Discovering Neptune: Prototype For Brilliant New 3D Mesh-Based Lighting System

Eshi and Lienna perched on the edge of an ominous martini glass shadow

The last time several SL bloggers acclaimed a single site at the same time was Privateer Space.  Though just a small establishment on a city block, the Neptune Bar is an incandescent study in colored light and deep shadow, recently marveled over by Dedric Mauriac, JeanRicard Broek, and Dusan Writer in the space of several days.  (Direct SLURL teleport to Neptune at this link.)  They do not over-enthuse: the last time I was immersed in 3D artistry of such quality was playing Bioshock.

Neptune is actually a showcase for a two man SL-based start-up company launched last month, with building skills provided by Sean Augustus, and Tories Canetti on programming duty.  (Neptune itself is hosted on the island known as Iron Fist, owned by Flopsie McArdle.)   As part of an SL-based university research project a couple years ago, Canetti began experimenting with shadowed prims, and applied his experience into their new texturing technique.

"We capture 3D meshes, so a 3D photo of sorts," Tories Canetti tells me, "and then we can import them into our package. So a lot of the challenge is fixing up the captures in a sensical way."  In other words, they export Second Life textures into their offline rendering program, give them vivid color and shadow, then replace the original textures with them.

The effect is such a profound and vast improvement over most color and lighting schemes in-world, it's easy to see it becoming a standard method.  I was so impressed, I called over a crew of NWN readers for a late night, impromptu photo op.  Thanks to Sean Voss, Lienna Jael, Eshi Otawara, Spidey Carlberg, Delaynie Barbosa, Dedric Mauriac, and Zee Pixel for dropping by-- some more lovely images below after the break.

Comments

[Nexii Malthus]

Wow, I have been dreaming being able to do this, I never considered just bluntly exporting an entire scene into a modelling program and using that! Ingenious.

[csven]

I thought people were already doing this on commercial builds. Am I missing something? Is it all automated or updated in realtime? It looks great, but I must be missing something. How about some additional information on what it is they're actually doing beyond simply ripping the 3D and textures out of the client, re-rendering and pulling back in. Gracias.

[Zetaphor Tengu]

@csven: Your not missing anything, thats exactly what they do. Its actually a tedious process...

[csven]

@Tengu - Aware it's tedious, but if you're correct then the headline - coupled with the portion about a "university research project" and "new texturing technique" - is severely misleading. Hamlet?

[larryr]

yes. "baking textures" has been a common technique for doing realtime 3d for many years.

that said, space looks fun and will check it out.:)

As for "new;)"- how about the new SKYBASE VIGILANCE RPG Sim were opening this week in SL. Unlike most, its a wholly original scifi RPG/community effort within SL.It's not based on any prior TV or video game franchise, but uses networked 3d media to grow its world ans storylines.

best..:)
cube3

[Hamlet Au]

Baking textures has been around forever, yes, but as I understood it, these guys are doing it with 3D meshes and they've made it an automated process. I know the danger of saying something in SL is "new" versus "new to me", but has this specific process been done before?

[Patchouli Woollahra]

Not to the best of my knowledge. Going from parametrics to meshes is easy, but reversing the process with minimal/no human intervention as has been done supposedly in Neptune? Not so much.

The only way you could seriously pull this off prior to Neptune was to work with a offline builder that supported SL-style parametrics and sculpties, and that has its limits too.

[larryr]

automated import? or export from SL?

As we know ripping objects meshes from SL has been done via tools like GLintercept for a while.... other than that or the new "backup tools" (and i dont know if what any translators they offer) one was stuck woth object left inworld. i assume the obejcts then are retextured and relit at the least in a max or maya type application, then texture baked rendered-saved, and exported for a mass "sculptie" import into SL build pallette.

frankly ive found the whole "sculptie" process a pain, and the "rez" speed and nature of sculpties too slow for there mass usage in larger builds. Although if used judiciuosly, they can help certain object shapes look more as "expected".

so automated? sounds interesting .. more info?--

sounds more like 3d scanning...you export a scanned mesh of onejcts?- rooms? single objects etc? then rerender and re import as parameter prims and texture objects(sculpties)?

c3

[csven]

I'd be interested in hearing a little more about the automated portions of the process; Hamlet's entry provides very little information for such a bold headline.

I'd also be curious to know if, say, the open source client was part of the solution, since Patchouli's comment seems to negate "off-line builders" such as Maya and Max (using plugins and whatnot), but not a modified client. Or is this purely of the "hit a button and a stand-alone app auto-renders the scene file and updates baked textures" sort of thing. Appreciated.

[Tories Canetti]

Hey all, just to chime in a bit.

larryr was pretty much right on, basically it's like a 3D scan of the scene. Where we can re-render and re-import maps. Much of the software we wrote has to do with cleaning up meshes that come out of SL and rebuilding shader data. Then we basically program the material shaders, render the scene and re-import the baked maps.

One thing I'd like to clarify a bit is that we don't build off-line, indeed we don't plan on offering building services at all. We are doing a service which takes some build which is already in SL and retrofits baked lighting by replacing the textures with rendered versions. Basically we'd like to work with established SL builders rather than compete against.

Feel free to contact me if you are interested in quotes or have other quesitons. I'd love to hear what the general reaction is!

Tories Canetti

[larryr]

hi.
thats what i thought. i visited the diner/club inworld. nice.

i looked at objects and could see they were all now "sculpties".

of course baking offers that "still life realistic" look that many go ga ga for--today..-:) and yes i thought it worked particularly well on the sofa in the corner:) my only caveat was the rez time.. it took a very long time for the "building" to rez around me...-almost- to the point of - too long to stay for the show;)- it would have been nicer to prim build the walls etc, and get me "into" the space sooner rather than risk the impatient traveler..--- but that is my general issue with the linden solution to complex objects.... Ive built way to many vr worlds using polygons to be wooed by the tech hoops jumped through by LL to solve what never should have been a problem in the basic 3d architecture of the service anyway..:)...rgb objects--geesh..

all in all , place looks nice. good work and maybe a few inworld less "visually gifted" builders/hobbiests will want to use your service to "pretty up a place" they already created, but id suggest looking to sell the tools rather than the service considering the current SL marketplace.

just some food for thought:)

c3

[Dusan Writer]

Hey all, and again, nice work Tories (still waiting for a reply from yer partner btw hehe) ... just thought I'd add my two cents, noting that this sound a lot like the SL to Multiverse pipeline where they extract models using OGLE, creating a nearly unusable OBJ file which needs to be cleaned up...once cleaned up, it's usable and 'renderable'.

That process is outlined here:
http://mymultiverse.com/blog/?p=23

And to quote:

At this point, the blender file if you look at still looks nothing like the model you would be expecting. That is because when OGLE captured it, it captured everything that went to the graphics card including the container (i.e. the Second Life GUI, Skyboxes, etc). This stuff is of a much bigger scale that the actual model and it completely surrounds the actual geometry of what you would expect to see. So, the script looks for objects that are near the center of the bigger model and then deletes all the objects that are not within 10000 units of the center. This is always consistent with the OGLE data from Second Life. So, after the scripted Blender unlinking (deleting) of the unwanted objects I am left with a model that is still way to small to work with.

So, regardless of how new it is, still a complex painstaking process, even if automated to a degree.

[Tories Canetti]

Hi Dusan!

I talked to Sean (we're actually in the same room working on our next lighting project) and he didn't seem to get your message - so maybe something weird happened.

Anyway, our process is very similar to the Multiverse process, although to some degree we can automate a bit more because what we use the geometry for is somewhat more limited, but you're right, it is not something someone can buy and "hit go" to make their build look awesome. It still requires quite a bit of knowledge of how 3D pipelines work and how OpenGL works and a touch of artistry to make the scenes convey an atmosphere....etc

Anyway, I put together a PDF which details our process and gives some hints to architects who might want to consider our services for their builds.

http://seanny.net/2nd/neptune-overview.pdf

Oh - feel free to message me of Sean again, sorry about that message - not sure what happened to it....

Tories Canetti

[Talia Tokugawa]

*smiles* have some additional shots of that..
here

That set would be the link between Dedric and Jean.

[jeanricard broek]

Thank you all for these intelligent and informative comments.

[Simondo Nebestanka]

That really is a great build, lovely work! Thanks for putting under the (funky colored) spotlight.

I'd love to see a larger scale setting! Looking forward to that.
Cheers

[Torley]

Hot stuff! I'm at a loss for words, in the best of ways.

But I enjoyed this build a lot (very fun to see familiar faces drop by...) so in respect, I made a panoramic photograph of the Neptune Bar! Mmmm... 360-degrees.

Sort of reminds me of an upgraded version of the classic atmosphere of Shufflepuck Cafe, that Douglas Adams romp Starship Titanic, or a video game tavern to be found in another respectable adventure.

[Tories Canetti]

Whoa, thanks for the awesome panorama!

Yeah, Starship Titanic - that game was the bomb from the dying era of pre-rendered 3D.

Definitely was one of our influences, as well as the host of other greats of CG interiors: The Journeyman Project, Myst, Syberia, and of course Bioshock.

[Hamlet Au]

MR. BUBBLES I'M READY FOR DREAMTIME!