Re: Project 314 - Intamin Blitz - Bad News

Thanks TTD03.

I have been working on the lake. There are still things to do, but I have improved a few things:

- Made the path higher. Now you see the track from above, so it doesn't block your view and you can see the splash.
- Reworked the shape. Now it's a perfect circle. Take a look to the April 30 update to see the difference.
- New fence.

Here are the pics:







And here is the work plan for this week:

- Modify the fence. I want to give it an "adventure" feeling. Now it looks like a fence you buy in your local store.
- More work in the mountain. Also making holes for the track from station to the lake. There will be a cavern in the top of the lift. One of the scenes of the coaster will be there. I have a pretty complete idea, but won't give details of it for now.
- Start working on the station. Maybe even finished. Here is a sketch:



The two temples are the stations. The building in the left is the transfer track. Proportions may not be accurate.

Remind that textures aren't definitive. Just for showing the scenery with some material on it. They will be the final step. If I made enough progress I will post a new update this week. Thanks for watching.

Aerial shots: the best customized mountain you've been shaping, more to say, for pure fun building your original zone!

[TTD03]

Yea, the shaping of the mountain is unique in my opinion.

Thank you guys. I'm pretty satisfied with the shaping, but I'm trying a few things to make it more realistic. BTW, I have changed the sketch of the station for a better one. Take a look at it if you want.

[TTD03]

It's amazing you can make stuff like this, and all I can do is draw stick figures

[Coasterkidmwm]

Yeah I have the artistic ability of a 5 year old. Keep up the great work!

[TTD03]

^ Me too!

Thanks, but they are not that good. They are simple perspectives, pretty easy. Just need a bit of practice.

Anyway, on topic. If Disney has taught us something is that a ride must have a story. And, of course, this ride has one. And a story must have a main character. So, I present you to Qulcatan, mayan god of the elements (fiction). He is the responsible of making you take the ride of your life. Very important guy, isn't he?



He will have two animatronics on the ride, and few sculptures in the queue line. I have big plans for this bad boy

[TTD03]

Disney has brainwashed us all that a ride has to have a storyline. It's a ride, it's meant to just be enjoyment, not a novel.
This will be a frame rate nightmare.

[Coasterkidmwm]

Lol maybe maybe not. Do what you want Dapalm.

[TTD03]

Don't take it the wrong way, do a story, it does make it cooler, but I feel that Disney makes it seem like it is absolutely necessary to have if you want a good ride.

I don't think a ride must have theming for being good. In fact, I would prefer to ride Shambhala or Dragon Khan over any ride at Disneyland Paris. But theming makes a ride better. If the ride is good it doesn't necessarily need theming, but having the opportunity of making anything I prefer to theme it. As for the fps... There are heavily themed rides in NL (Thunderhead Falls, Gaia, Aeris...) and they work fine. With the new features in NL2 it will be even better. I'm making use of all the possible techniques to make it run better (LODs, alpha masking...). Pyther (creator of Thunderhead Falls) said he was running a revamped version of Thunderhead Falls at 90-120Fps. So I think I can finish my coaster and it will run fine.

[mkingy]

Have to agree with you there Dapalm - if a ride can be themed well (ie Shambhala and other giga's struggle due to their size) it's always going to make it a better ride!

Intrigued on the 2 animatronics - I would care to guess that you may be pairing 2 elements together for each of the launches? Perhaps ground and water due to the lift within the rock structure and water encounter. Then air and fire with the highest point of the ride coming in the second half (and perhaps some extra fire based scenery you may be planning on adding!)

side typo note: Phyter not Pyther for anyone looking for the ride!

[TTD03]

The issue with NL2 is that the heavily themed rides make the fps really bad, where as in NL1, it was much better. At least for me.

^^ Pretty good guess. I'm not going to say anything for now, but you are in the good direction.

^ Well, I hope it will run fine. With all the new features in Nl2 it should be better than in NL1.

I've tried to make the mountain look more realistic, and this is what I have now. I mixed the old mountain with a new technique. There is still a lot of work to do on it, but I wanted to know your opinion before.





So, V2.0 or V3.0? The poly count in this new version is 50000, but once finished it should go down to 20000. Thanks for watching.

[mkingy]

Dapalm wrote:

^^ Pretty good guess. I'm not going to say anything for now, but you are in the good direction.

^ Well, I hope it will run fine. With all the new features in Nl2 it should be better than in NL1.

I've tried to make the mountain look more realistic, and this is what I have now. I mixed the old mountain with a new technique. There is still a lot of work to do on it, but I wanted to know your opinion before.

So, V2.0 or V3.0? The poly count in this new version is 50000, but once finished it should go down to 20000. Thanks for watching.

Glad you're posting! Good to see the development of the scenery backgrounda s we don't usually get people do that very often (especially in such detail!)

V2 I think for me - the rocks are more rounded and seem more realistic.

^ Thanks for your opinion. But keep in mind that the new version is in its early stages. Should look much better when finished. But well, we will see. I will finished it to see how it looks. I can always go back to the older version.

I opened the NL2 demo and imported the coaster and the mountain to see how it would perform. I'm pretty happy with the results. 50-60fps with all settings at max. My computer is very low: Intel dual core E5200, Nvidia GT640 and 3.25Gb of RAM (4, but XP doesn't support so much)



That imported mountain has about 16000 polys. The old one would be a bit higher, but not a lot. I have to clean a lot of things, as well as add a bit more (1 hour working in the new mountain) , so maybe it can be reduced even more. The scale in NL2 is wrong, look at the renders for it.

[TTD03]

Unrelated to the mountain but what is going on here?

Since I imported the coaster from NL1 and had the track set to 2-tube in that element it may have changed the spine thickness. Don't know why it made it larger though.

[mkingy]

That angle makes it look better - I just felt some of the rocks were too pointy. I just feel like that kind of thing gets eroded away pretty quickly.

[TTD03]

Dapalm wrote:

Since I imported the coaster from NL1 and had the track set to 2-tube in that element it may have changed the spine thickness. Don't know why it made it larger though.

Oh ok, assuming you'll fix at some point

^^ I will try to smooth them a bit.

^ Of course it will be fixed. It was just a quick test. Notice that the track is B&M (can't use Intamin one since it is the demo)

[TTD03]

Wait. This is the Demo. They let you do this much? Wow.

Well, next week I will be taking a small break, and will be making a small side project.



I'm working on this small scene to see how realistic I can render it. So I have to finish the coaster (supports, LIMs...), redo the buildings, making a path, replace the trees and apply correct materials. If my computer can handle it... It ran out of memory a few times while rendering that scene. But I think it was because of the trees, so I will render some trees and place them as textures. Well, so I've showed you the before, next week I will show you the after.

[TTD03]

Ah, an Intamin ZacSpin, haven't seen too many of those made.