192 replies to this topic

[gear323]

Wow. This really looks great. Some seriously amazing work being done here. Thanks for sharing the progress and explaining how you are building this.

Looking forward to any future updates as to the progress here. Whirlwind is a great table and this is going to be awesome.

Edited by gear323, 10 October 2020 - 12:10 AM.

[krel01]

Got pretty quiet here - is Flupper1 still active?

[Rajo Joey]

Got pretty quiet here - is Flupper1 still active?

I'm sure, he is, but he is involved in many other projects.

Gesendet von meinem CMR-W09 mit Tapatalk

[rothbauerw]

He is, would love to see him come back to this one.

[flupper1]

I am still working on this (and also other projects...), but little to show for it right now. Will do an update soon...

[flupper1]

Chapter 6: bats, bumpers, screws

 

Today I will show you what I worked on over the last couple of months. Some of them took me way longer then anticipated, like the bumpers and the flasher domes. First the Williams bats:

 

I always wanted to make new bats with the correct proportions and the Williams logo. For Whirlwind, I finally found a good reference image for that which I converted into a vector drawing, which I could use as a reference for the new bats:

I imported the vector image in Blender and reshaped an existing Williams bat of mine to the exact contours of the vector image:

With some experimentation I found a good material (a combination of reflection, diffuse color and subsurface scattering), which I baked into a 1024x1024 texture. I simplified the primitive a little and boosted the contrast of the texture in photoshop:

In order to test them I updated the bats in BK2K, I think they look spiffy:

 

If you want, you can check them out yourself, yesterday I uploaded a new version of BK2K which has these bats and also my new bumpers:

 

The bumpers are quite complicated in setting up, I spent way too much time trying to get them look right. Here are some issues which I faced:

- primitives cannot color anything which is behind them in VPX. This means that a colored transparent bumpertop looks wrong when in VPX. The only thing which can actually color something is the VPX light object. So I used this to my advantage: my new bumpertops are almost opaque when displayed in VPX. I put a colored VPX light directly/just below the bumpertop, which is really bright. Combined with the almost opaque bumpertop, these cancel each other, and the effect is a colored effect through the bumpertop.

- Bumpertops have layers of transparency effects. I wanted to make them to look nice, not only in one POV but multiple and even VR. Hard to explain what I did, but if you look at the bumpertop texture in VPX, you will see two parts of it. When rendering multiple transparency layers in the bumpertop, these two parts give a good 3d transparency effect (at least I think so...). When looking at the bumpertops they work quite well, unless you view them more or less directly from the side. One drawback is that you cannot rotate them, then they look off.

- The lightbulb also uses two different transparency layers, I wanted to let the glowing wire also have 3d effect.

 

Last part, the screws. There are several problems with screws in blender and VPX:

- there are many of them, and they have a lot of faces (compared to plastics for instance which are way bigger).

- they catch reflections, so they cannot be too low poly otherwise they look off. 

- If you use highpoly screws in blender, it is hard to translate that to VPX (because of the performance). And even Blender does not like a large amount of high-poly screws, this will increase rendertime.

- Blender has problems with shadows for small objects. A raytracer has a hard time "finding" these shadows. 

So I fixed that in the following way:first I modelled a relatively low poly screw, which is also exportable to VPX:

For the shadow issues I baked an Ambient Occlusion map for the screw and also for the shadow underneath the screw (the flat face in the screenshot above). Also, I baked the normals from a highpoly version of the screw, to have better reflections.

If you render that, it looks like this:

If you disable the normal and AO maps, and the subdivision, then the base mesh looks really bad; so that shows why I use all these extras:

The same method I used on the other type of screw, which I call the hexanut:

 

If you want to see my new flasher domes (also made for Whirlwind, but ended up as a demo table), you can find it here:

https://www.vpforums...&showfile=13138

 

Next update: https://www.vpforums...430#entry469993

Edited by flupper1, 28 February 2021 - 04:17 PM.

[JLouLoulou]

Just impressive and very... very... very instructive! You are a master.

[Thalamus]

Impressive as always. Thanks for sharing. It is always interesting getting an insight into how you solve problems I would not even know was there

[JLouLoulou]

"- primitives cannot color anything which is behind them in VPX. This means that a colored transparent bumpertop looks wrong when in VPX. The only thing which can actually color something is the VPX light object. So I used this to my advantage: my new bumpertops are almost opaque when displayed in VPX. I put a colored VPX light directly/just below the bumpertop, which is really bright. Combined with the almost opaque bumpertop, these cancel each other, and the effect is a colored effect through the bumpertop."

 

This week end, i discover this tips by hazard by working in shaq attaq. I made a very bright light with transmit value at 0 and I discover you see elements behind the first mesh which is coloring the other.

 

 

This is what i use for the 3 bulb under the plastic ramp on shaq attaq. It make a very relastic bright bulb and great effect over the ramp. Stickers are opaque, but when GI is on, you can see the sticker have translucide black color, and which is behind, is colored too by the stickers.

 

Edited by JLouLoulou, 09 November 2020 - 12:03 PM.

[Mitchell]

Nice

[marie]

Wow Flupper, I like following your progress and Masterclass! 

[polishedball]

Following.   Amazing work.  

[mrjcrane]

Dang, that's a lot of effort Flupper, keep pushing forward. And I'll at least say thanks in advance, because that attention to detail will make for a fantastic table.  I'm coming to believe that the skill set in the VP community is at least on par and perhaps even better than what the commercial dev houses are able to produce.  Am glad you shared your approach because I and others can at least learn from it and maybe become contributors some day. Very nice high quality work Flupper !, Thanks. mrjc.

[dielated]

Commercial dev houses couldn't afford this...

[Mancave]

Just learned that you've been working on this one past year. Man oh man, you've made my day!!! Very fun table to play. And your skills are superb, Flupper1! I know for sure this table will go straight to the top of my favorites list. Ziet er top uit!!! Thanks in advance!!!!

[flupper1]

Chapter 7: ramps

 

There has not been an update for quite some time, so here it is; today I will show you how I made the ramps for Whirlwind:

 

It was quite a bit of work, since the ramp involves flasher domes (which need to be the correct size and in the correct position), a ramp entrance which can move, a transition to a wireramp with a plastic on it, some ramp decals and 2 skyway toll booths, which hide 2 switches. 

As a start I used the actual VPX ramp which I made as explained in an earlier post. For those of you who used my ramp tutorial, you know what happens next: the VPX ramp is imported in Blender and remodelled to be a proper ramp ready to be rendered. But the basic ramp is in fact a rather blocky mesh (the h is intended, don't read mess):

 

Everything else is done by modifiers on top of the basic mesh:

 

To give a flavour what a modifier does in Blender, here is some clarification of the modifiers in the ramp (you can see them in the right area of the wireframe screenshot above):

 

As a starter, a modifier creates or changes geometry of a mesh, without actually changing what you can edit in Blender. It is all done dynamically. The benefit is that you can always go back to the basic mesh, without reloading an old Blender file. Very useful for iterating through a design. 

 

In depth for this ramp:

The first modifier (called Bevel, the top most one), make the blocky edges of the ramp mesh into a more smooth one. It divides 90 degree angle face transitions into 3 sloping faces.

The second one, Solidify, makes the mesh have actual thickness. The basic mesh has just flat faces, and with that you cannot render it properly.

The third one (another Bevel) again breaks down 90 degree face transitions into 2 very small faces. This is needed for the fourth modifier, as this generates extra faces to have nice solid edges for the ramp.

The fourth one is Subdivision, which basically creates many faces starting from my basic mesh. This is necessary for smooth transitions and rounded surfaces.

The last one (Lattice) is a modifier to enlarge, rotate, scale and "layback" the mesh, just like VPX does when it renders. This is necessary in order to render in Blender the exact same view as in VPX (fullscreen).

These modifiers all stack on top of each other (so the order matters), and give the final result (as you can see in first screenshot and the wireframe view).

 

When included in the table, you get the full table screenshots:

 

GI off

 

GI on

 

From now on, I will start preparing everything in Blender for exporting to VPX. That is a lengthy process in itself, so another update might be some time again...

 

Next update: https://www.vpforums...e=7#entry484479

Edited by flupper1, 09 August 2021 - 07:56 PM.

[gear323]

Where is the "Love" button when I need it.  Ha.. Guess I'll have to settle for "Like".  Awesome work Flupper1!  While most of this is a bit over my head, it is very interesting to read about the process and see how much work goes into the tables you (and others) create.  Makes me appreciate the effort even more.  Those ramps look amazing, really looking forward to this one.   

 

Thanks again!

Edited by gear323, 28 February 2021 - 05:43 PM.

[mrjcrane]

That looks totally awesome Flupper. What I like about you and the other table developers is how professional each consecutive table rebuilds end up looking. Each time you go up a version, you totally "Kick it up a notch."  And I think you can rival or surpass what the commercial game developers can do. You all keep improving on this great hobby. I'm happy to volunteer as a tester if you wish when you are ready for beta testing. (Thanks again and for all your other prior awesome tables, I certainly appreciate all your work and effort.)

 

P.S. The chrome looks fantastic and I like that you allow the fake light bulb to shine through the center of the pop bumpers, nice touch of realism. 

[BrandonLaw]

Bruh.

[TNT2]

It always blows me away how complex and involved development is. Flupper you are second to none.