'Pyramids of Mars" TARDIS interior

[BeeblePete]

Using Marc's detailed Maya tutorial over at Who3D I had my second attempt at a wall mesh but I hit two problems afterwards:

• The render cost of all those polygons was extreme.


• Tony dropped a fresh, new set of measurements on the forum!

This method is similar to the actual BBC structure - it puts a load of tubes up against a 'grille.' I cloned off the hollow cylinders needed and set them inside a cube stretched out to wall shape. The front face of the cube has the honeycomb texture applied. It's a bit of a cheat, since the 'holes' are just alpha-coloured circles in the image:



Although the holes are the proper size, the cylinder thickness is much greater than used by the BBC. This allows the pixelated edges of the texture to get lost in front of the cylinder edges, which are a matching colour.

[Rassilons Rod]

That's actually a pretty good idea! Only two things come to mind.

1) The thickness of the ply on the front shouldn't be visible but could be compensated for with an all-over displacement map, matching the transparency map.
2) The only thing that might be a problem is lining up the bins with the transmap holes.

In your image, things look pretty good, but the bottom left half roundel looks a little odd (I imagine it's probably just a texturing issue though...)

-Marc

[BeeblePete]

The thickness of the ply probably doesn't enter into my SL build since to me, that kind of detail is more a scene shop thing than a TARDIS thing. Since I'm using no real materials, I'm free to have a honeycomb crafted from a pure, solid block of, um, Gallifreynium

The roundel oddities are distortion since SL has a wide camera angle and also mesh detail is low by default so SL can be strolled through in real time. When things are more final I'll post some shots with the detail cranked up, but a 'typical' view is more honest, unless we visit SL with super powerful hardware.

[cobalt]

It's a bit of a cheat, however, since the 'holes' are just alpha-coloured circles in a blank white image:

That was pretty much how I built the walls for the 3-Doctors console room. The face of the wall had alphaed holes in it. The casings of the roundels were sculpties.

If you're working in mesh though, you're making your job more complicated than it needs to be. You can do a mesh roundel wall for pretty low PE cost without the need for alphaed textures.

[BeeblePete]

I've done Marc's tutorial so if you have a pointer or two I shouldn't waste your time. I've got Maya and Blender, so feel free to add a comment or just IM PeterTheta.resident next time inworld...

[BeeblePete]

Wall drawing PDFs, recently revised to match the new research!



Further explanation in the original reference topic: the TARDIS Main Doors

An interior doorway drawing is also available: here's the post.

To match the BBC designs, the wall drawings are in inches.

A wall 125 inches high is 125mm on the page. In Second Life, I'd interpret that as metres and then scale up by some amount.

[BeeblePete]

Code Select Expand


Real body height     5'10"  1.778 m  Rough average, UK/US caucasian height
Real doorways        6'8"   2.032 m  Current building codes (mean)

SL Female Steampunk  6'0"   1.830 m
SL Female Elven      6'10"  2.090 m
SL Male Designer     7'0"   2.150 m  I'm using this as an 'average' male avatar
SL Male Cyborg       7'3"   2.230 m


An actual-sized console looks puny amid the oversized scale that's become standard in Second Life:

[cobalt]

I was worried that an actual-sized console might look strange in SL with enlarged walls, but obviously it all needs upscaling.

Yes, this is something that most builders end up having to deal with at some point. Second Life's sizing is off.

When SL was originally created, it was a bit of a rush job. One of the mistakes they made, and one which has never been corrected, is that they never measured their avatar sizing against their object sizing. So anything built to the correct scale measurements is somewhere around a third too small for the avatar.

When I was working on my SL Hartnell console room build, I built the whole room to the correct real-world measurements, imported a "cardboard stand-up" of William Hartnell which had been sized to correct height, placed him next to the console, and then sized the whole shebang up until Billy was the same height as the stock SL av. End result: no longer the "correct" size, but now it looks right against the avatar.

Here's me, hamming it up with Cardboard Billy:

[BeeblePete]

After yesterday, I'm dropping the face texture method and giving full mesh another go!

[BeeblePete]

This Second Life post recommends scaling up to 1.25. So I ran a test - video here:

http://m.theta-g.com/bbc/m/TARDIS/test.mp4



I used 1.3 as it worked best with my avatar, which is by no means tall. 1.4 worked better with the camera but looking at the wall and the avatar together, maybe 1.4 is a bit extreme.

Opinions welcome...

[expendable]

Very impressive! But it looks slightly tall to me. Can you try 1.2?

[BeeblePete]

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, the console does look a bit big at 1.3. Here's everything set to 1.2:

http://m.theta-g.com/bbc/m/TARDIS/test2.mp4



My main frustration is how the chase camera passes through the wall above the door, but just walking down the corridors, the ceiling looks healthily high. This is why I'm so desperate for feedback, it's not an easy call...

[exleo]

If building in Second Life, you can alter the camera angle and distance in your preferences menu, so that instead of having the camera view six feet above you and ten feet behind you, you can have it just behind and above your head....
As a primary builder for the most prolific producer of Tardis console rooms in SL, we have now started producing all our builds in 1:1 as it is not only more realistic, but also means you can produce much larger more intricate builds but with a far lighter Land Impact, and with your camera set to the right angle and distance it will skim nicely under 1:1 scale doorways looking no more different than how a film camera might follow somebody through a door in a movie.....

So basically, reduce your build size to exact scale, you'll be far happier with the end result

[BeeblePete]

Are you? I remember the console screenshots you posted - very nice! If you fancy showing off details, zap an IM or LM to me @ PeterTheta.resident, I'd love to pop by.

When my goal's achieved, all the tools and bits are all going up for free download; I've no SL marketplace aspirations. My fan focus is films (beeblebroxcompany.org) but I care very much about getting my own TARDIS right (see drawings above).

I agree with you completely that SL should be 1:1 scale. But I wouldn't be happy pestering my friends and family to lower their cameras and avatars. Even if we can cut Second Life down to size, the occuloid tracker is here to stay, in and out of SL.

[expendable]

1.2 looks very close. I'd say it was acceptable.