That's it, I'm going to become a diorama/customizer!

[Yodacappy]

And it's all because of you!

Just wanted to tell all of you how much of an inspiration you are :)

I've got a lot to learn and will probably ask a bazillion questions.

First projects will probably be the Tantive IV opening scene and Jedi Council Chairs.

Not sure on the level of difficulty but gotta learn all of it some time! :)

[Darth_IMPoor]

Another one turns to the Dark Side!:yess:

Come on in, the waters fine. I would pretty much love to see a Tantive hallway in 1/6. And ask away. Everyone here is super cool! Only 1 stipulation: lots of pics.:lol

Jeff

[Dorgmal Snow]

Great thing to start on.. thats on my to do list. I will have a look but I am pretty sure I started drawing up plans... once u start making stuff, dollies take on a new dimension... its great
and there are some very talented folks on these boards ad the community feel makes me feel all warn inside... nurse.....nurse!!!

[Dorgmal Snow]

I did draw up the doorway.. and I will send you a pdf of what I did and the council chairs. :)


<img src="http://i441.photobucket.com/albums/qq132/Dorgmal/Tantive%20IV/Picture3.png" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>


<img src="http://i441.photobucket.com/albums/qq132/Dorgmal/Council%20chair/council.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

<img src="http://i441.photobucket.com/albums/qq132/Dorgmal/Council%20chair/chair.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

[Yodacappy]

Another one turns to the Dark Side!:yess:

Come on in, the waters fine. I would pretty much love to see a Tantive hallway in 1/6. And ask away. Everyone here is super cool! Only 1 stipulation: lots of pics.:lol

Jeff

No worries on that, I'm big on documentation so there will be plenty of that. May even attempt to draw up plans too!

Very excited to get started on it but first, much research to do :panic:

[Yodacappy]

Much appreciated Mark, anything from you is definitely a great start! :bow

[Chakaman]

Very cool, glad to hear it!!

I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with!! Welcome to the "Guild". :D

[shocktrooper_au]

Yes, hopefully I will join the guild soon as well, I've started with plans for the Emperors Window for my detolf, & again it's due to this small but dedicated bunch of guys here.... I applaud you all. :clap

[thundergod]

Welcome aboard guys, you won't regret it . This corner of the board gave me back my enthusiasm after it took a few knocks , due to figures prices generally going through the roof and the mean spirited attitude of some "fans" of 1/6 . We don't get into p!"$%^$g contests here and our credo is "the cheaper the better !":hi5:

[hemble]

Are you guys :cuckoo: you know once you start down the DARK PATH there is no turning back the guys here are living proof of that :rotfl.

Seriously thou welcome aboard and by all means rack our brains that's what were here for.

Ron

[Crimsonbob]

Go for it and have fun :)

[shocktrooper_au]

Well visited a few hobby stores today, and bought a thin piece of styrene (for plate metal details) & some foamcore (for the window) I'll have a crack with this and if I can't get a decent result will find a styrene sheet supplier as atthe hobby stores it's a bit expensive ($38 a sheet)for the thicker stuff & still to small for my project

[EXOTICLEX]

that's some awesome work there dorgmal

[hemble]

shocktrooper_au have you thought about using plywood it's cheap and pretty easy to work with, and I know Bunnings(hard ware shop for international guys) sell it cheap.

I picked up a piece for $12 and it was 1.5mts x .5mts

Ron

[shocktrooper_au]

Thanks Ron, I'll certainly be looking at it as an option in the future though at the moment my only tool is a dremel, the toys stop me buying the real toys :P, but anyway here's what I've started with foamcore so far, along way to go..


sorry Yodacappy I've hijacked your thread I will start a new one shortly

[Dorgmal Snow]

I am lovin it!! so glad to see more folks getting stuck in!! Its the only way. and everything is looking great! That Emperor shot is chuffin ace!!

[Yodacappy]

Thanks Ron, I'll certainly be looking at it as an option in the future though at the moment my only tool is a dremel, the toys stop me buying the real toys :P, but anyway here's what I've started with foamcore so far, along way to go..


sorry Yodacappy I've hijacked your thread I will start a new one shortly


No worries! All are welcome! :hi5:

[Dorgmal Snow]

Feel the love brothers and sister feel the love of the 1/6th dolly lovers wow yeah

[sparkstron73]

Oh another ewok just died:)
Unleash your diaoramas and have fun.

Cool stuff shocktrooper_au ;)

[Vivisect]

Thanks Ron, I'll certainly be looking at it as an option in the future though at the moment my only tool is a dremel, the toys stop me buying the real toys :P, but anyway here's what I've started with foamcore so far, along way to go..


Foam core is nice, cheap and light stuff to work with, even if you just use it for parts of a dio or a background.

This is nothing fancy, but I did it a while ago as a background for Indy, but it took up to much room for just one figure. But I just got my Toht and ark delivered yesterday, and had this sarcophagus I got a while back so I decided to put it back together and put it up in the shelves.

Foam core costs 50 cents for a 3 foot square piece at the local dollar stores, and the half pillars are separate pieces and can be moved around or replaced, and are just part of a shipping tube cut in half. I have been tempted to do backgrounds for all the selves in my figure cabinets since its so cheap and looks better than the plain shelves.

It looks a lot better without the camera flash, since it seems to screw with the colors and makes some of the wall paper seams visible on the sides and floor, and the clear stands are normally almost invisible.

http://i739.photobucket.com/albums/xx39/William_Mayers_III/My%20Collection/Indy001.jpg


Heres with the doors closed. The flash showed me what a crap job I did cleaning the glass, I really need to get out the Windex, if my wife see this picture I will be cleaning every window and mirror in the house.:lol

http://i739.photobucket.com/albums/xx39/William_Mayers_III/My%20Collection/Indy002.jpg

[Yodacappy]

Feel the love brothers and sister feel the love of the 1/6th dolly lovers wow yeah

Calling them "dollies" just cracks me up...:rotfl

[hemble]

Hi All

shocktrooper_au - Love the window mate it looks fantastic already.

Vivisect -Damn impressive tomb I love it, just curious thou were did you get the background from. I've been wanting to do a inclosed area like a shadow box dio and this background would be perfect.

Ron

[Vivisect]

Vivisect -Damn impressive tomb I love it, just curious thou were did you get the background from. I've been wanting to do a inclosed area like a shadow box dio and this background would be perfect.

Ron

Thanks, that was sort of my idea when i did this, since even though it is simple it looks so much better than the back of shelves.

They were just textures I was using for a video game level I was working on for Unreal Tournament 2 many years ago back when that was a hobby of mine.

Video game textures used to be a good source for stuff like this before they started adding parallax, normal and height map layers to the textures, and therefore shrinking down the average textures pixel size and removing any depth or fake shadowing from the color textures since it is not necessary anymore. Though if you upload all the layers from a modern texture into the right editing software you can set light sources to hit the textures how ever you want and save a copy as it looks on the screen as a combined single texture, which it what I will likely do in the future.

I just tiled it how I wanted it, printed it up and wall papered it using watered down Elmers glue thinly spread on the foam core with a brush, then when it was dry I gave it a light misting of clear satin finish spray paint to protect it.

The sarcophagus was something I ran across at a second hand store for like $1, but was missing its hands, so I made replacements out of some Ultimate Soldier fist hands I had sitting around, but I think I want to redo them a bit since I left to much wrist on the hands.

Anyhow, I can email you a bunch of the textures including a ton I didn't use and the ones I tiled together already if you want. The ones I made into full size pre tiled sheets have had some of the individual textures re sized so they print up to a proper scale, like the floor and some of the wall stones.

[hemble]

I never thought of video games backgrounds for dios before, that is such a fantastic idea. And I would really appreciate you sending me whatever you can that would be awesome thank you.

My email is hemble@optusnet.com.au

Ron

[Vivisect]

I never thought of video games backgrounds for dios before, that is such a fantastic idea. And I would really appreciate you sending me whatever you can that would be awesome thank you.

My email is hemble@optusnet.com.au

Ron


I just sent them to you, enjoy. :duff

[hemble]

Hi All

Just wanted to say a BIG THANKS to you Vivisect for sending me the pics, I've already started on a 3-3/4" Shadow Box dio and will show pics as soon as it's done.

Ron

[the dude person]

Wow Viv, great Indy dio!

And I love modding the Unreal Engine... but with Republic Commando instead of Unreal Tournament! And it has some pretty nice textures, been thinking maybe I'll print some out and make a nice Geonosis backdrop or something. I have several sheets of foam core lying around and collecting dust, now maybe I'll finally use them!

[Vivisect]

Thanks, I never really considered it much of a dio, just a background, because it looks better than the back of my shelves, but I guess adding the sarcophagus and the ark make it more like a dio.

As for Republic Commando textures.

The only problem with using textures from republic commando is that it uses multiple textures (diffuse/normal map/height map) that are combined in game to create what you see, and they are all very low res since they were originally made with the memory size and bandwidth limitations of the original X-box in mind, so blowing them up for printing back grounds for 1/6th scale stuff may not work out so good.

Also the texture format will likely be DXT (Direct X Texture) which are super compressed and requires separate programs to even view outside of the game, or you will need a full version of photo shop. Microsoft make a free program to view them called the Direct X Texture Tool, that if I remember right lets you convert them to a normal format but you will still be stuck with 3 layers or so per in game texture.

A very good and easy game to grab Star Wars textures from would be Jedi Outcast or academy, which has an average wall texture size of 1024 x 1024 - 2048 x 2048 pixels that are uncompressed Bitmaps, and the textures are only one layer, so they will have their shadow detail and such intact without any extra work.

Also they are easy to rip from the game, all you have to do is go to the Game Data folder and rename the .pk3 file you want to open to .zip and open them up and dump the textures you want which will be .BMP images. Or just tell what ever unzipping program you use to open pk3 files if it allows it.

[the dude person]

Thanks, I never really considered it much of a dio, just a background, because it looks better than the back of my shelves, but I guess adding the sarcophagus and the ark make it more like a dio.

As for Republic Commando textures.

The only problem with using textures from republic commando is that it uses multiple textures (diffuse/normal map/height map) that are combined in game to create what you see, and they are all very low res since they were originally made with the memory size and bandwidth limitations of the original X-box in mind, so blowing them up for printing back grounds for 1/6th scale stuff may not work out so good.

Also the texture format will likely be DXT (Direct X Texture) which are super compressed and requires separate programs to even view outside of the game, or you will need a full version of photo shop. Microsoft make a free program to view them called the Direct X Texture Tool, that if I remember right lets you convert them to a normal format but you will still be stuck with 3 layers or so per in game texture.

A very good and easy game to grab Star Wars textures from would be Jedi Outcast or academy, which has an average wall texture size of 1024 x 1024 - 2048 x 2048 pixels that are uncompressed Bitmaps, and the textures are only one layer, so they will have their shadow detail and such intact without any extra work.

Also they are easy to rip from the game, all you have to do is go to the Game Data folder and rename the .pk3 file you want to open to .zip and open them up and dump the textures you want which will be .BMP images. Or just tell what ever unzipping program you use to open pk3 files if it allows it.

Oh RC textures aren't that hard to get at all, just open up the editor, find a nice texture, click "export," tack ".bmp" onto the end of the file name and save.

But you're right, the textures aren't the best, but I think they're ok. They should at least be something to work with. And you're also right about the normal maps. (AKA "bump maps" AKA "height maps"), those are all multicolored and I don't think I can export those...

I'll just fiddle with it and see what I can get out of it.

[Vivisect]

Oh RC textures aren't that hard to get at all, just open up the editor, find a nice texture, click "export," tack ".bmp" onto the end of the file name and save.

But you're right, the textures aren't the best, but I think they're ok. They should at least be something to work with. And you're also right about the normal maps. (AKA "bump maps" AKA "height maps"), those are all multicolored and I don't think I can export those...

I'll just fiddle with it and see what I can get out of it.

I wasn't sure if it would export them, I think the engine is some variation of the unreal 2.5 engine that i never messed with much since every company did something weird to the version they used.

In most cases the normal map and height map are 2 different things, normals cover the shaping and the height/bump map tells how to interpret the normal map depth. So the color map (diffuse texture) you have to work with is just missing shadow/depth detail, which for some of them it might not even be to noticeable, or you could edit it back in there since you seem to be quite good at doing that sort of thing.

Anyhow thats cool if some of them actually come out ok blown up. I was thinking originally they might only be good for backgrounds for 3 3/4" figures.

I got Jedi outcast and academy on my PC still apparently, so I will probably dump them all and have a look and see whats good in there.

[the dude person]

I wasn't sure if it would export them, I think the engine is some variation of the unreal 2.5 engine that i never messed with much since every company did something weird to the version they used.

In most cases the normal map and height map are 2 different things, normals cover the shaping and the height/bump map tells how to interpret the normal map depth. So the color map (diffuse texture) you have to work with is just missing shadow/depth detail, which for some of them it might not even be to noticeable, or you could edit it back in there since you seem to be quite good at doing that sort of thing.

Anyhow thats cool if some of them actually come out ok blown up. I was thinking originally they might only be good for backgrounds for 3 3/4" figures.

I got Jedi outcast and academy on my PC still apparently, so I will probably dump them all and have a look and see whats good in there.

Thanks! :lol

And yes, I know without the height/normal maps it won't have as much detail.

I wasn't aware that height and normal maps are 2 different things, I can only find one non-color map (the bump map) in the Unreal Editor for each texture... (a texture = the color part, shader = texture and bump map together)

From what I understand, a normal map is generated from a high polygon-count model with all detail included, then the normal map is applied to a much lower resolution model that has less actual detail in its geometry, making it appear as detailed as the original. Without the actual geometry of say, a groove or a dent, there are much less polygons, which means better performance in game.

Perhaps I'm not using the term "height map" correctly, as in the world of 3D modeling there is such thing as a displacement map, which actually alters the geometry of a model, rather than simply making light areas and shadows appear on a flat surface (like bump maps do).

Although I've never heard of a displacement map being used in real-time in a game, usually just bump maps...

[Vivisect]

The normal map is a blue and purple rainbow looking image that is what that shows the contours of the surface, the height map is a grey scale image that tells the height or depth of each pixel in the normal map.

Some older games may use only the height map, or not use the normal maps to save video memory and as a side effect cut down on the depth and shadow detail, in the case of X-box games. Though in some cases both are not necessary I suppose.

This is a normal map

http://bcchang.com/immersive_blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/fieldstone-n.jpg

Oh and they have been using displacement or parallax maps in games for like 5 or so years, get some new games dude. :lol, just messing with you. :) Actually even far cry had some experimental but usable displacement maps in it that you hack into working back in 2004.

Go out and get Crysis which is crazy if you turn on the Steep Parallax Occlusion Mapping options, things like stones on the ground will actually obscure things behind them. As a matter of fact Oblivion uses them all over the place, the caves in that game are just big blocky funny looking rooms with out them.

Heres a pic from crysis, look at the stones on the ground.

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/08-01-16/591.jpg

[Gipetto0812]

[B][COLOR="DarkSlateGray"]

<img src="http://i441.photobucket.com/albums/qq132/Dorgmal/Council%20chair/council.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>


Wow I know I'm late to this but man that looks like one heck of an undertaking right there! great job on that Snow!

[Vivisect]

Wow I know I'm late to this but man that looks like one heck of an undertaking right there! great job on that Snow!

:lol Actually I think Mark told us right off that he cheated on that one, he only made 1 actual chair, the rest are photo shopped. Looks awesome anyway though.:)

[Gipetto0812]

:lol man i need to be around here more often then...need to get outta the DC forum and explore more

[Dorgmal Snow]

LOL Hell yeah!! I only bad one chair and the floor, then my old evil arch enemy Photoshop got its paws on it!!

But I intend to make some casts ONE day if any one wants one, No idea on the price atm.
:)

[astro666]

Thanks, that was sort of my idea when i did this, since even though it is simple it looks so much better than the back of shelves.

They were just textures I was using for a video game level I was working on for Unreal Tournament 2 many years ago back when that was a hobby of mine.

Video game textures used to be a good source for stuff like this before they started adding parallax, normal and height map layers to the textures, and therefore shrinking down the average textures pixel size and removing any depth or fake shadowing from the color textures since it is not necessary anymore. Though if you upload all the layers from a modern texture into the right editing software you can set light sources to hit the textures how ever you want and save a copy as it looks on the screen as a combined single texture, which it what I will likely do in the future.

I just tiled it how I wanted it, printed it up and wall papered it using watered down Elmers glue thinly spread on the foam core with a brush, then when it was dry I gave it a light misting of clear satin finish spray paint to protect it.

The sarcophagus was something I ran across at a second hand store for like $1, but was missing its hands, so I made replacements out of some Ultimate Soldier fist hands I had sitting around, but I think I want to redo them a bit since I left to much wrist on the hands.

Anyhow, I can email you a bunch of the textures including a ton I didn't use and the ones I tiled together already if you want. The ones I made into full size pre tiled sheets have had some of the individual textures re sized so they print up to a proper scale, like the floor and some of the wall stones.

great work here you guys, I wish I had the skills to make custom dioramas or background/back-drops.

I would luv to have something to put behind my Jabba & throne or Emperor's chair. So far the only back-drop I have came from my Hasbro Speeder bike with that awful Leia. I tossed the Leia into storage but display the bike with my Koto Biker Scout and Medicom Luke, I used Leia's poncho on him and it looks alright. I've also got some of Triad's Triaramas and all of the Sideshow ones except for the furnace environment, which I still regret missing. I have also used real rocks and branches for my Predator, Dutch and Billy shelf and for my Sideshow Endor figs.

Cuz you guys are right when you say that your figs look better when they are not just on a plain shelf. I would really appreciate anything anyone could send me, whatever you could send would be awesome:pray:. Whether it be for Sideshow Star Wars, The Dead, LOTR, Indy, Buffy, GI Joe or any of the HotToys lines like Alien, T2, Iron Man or Predator, in all honesty, anything would probably be useful since I just don't like the look of plain shelves:monkey4. I even went so far as to buy some random cloth napkins to use as back-drops and carpet, :dunno. Also, any other suggestions would be appreciated too, thanks everybody.

My email is astro666@hotmail.com