back wall, are not there yet, only the backwall itself is rendered, but since it uses the texture with these plastics in them, it looks correct

 

To get the transparency right, the texture itself has transparency. The texture itself is 4k and in png, so too big to upload here, but this is a piece of it:

 

If you overlay the rendered view with the vpx view, you will hardly see any differences (except for brightness and contrast) in the areas which I already converted. So I think I will be able to transfer the blender look to VPX quite well. 

 

This technique is similar to what G5K is doing, but he does it in 2 steps (render and reproject I believe). This way I can directly use the rendered output as the texture.

 

For those of you who want to ask: I am still far away from a release, even with the help I get from Rothbauerw for the physics and all. I had to learn a lot of new stuff in Blender, so I am just now beginning to convert to VPX and this way of building a VPX table certainly is not a fast one...

 

And one last render of the whole table:

Edited by flupper1, 22 April 2019 - 08:24 PM.

[Thalamus]

I'm Speechless !!!!

[batch]

Gold ! it's made of gold !

[hworths1545]

Wow!  I can not believe how clear and crisp everything looks once rendered in VPX.  Clearly a work of art.  Genious!  Thanks!!!

[Oldschool4]

Beautiful table.

[Karlor]

0/10 the genie doesn't even look like Will Smith!

 

Insane detail, really cool for you to explain as your going along. Man how cool would it be if we could play those blender renders!

[Pinhead22]

WOW!!!!! This is unreal!

[The Loafer]

I don't know what to say, can't believe those are VPX screenshots.  Will be another milestone release for sure!

[bjschneider93]

Absolutely incredible

[Ben Logan]

As soon as I saw Flupper had made a progress-update post, I actually ran all the way across the house to grab my reading glasses. Details not to be missed! Looks better than IRL.

[shannon1]

Unbelievable.

[Mr H]

Speechless! 

[Rawnei]

We're lucky to have an enthusiast like you work on VPX tables, awesome job man.

[Herweh]

Unbelievable. For sure the most impressive VP stuff I have ever seen. Time to check out a matching 4K screen for my cab ;-)

[Mandolin]

 

 

edit: some observation, colours and lights look a bit off in VPX vs the render, like the Blender render was more contrasty/sparkly don't you think?

Edited by Mandolin, 23 April 2019 - 03:19 PM.

[dramaone]

that kind of visual makes a guy emotional!!

[sifusun]

It looks absolutely stunning....   THAT´s why you want to build a cab for!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.............

 

 

Take your time... don´t hurry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!