I decided to make a follow-up model to the oscilloscope about an hour ago. Here's the result:

http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/levels-monitor/

Essentially it's the same monitor model with a different animation on the front. Still, it's a nice complement to the oscilloscope - a lone animated screen might stand out as too weird. If anyone has any other suggestions for screens that would be easy to animate only using polygons then post 'em so I can take a look at making them. 

the sefiroth tree.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Tree_of_Life_(Sephiroth).svg

somehow animated... 

Just wiped out a post with ideas.

As I was saying...

I made some screen textures like this but the animation quality suffered thanks to the frame limit. So here's some ideas;

Mathematical graphs that update in real time.

Concentric c shapes that rotate.

A 3d plane that's displayed on a 2d screen.

Star field windows screen saver.

Real time render of a vat filling / emptying.

Particles moving through a schematic of pipes. 

Just wiped out a post with ideas.

As I was saying...

I made some screen textures like this but the animation quality suffered thanks to the frame limit. So here's some ideas;

Mathematical graphs that update in real time.

Concentric c shapes that rotate.

A 3d plane that's displayed on a 2d screen.

Star field windows screen saver.

Real time render of a vat filling / emptying.

Particles moving through a schematic of pipes. 

Also, I'm already using a few of your meshes in an upcoming map, including the oscillator screen, so more screen is good for me :)

And I know it's a bit cheeky but I don't suppose you've got any hanging or wall climbing vines?

The level is a rubicon thing so plays heavily on red and green. 

Can't wait dude, let me know if I can provide cumbersome testing.
How far along do you think? 

Will let you know about testing. 

Yes, I do have a vine model, it was up on my old site before that died. I'd been thinking about revisiting it with more poses and maybe multiple vines per model. It seems silly to hold it back over nebulous plans like that when it would be useful immediately, so here's the post:
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/vines

Ooh, another question. I try to tag the tech related models on the blog with "base", so you can use the tags to filter for the kinds of model that suit your map. What would be a good tag for things like:
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/oval-window/
"Medieval" kind of works, but lots of things would equally suit elder-world maps, or even other non-base themes like runic metal. "Fantasy" seems a bit airy and inapt. Can anyone suggest a descriptive, punchy tag to include all quake maps which don't have a base setting? 

they're tags, so just give things like that both a medieval tag and a runic tag. 

I suppose that at least maps to the existing classification system of maps - which kind of keys they have! 

any key ranging from used textures (cr8), to like say puzzle, as the 768 map by negke.
quaddicted has lots of tags. 

They're exactly what I was looking for.

In terms of tags, I think themes is good. Whilst some things do share, we all know what 'base' is. Elder is a bit more loose, but we all know more or less what belongs there.

And tags are tags, as mentioned :) 

Oh, and if anyone tried to download the vines but found the link was broken, it is now fixed. 

 

I was impressed by Preach's monitor.

In fact so much I reframed it and made it a three channel one.
The vertcount is not the same and this one has a larger resolution.
The simplicity of the verts changing is fun to see.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/oscill1.zip

I also made the Star field windows screen saver based on Ijed id.
But then I realized the max frames for animated texture is much lower
than what I had in mind. I thought it was 24 frames. 

Cool stuff, MadFox! It made me think a bit of those old Doctor Who serials where the evil computer would be giving a voiceover, and you'd see a monitor with sound waves syncing up with the audio. If you had a map with an evil, omnipresent machine like Shodan or GLaDOS, you could probably connect that model with all the different animation patterns to go with the audio.

As for the starfield, I think it's another one best done with animated polygons instead. I think I can see how to do it now, gonna take a shot... 

At the time I was also thinking of a game of solitaire - even the quake base monsters like to slack off now and again. 

I made a flipcard animation to see how much frames related to the skinfile could be worthwhile. A slide of seven frames that switch after eachother.
I could make more frames, but then the resolution of the skinn becomes smaller.
For simple forms it works, but anims like a surveillance camera it is lame.

The winscreensaver monitor I expanded several spots before a screen and flattened them. Maybe a bit too small for viewing.

http://members.home.nl/gimli/winscrn.zip

:P 

Here's another shot at the starfield:
http://tomeofpreach.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/starfield-screen/

I spent ages trying to get round an awkward gmax issue. If you mirror an object, then the vertices end up in clockwise order rather than anticlockwise, and so the triangles on that object came out backwards in the model.

Also I finally added the mushrooms from December to the blog, but I'd already posted them here, so nothing new... 

Stars looking cool...
what shrooms? 

Does it have the reset xform option?

In the latest versions it appears as both a utility and a modifier. Not 100% that it'd fix the issue you mention though.

Thanks for the starfield :)

The shrooms I requested a while ago for my RMQ map where the player gets poisoned by spores and has to stagger around drunk... 

i really like how you're building animations with polygons like that. gives much better results than animated skins! 

mfx: The mushroom can be found in the model archive, or on the front page for the next few days.

ijed: I don't have a backup version to test reset xform on, but thanks for the tip - I'll give it a shot next time.

necros: Yeah, although the interpolation you get in modern engines is a double edged sword. It makes nicer visuals, but you can introduce glitches if you aren't careful. On the starfield it was important to keep the stars at 0% scale when they move from the edge of the screen back to the centre. Otherwise interpolation would give away the magic trick; you'd get away with it on simpler engines.

I may be taking it too far though, I was planning how to make an LCD digit display using just polygons. That's probably much better done as a sprite instead, no interpolation needed or wanted. So yeah, maybe time to take a break from all this base-tech content and make something other-worldly... 

does gmax have maxscript? cause it could probably be done with a bit of scripting and some funky rigging. 

Yeah, there's maxscript. The way I'd do it is model a plane with each lcd segment carved into it. Then inset a duplicate polygon into each segment. You can then scale this inner copy to 100% when the light is on, or 0% when it's off. It's just that's a lot of fuss and a lot of polygons to create something that appears to switch from on to off. A sprite would be 2 triangles, and actually switches on and off instantly, which might be more appropriate.