D'ni mining winch-thing?

[Emor D'ni Lap]

Sorry, Ben. I was away from any URU matters for several months due to work projects and unexpected family matters.

But it looks like I'll have some time in the next couple weeks to mess around with your machine. Let me know if you have any more specific ideas about it, okay?

[Emor D'ni Lap]

Okay, here are the fixes you asked for and a bit more progress.

The motor and power system:

If you like what's been done here, I'll move forward and add the drive system between motor and reel.
But I wanted to ask you: rather than the push-rod you drew, could I change it to a (D'ni-ish) chain drive, with a small sprocket at the motor and a big sprocket at the cable reel...to give it that power differential?

Let me know what you think!

[BenB]

That is just what I was asking for, Emor. Thank you.

And I like the motor and especialy the power unit! Do you know if the D'ni used wires and electricity? I don't know if I remember seeing anything like wires in the Myst games? But I'm not a expert!

Yes, changing it to a chain drive is okay with us. Can you make a chain without a million poygons though? And I wonder again if we ever saw D'ni chains somewhere?

[Karkadann]

a worm drive system might work, similar to the one in the Backgammon age's dice cage.

[Emor D'ni Lap]

a worm drive system might work, similar to the one in the Backgammon age's dice cage.

You're right.
A worm drive would be the perfect thing to prevent back-driving the winch when the cable is under tension. But they aren't often used in places that get really dirty, because the grit abrades the surfaces of the worm gear, eventually stopping the whole thing.
Anyway, I had already done most of the work on this weird chain drive setup, so here's a couple shots of it so far:


So, this rather imposing chain is just made of a single alphaed .png panel repeated in 3 dimensions. Both chains add up to about 600 tris.
(the chain looks a little odd right now, I think because it's the only thing in the scene that's textured!)

But I think the main wheel needs more vertices; it still looks way too angular to be believable. It's 800 tris right now and may need to double that, we'll see.

Hope this is all okay by you, Ben.

[BenB]

That chain looks scary! But good scary, I think!

When you talked about using a chain I thought maybe it would be a problem with people putting their hands in. What they call a pinch point. But you would have to be crazy to put your hands anyhwere near that kind of chain!

When you say tris you mean triangles, right? So 600 is not a problem. This project now has space divvided into pages, so I think polygons are not so much of a worry.

What is next? Do you want to try to convert for URU yet? To see what it looks like in game render?

[Emor D'ni Lap]

When you say tris you mean triangles, right? So 600 is not a problem. This project now has space divvided into pages, so I think polygons are not so much of a worry.

Glad the chain will be okay; it was actually a good bit of work!

What is next? Do you want to try to convert for URU yet? To see what it looks like in game render?

What's next was a bunch of cleanup work: cleaning up unused junk and naming pieces that I was being sloppy about. This is something I don't do enough when I'm working only for myself, but when an asset is being handed off it needs to be clean-and-clear as to what is what. So I've done most of that now.

Next is setting up UVs on some things, starting texturing.... and making a piece of the cable coming down off the reel. Do you want some cable snaking around on the ground in front? Can I end it in a clipped loop (like ships use for hooking onto things), or do you want a loose, frayed-looking end to the cable?

And yeah, you're right: I should try an Age conversion, just to see how the alphaed .pngs on the chain render in-game. The rest I'm not too worried about, though.

[BenB]

Emor you asked what should be on the end of the cable?
I think it should just be a hook, not frayed or a loop.

Here's a picure of something close to what we thought:

except it should be even bigger and heavier than that, more Dni looking if you can? Thank you

[Emor D'ni Lap]

Ben, here's the point where I have to hand this model off to you! It's one of those things I could go on fussing with forever, but at some point one has to say "enough!", and you will be the one to make additions and improvements from here on.

Also, it's always somewhat different when you're working on a file that has to be handed off to others: maintaining a clear structure and naming conventions becomes more important than on a project where only you have to keep track of what's what (and only you will see your messy Max file!)

So, some notes on the setup for this winch-thing:

You asked for a D'ni hook, I dunno what that might look like but hope this fills the bill:
       
Here's the winch in-game:
   
   
And the back side, with control box and power supply:
   
The cable is a bunch of polys, and they're all currently aligned along a flat floor plane. So if you put all this on an uneven surface, you'll have a very busy time aligning all those edge loops to the ground...but it would be a convincing effect!

The chain that I was concerned about, because it was built of layered alphaed planes? To my surprise, it renders beautifully in-game! I even used an alphaed background of windows behind it as a test, and the chain causes no problems when seen from either side of those windows! Weird. But a relief.

I used an alpha layer on the large sprockets, to break up the big solid discs a bit. But if you find it makes it look too much like a Mississippi sternwheeler, just turn off that lower layer.

I've added colliders for it, using three Hulled box shapes with ProxyTerrain and NoShow modifiers.
This permits the avatar to walk in between the pontoons, to examine the controls and so on.
The collision boxes have sloped tops, so - with the exception of a small area at the top of the reel - high-jumpers should just wind up sliding off the winch.
The hook also has a little collider, to step upon.

The winch's objects are all grouped under WinchGroup, so any translations you need to do should happen there.
Likewise, all textures are collected in Material Editor slot #2, a multi-sub-object material called "Winch-MSO".
The colliders have a non-Plasma material on them, for convenience while working, in slot #3. I made pre-layered texture files for a few of the meshes (the reel, the motor and the battery/control mesh group); all the other textures are very heavily modified from free online textures (colorations altered, layered and multiplied with other textures, made tileable, and so on), so I can basically say they are my custom creations at this point. Feel free to alter these as you need, and if you require the pre-layered files I can send those to you as .xcf or .psd files.

I've created a very basic floor shadow map on a separate plane, for the winch, cable and hook. You can alter this as you see fit, too. But if you have time, it would be great to add some ambient occlusion maps to the pontoons, for instance, where there are not enough vertices to sustain Plasma shadow data.

Texturally, what it needs now of course is a bunch of schmutz and dings, the wear and tear a piece of gear like this would acquire in a mine. Not knowing exactly where you're going to put this thing, I'm going to leave this additional aging/schmutz texturing to you!

Plus, I'm out of time and have to move on! After all, this has only taken me thirteen months to get to this point!
IF I had more time, I would have liked to have added more decorative detail: embossings on the sprocket wheels, retainers on the sprockets and on the vertical stakes, some D'ni lettering in the space reserved above the contol slider (in/out, forward/backward, something like that). And you'll probably put a bunch of your local rocks inside the pontoons, right? But those are your decisions!

Files PMed to you....hope this works for your project!

[Emor D'ni Lap]

One more image I forgot: a closer view of the motor and power unit.