DDR/DS (Dancing Stage) machine for project

[Kage]

Hey, for my university project, I have to create an animation of some kind.
I'm kind of hooked on DDR (Dance Dance Revolution/Dancing Stage) at the moment, and so have decided to do something on this.

I don't think this has been modelled before on here in my knowledge?

I first went to my local arcade and took some reference images of the Supernova machine.

I then yesterday started boxing the unit out, and started work on the pad itself.

Comments are welcome. I have no idea on dimensions, so I'm going by eye.
It is hopefully going to be detailed enough to look like the real thing, but we'll see I took a break from 3D modelling for a while, so its also for practise

UPDATED:
This is an updated image from the last page on here of what I have so far of the pad:



This is the machine itself that I'll try and replicate:



I' going to split the parts up next so I'm not working on them all at once, making them as detailed as possible, and then merging back.
I have no idea how I'm going to make textures yet, but they'll probably end up being hand done.

[Kage]

I've started work on the main pad, as this seems the easiest of the lot. The metals starting to look great

I'm yet to do all the detailing, and of course, the foot up/down/left/right pads themselves.

This is what I have so far though, brackets and screws included
Every little bit is also chamfered for realistic-ness, as just placing a box wouldn't have sufficed I don't think.



Close up of screws and bracket:



I may have to turn the screws differently to show variation mind.

Hope you like Comments of course, welcome.

[--Strattus--]

Great work so far Kage!
Very nice details! Keep it up!

PS - Did you download that shader or did it by yourself? It looks familiar somehow...
Very good looking at any rate.

[Kage]

Thanks Strattus, you always have kind words to say

That shaders mine

The texture is took from a camera of a real arcade panel put in diffuse which is about half on in Max which I messed about with in Photoshop.
Then, I just messed with the reflection/reflection blur properties in Vray, and added some large but minimal bump using Noise.
Making shaders I find the best bit, as its what makes the object your creating, more real when rendered.

It wouldn't look half as good without the environmental HDR in place mind!

[tillaart36]

Hi Kage,

as i said it's looking great...happy to see you're working on this project...keep us updated because i think this can turn out great...

BTW: turn some screws around just as you said...that's also one of those little things that add to the realism of renders...

Keep it up!

[Kage]

Thanks

Done some more. Added the base, and the side parts and the bar.
Need to add the arrow panels next! Then its on to final textures, and extra little details like supports on the floor, etc.

Any details I'm missing (Come on DDR players!), or any crits, please say, as I'm only running off some references I took myself



Top View:

[fartbunny]

you call that taking a break?? it looks wonderfull!

[DarkSniper3D]

Materials looks great! Though I can see the chrome reflections are jagged. How do you plan to solve this? (I have this problem aswell)

[Kage]

Hehe, thanks Fartbunny I'm surprising myself actually... I think the machine itself is going to be the hardest task. I also have to make the arrows light up to music (another hard task) and react to light the right way (i.e no light comes through the black bits)

Darksniper, thanks also

Thats to do with antialising, since I've added sharpness to it for clarity. It looks good to me, though can see why some people wouldn't like it.

While I'm making the arrow decals, etc, heres another close up for you to look over :P :

[Kage]

Right, I have added the buttons, and made it a doubles set.
I honestly don't like it with the buttons though on the render, even though this is how its meant to look. Somethings not right..
I even tried to mimic the way the graphics are held by having it below some transparent glass material.

Anyhow, here is the update:

[--Strattus--]

You may want to put another object on top of it with a pretty reflexive and transparent material.., that would create nice reflections.
VrayLightMaterial would be awesome if used in an underneith object...
My scheme:

------------------- = Reflective Layer
------------------- = Color Layer, with opacity maps where there should be light
________________ = VrayLightMaterial

I guess that would give you nice results

Keep it up

[Kage]

Well at the moment I have:

A pexiglass type object with Refract at almost 100% and Reflection quite high.
Under that, I have the diffuse material of the arrows, thats refracting up to the surface of the other material.

I have just finished making the opacity material for the arrows, since the black doesn't glow, and the arrows don't glow all the time anyway. They only turn on if you hit it them while playing.

The only thing is, it doesn't look real any more It did before somehow. I must be missing some detail or something...

PROBLEM:

Hmm... I made an opacity map, and put this into the opacity channel and set it to around 30.

I then put a Vray light underneath, and, the parts that used to be white in diffuse, turned black...

Setting the Opacity lower or higher didn't change anything...

Whats the best way of going about this?

[--Strattus--]

You must leave it 100 I think...
Oh.. it could also be a shadow problem. Try applying the Shell modifier on it to make it two sided...

[Kage]

I'll hopefully have more updates soon.

Yesterday was a bit scary though. I went to my local arcade to take more pictures for usage (since its the only place close by me that has a dance machine), and got stopped, told that I was taking pictures of copyrighted material, so can't use them, and asked "WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR?!" :S
Like I'm some sort of terrorist or something.

Anyway, I have enough to finish it now hopefully I'll try and get updates today.

[davie563]

Kage this is looking very nice, what did u use for the surfacing material, it looks great up close.

This is a very nice model to watch progress, its somthing different than the usual. Im looking forward to seeing how u do the lighting for this model. The glow of the screen and the lights under the floor will be tricky.