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rueitae · 5 years ago

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Roommates in Disguise

Read the fic on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19901668/chapters/47138743

Lance makes a hasty decision that lands him in the clutches of the Green Starling, one of the city’s most notorious super villains. Thankfully she doesn’t seem to know he’s actually her nemesis, the superhero Icebound. His captivity puts him in contact with Katie, a fellow college student. Concerned she may be targeted again, Lance befriends Katie. He doesn’t expect to end up moving in with her.

Katie will do anything to find her family, that includes becoming a super villain to expose a Galra Corporation that has the city wrapped around its metaphorical finger. When Lance literally falls at her feet, claiming to be friends with Icebound, she jumps at the chance to find the connection between Galra Corp and the sudden appearance of super heroes two years ago, not long after her family went missing...

Neither anticipate a friendship and a blossoming romance.

Rated: T

Tags: enemies to friends to lovers, alternate universe - superhero, explosions, comic book level violence, experimentation, human lab rat, domestic fluff, roommates/housemates, Pidge is an anti hero, Galra are still the bad guys, action, secret identities, captured, companionable snark, collaboration

Art by @mybluelionlancylance. Look at it!

https://mybluelionlancylance.tumblr.com/post/186452499757/this-is-art-for-the-plance-mini-bang

Beta-ed by @whyamistillhungry

For @planceminibang

Myself and @fallen-angel-nightshade have worked together to provide ten chapters for your enjoyment! We’ll be posting once a day in alternating POV. I have Lance, she has Pidge. Watch for Nightshade’s chapter two tomorrow!

~~~~~

Lance wondered if heroes in comic books ever had bad days like this.

Not for the first time that day, or even week, Lance cursed his horrible luck. Dust gathered on his dress shoes as he ran desperately along the upended street. He loosened his tie for easier breathing, disoriented and light headed as he crashed into a mound of concrete that used to be part of the road.

The meeting with his boss hadn’t gone well - he was epically failing his internship, though that was no surprise considering his absences and late assignments. There was no way they’d hire him when he graduated.

If he lived to graduate in the first place.

Well, at least he could try to save some people from today’s villainous rampage.

Pausing for a moment's rest against the wall of concrete and pavement, he closed his eyes to construct peace and quiet as streams of shrieking bystanders raced by in the opposite direction of his travel, towards the center of chaos. There was no opportunity for him to hide and transform into his hero persona. Icebound would be able to traverse this trashed landscape with no problem, but he couldn’t give away his secret identity. His enemies wouldn’t give him any peace.

Enemies he never would have had, had he not been delivering lunch (with ice cream dessert, oh does he remember that ice cream well - all that awful stickiness!) to the Galra Corp building when the lab exploded. So of course he had ice powers.

It wasn’t as easy as comic books made it out to be. Lance extended a wave of sympathy towards Clark Kent - but at least he had convenient telephone booths to work with. Lance liked to see what he would do in the age of cell phones.

A growing chorus of panicked screams rang out in the near distance.

With a deep breath, determination set in. He had to do something, or innocent people would get hurt.

He heaved, pushing himself up and over a piece of raised road, making Lance grateful for all those years of gym class. He rolled over his back before sitting up on his knees, assessing the situation.

A group of students from his university were huddled together, surrounded by strings of green-colored energy that emitted from three black poles embedded in the pavement.

His heart dropped into his throat. They were trapped, and the design and coloring of the contraption told him exactly who was behind it.

A black spire impaled the ground next to him - it may have well struck through his heart with the way it skipped a beat. He screeched as it missed his arm by a hair’s breadth, forcing him to blunder backward. Elbows scraped against the concrete and he hissed in pain, though it was a small price to pay to avoid a head injury.

Dread grew by the tick, perspiration trickling down his temple as he craned his neck upwards. Towering above him, the cause of the destruction sat atop her prized machine in a half-circle cockpit surrounded on all sides by control panels, the tall legs lifting her a full story above ground level.

“Well, what do we have here?” the Green Starling, or Pidge as he’d grown to know her, mused. Lance scooted backward but another leg of her octopod caught a piece of his nice slacks with precision and purpose, pinning him to the spot. “Not really who I was expecting to be running into danger.”

This was not the most ideal way to face one of the city’s most dangerous villains, Lance fretted. He wasn’t in costume, but he had to do whatever he could.

Frostbite formed on his fingertips despite his racing heart. His chilly core begged for release to encase his body and unleash his full power. He had some access to his powers while not in disguise, but not enough to defeat the imposing sight before him. Worse, she’d learn his identity and Lance knew she’d take full advantage of it. Her hacking prowess had landed him in hot water before, mostly in the form of turning machinery against him; she’d find his name and address before he could get home.

He curled in his cold fingers, hiding them on an otherwise warm and sunny day. “Let them go,” he pleaded, “they’re innocent!” He still had his words. She’d listened to him before - well, Icebound anyway - and left civilians alone. Lance was convinced she had a good heart. She just needed a reminder of it from time to time.

Pidge rested her elbows on the machine’s console, chin sagging into her palm. The slightest of amused smiles teased on her lips and Lance swore there was a sparkle in her eye. “You’re playing hero - that’s cute.”

“Someone has to,” he retorted, perhaps a bit too quickly, though his heart pounded and he swallowed hard. “What are you even after?”

Pidge rolled her eyes, squashing his hope she’d listen to him. “I needed Icebound’s surrender yesterday,” she said. “I figured surely he’d come out with a mess like this. So unless you know where he is, I don’t have any use for you.”

Lance gulped. Oh if she only knew.

Though, a sense of pride swelled in his heart that she’d focus on his meddling verses the other two heroes in the city. Not that they were a common sight and Lance begrudged the idea that, despite how irritating Flame-o Brain-o always managed to be, he wouldn’t mind a little help with hero work now and then to catch up with his civilian life.

The attention to him specifically boosted his confidence and a smug grin tugged up the side of his face. Maybe he could use this to his advantage.

“It’s your lucky day then!” Lance said cockily, despite being pinned down by a giant robot. “Why hold a bunch of people hostage, when you can just take Icebound’s best friend?”

Pidge raised a critical eyebrow. “You?” she questioned, pointing a lazy finger in his direction.

“Yes, me,” Lance responded, momentarily annoyed. Why wouldn’t he be a hero’s best friend if he wasn’t already the hero? He was an awesome friend!

But a shallow argument wasn’t going to free the civilians. Lance closed his eyes and took a calming breath. He needed to swallow his pride and make her take this deal. “Take me hostage and let the others go,” he pleaded as sincerely as he could muster. “It’ll be just as effective, and you’ll only have one body to worry about.” He had no idea how he was going to free himself later, but as long as the students were safe, it was a risk worth taking.

After a long moment of considering, Pidge pulled down definitively on a lever. Two thick cables snaked down from either side of the machine. Lance fought his instinct to retaliate as they wrapped under his arms and around his chest, pulling him into the air helplessly. He gripped the coils for some sense of security as he was hoisted to the villain’s eye level.

Without prompting, she released the students. They scattered and scrambled in all directions. Lance breathed a sigh of relief.

“For your own sake, I hope you’re telling the truth,” Pidge said ominously as she turned her vehicle and moved towards the suburbs. “Because if Icebound doesn’t show up for you, I have plenty of use for you in my lab.”

“You actually have a secret lab?” Lance perked up, his voice rising steadily in alarm. The methodical movement of the machine was making his stomach twist about. each step it took jiggled him about in the smooth coils and it felt like he could slip out if he doesn’t hang on with all he had, legs dangling uselessly a story above the ground.

He forced a laugh that didn’t feel entirely humorous, keeping a weather eye on how far away he was from the ground. “I never pegged you for being the ultimate villain stereotype.”

Pidge raised an eyebrow at him.“We only just met and I’ve done nothing but hit the super villain checklist.”

Oh right. He couldn’t mention any of their past meetings in costume. He laughed nervously. “Icebound tells me about you all the time. He says you’re the smartest and most creative bad guy he knows.” Add a wink to the compliment, wiggle the raised eyebrow - be irresistible.

“Flattery won’t save you from my death ray if you’re lying.” Her threat was so monotone that it sent a chill up his spine faster than ever. So much for flirting his way out of this.

Their ride took an extra heavy stomp and he slipped down, scrambling to catch hold of any part of the coils that might offer more grip. His belly button was left exposed, shirt riding up his stomach.

Maybe, if he’s lucky, one of the other two heroes would find him before he’s forced to reveal his identity to Pidge.

Urgh. Getting saved by Flame-dude would suck.

#plance mini bang #plance #pidgance #flirtyrobot #voltron legendary defender #my writing #rueitae #vld fanfic #ahhh this was so much fun!#i can't wait to unveil the rest of the chapters!#i hope you all like the introduction!

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newstwitter-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/02/bbc-earliest-evidence-of-life-on-earth-found-12/

BBC: Earliest evidence of life on Earth 'found'

Image copyright M Dodd

Image caption Ancient life: These clumps of iron and filaments show similarities to modern microbes

Scientists have discovered what they say could be fossils of some of the earliest living organisms on Earth.

They are represented by tiny filaments, knobs and tubes in Canadian rocks dated to be up to 4.28 billion years old.

That is a time not long after the planet’s formation and hundreds of millions of years before what is currently accepted as evidence for the most ancient life yet found on Earth.

The researchers report their investigation in the journal Nature.

As with all such claims about ancient life, the study is contentious. But the team believes it can answer any doubts.

The scientists’ putative microbes from Quebec are one-tenth the width of a human hair and contain significant quantities of haematite – a form of iron oxide or “rust”.

Matthew Dodd, who analysed the structures at University College London, UK, claimed the discovery would shed new light on the origins of life.

“This discovery answers the biggest questions mankind has asked itself – which are: where do we come from and why we are here?

Image copyright Dominic Papineau

Image caption This bright red “concretion” of iron-and silica-rich rock contains the features interpreted as microfossils

“It is very humbling to have the oldest known lifeforms in your hands and being able to look at them and analyse them,” he told BBC News.

The fossil structures were encased in quartz layers in the so-called Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt (NSB).

The NSB is a chunk of ancient ocean floor. It contains some of the oldest volcanic and sedimentary rocks known to science.

The team looked at sections of rock that were likely laid down in a system of hydrothermal vents – fissures on the seabed from which heated, mineral-rich waters spew up from below.

Today, such vents are known to be important habitats for microbes. And Dr Dominic Papineau, also from UCL, who discovered the fossils in Quebec, thinks this kind of setting was very probably also the cradle for lifeforms between 3.77 and 4.28 billion years ago (the upper and lower age estimates for the NSB rocks).

He described how he felt when he realised the significance of the material on which he was working: “I thought to myself ‘we’ve got it, we’ve got the oldest fossils on the planet’.

“It relates to our origins. For intelligent life to evolve to a level of consciousness, to a point where it traces back its history to understand its own origin – that’s inspirational.”

Image copyright Credit: Matthew Dodd

Image caption Iron-rich tubes from the Quebec rocks provide additional evidence for life

Any claim for the earliest life on Earth attracts scepticism. That is understandable. It is often hard to prove that certain structures could not also have been produced by non-biological processes.

In addition, analysis is complicated because the rocks in question have often undergone alteration.

The NSB, for example, has been squeezed and heated through geological time

At present, perhaps the oldest acknowledged evidence of life on the planet is found in 3.48-billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia.

Image copyright Dominic Papineau

Image caption The fossils were discovered by Dominic Papineau in an area of Quebec that was deep under the sea billions of years ago

This material is said to show remnants of stromatolites – mounds of sediment formed of mineral grains glued together by ancient bacteria.

An even older claim for stromatolite traces was made in August last year. The team behind that finding said their fossil evidence was 3.70 billion years old.

Nonetheless, the UCL researchers and their colleagues say they have worked extremely hard to demonstrate the greater antiquity for their structures.

Dr Papineau does concede though that the idea of metabolising micro-organisms using oxygen so soon after the Earth’s formation will surprise many geologists.

Image copyright WALTER MYERS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Image caption Artwork: Life appears to have started hundreds of millions of years after the formation of Earth

“They would not consider that there were organisms breathing oxygen at this time. It brings back the production of oxygen on the Earth’s surface, albeit by tiny amounts, to the beginning of the sedimentary record,” he said.

Prof Nicola McLoughlin from Rhodes University, South Africa, was not connected with the research.

She commended the scholarship but felt the data presented by the UCL-led team fell short.

“The morphology of these argued iron-oxidising filaments from Northern Canada is not convincing,” she told BBC News.

“In recent deposits we see spectacular twisted stalks, often arranged in layers, but in the highly metamorphosed rocks of the Nuvvuagittuq belt the filaments are much simpler in shape.

“The associated textural and geochemical evidence of graphite in carbonate rosettes and magnetite-haematite granules is careful work, but provides only suggestive evidence for microbial activity; it does not strengthen the case for the biogenicity of the filaments.”

She also said the maximum age of the rocks had proven to be very controversial, and that the true age was more likely to be closer to the 3.77-billion-year age.

Part of the interest in ancient life is in the implication it has for organisms elsewhere in the Solar System.

Image copyright GEORGETTE DOUWMA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Image caption Hydrothermal activity on the sea floor may have supported some of the earliest life forms

“These (NTB) organisms come from a time when we believe Mars had liquid water on its surface and a similar atmosphere to Earth at that time,” said Mr Dodd.

“So, if we have lifeforms originating and evolving on Earth at this time then we may very well have had life beginning on Mars.”

If that is the case then, according to Dr Papineau, recent Nasa rover missions to the Martian surface may have been looking for signs of life in the wrong places.

He said that the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER), Spirit and Opportunity, and the more recent Curiosity robot mission had overlooked areas that might have had rocks produced by hydrothermal vents.

“On the surface of Mars there have been missed opportunities. The MER Opportunity in 2003 found promising formations but there was no analysis. And the Spirit rover went straight past another near the Comanche outcrop in Gusev crater.”

The suggestion that life had already arisen “just” a few hundred million years after the Earth had formed is intriguing in light of debates about whether life on Earth was a rare accident or whether biology is a common outcome given the right conditions.

Follow Pallab on Twitter.

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1402385yr3personalproject · 8 years ago

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Work over summer continued

For my animation I needed to also create a human character and weapon for them to use. I would have also liked to focus on creating an enemy which I would prefer to be something like a robotic human defence force for the under ground vaults with larger sentient spider like robots which would crawl through the darkness of the roofs of the hallways they would be a harder difficulty to defeat. Unfortunately I don’t think I have time to create all these assets, also I can achieve the final animation that I’m aiming for without any enemy models that the character is shooting at. I’d rather not have an obvious enemy character in the animation because in the intensity of a gun fight the survival of the character should come first to capture how hectic and fast paced real gunfights are between waiting or moving to a better position.

When it came to creating the character I simply needed a human model to rig and I remembered our media technician, Leigh Evans mentioning the program MakeHuman for creating high detailed anatomically correct humans. I already had the program from use in year 2 and decided to start playing around in it to see if I could export a viable human figure I could rig. Luckily it came with the textures for the body that come as included open source files.

Funnily enough there was also a textured suit that came with the program that I couldn’t resist using, it’s similar to what the character wear in Heat and Payday 2 instead of full out armour.

Adding to this the character is female for no particular reason. The only thing that suggests this are these screenshots where you can see their face which is never going to be seen in the animation. Most people who have seen the final animation assume they are male.

The image below is from different renders made in unreal engine 4 of a human head in different environments. I have started to see a common theme throughout alot of 3D art and games that involve human like characters. That is the use of Subsurface scattering, an advanced texturing and shading process used in modern rendering engines that can simulate photon scatter beneath a layer such as skin. I knew this was a feature in marmoset toolbag 2 and with already having the skin texture of the character all I have to do is edit the textures to create a similar effect which is not fully applied in the image above.

The image below is the skin texture that I got from MakeHuman for the character. This will be placed in the materials diffuse/albedo slot to create the colour of the skin.

The same texture but I have edited it in Photoshop to make it black and white and increased contrast. This will be the gloss texture which will define the reflections on the skin, it’s mostly grey because I don’t want a glossy skin that reflects too much of the surrounding making it look wet or like glass.

This is a normal map I generated from the same texture to add bump detail to the texture if needed. I think the resolution of the original texture would have to be much higher to make this very effective to use.

The texture below I name epidermis. I took it into photo shop and increased the red and blue hue of the original texture. This is the map that create the subsurface scattering effect, it will tell the software what colour to project beneath the skin. Alot like in real life when you shine a torch beneath your hand you can see how translucent your hand is and you see the light has changed colour to red. This is what this texture map is doing.

The image below from Marmoset toolbag 3 and it shows the hands of the character which is what is most likely going to be in the view of the camera for most of the animation. I wanted to show how effective these textures are once they are all applied. You can see the soft fuzziness of the skin and the slight pink translucency in the darkest parts of the shadows.

This is with subsurface scattering turned off. You can see how all the texture maps have gone in the right side of the image. You can see how much detail this effect adds, how it lights up the textures of the hand.

In this image I have added a small but bright light in the palm of the character hand. You can see how the light goes from a ultra bright pink/white to a soft orang/pink colour of the skin to the darker side untouched by the light. You can see the light completely penetrating through the pinky finger that is the epidermis texture map doing it’s work..

This is the light inside the mesh of the hand just for testing to see how the texture react under different lighting

The best part is when a bright light hits the surface you are looking at like here. You can see where I have moved the light up above the surface of the hand and they way the light is casting, pink blue, skin coloured light all through the hand.

The same goes for the last image here where the light is fully extended above the hand. I’m really pleased with how this turned out and think the model and textures for the character are ready. I’m really interested to see how the subsurface scattering will reflect of the shiny metallic surfaces of the gun when they are in contact.

Once I had completed modelling the scene I had to be sure that the UV unwrapping covered all visible surfaces that could be seen during the animation. I tested this with textures I found from google and stuck with them as they made the look how I wanted it to. I was just before texturing that I was considering adding a window to the hallway where you could see futuristic sky scrapers and so on through it. This would have fit with the original idea of the setting being in a bank how ever I saw the potential issues I would have had whilst making this mostly concerning how much time it would add having to UV Unwrap individual shapes to cut the window out of a wall on top of that I would either need to make or find a texture of buildings to be seen out of from the window. I changed the idea of it being in a bank to an underground vault facility where ultra valuable artefacts are defended I just thought this fit the feel of the final version of the scene where it was much darker.

The following images are the textures I used for the scene.

Cement bricks with slight stained shadows on some of the bricks, should work well to add some depth to the texture later when the material is set up in the scene. This is the texture used for the outer walls of the scene. This texture doesn’t have much saturated colour so it should work well for the gloss and specular texture effects that I can apply to the material to manage reflections of lights.

I used NVIDIA Tools plugin for Photoshop to render a normal map for the cement bricks to add some extra detail to the material like the cement filled gaps between the bricks.

Dark Marble tiles texture I used this because I really liked the subtle patterns and irregularity's in the gaps between all the tiles. A lot of tiling textures online or on websites tend to look far to regular/generic and when it comes to photo realistic renders of that texture the repeating patterns can become quite visible. I also thought the darkness of the marble fit very well with the scene.

I then took the texture into photoshop and edited it by significantly increasing the contrast. This makes the gaps in between the tiles much darker and the tiles much lighter. This texture map will handle the gloss and specular of the tiles. Where the image is white indicates where the surface will be most reflective and vice versa for the black and grey in the texture. I made the texture nearly pure white because I want the marble to have quite a wet effect to really capture the reflections in the scene. Even if the tiles where slightly greyer the surface would not be reflective enough to fully reflect other textured surfaces in the scene (For example being able to see the reflection of the cement bricks texture in the walls on the reflection of the marble floor). By having the gaps between the tiles completely black the specular and gloss textures combined can create the illusion of depth on material making them look recessed between each tile.

I also render a normal map for the tiles in the hopes that it would bring out some extra detail however this went unused as it create quite an ugly effect which completely disrupted all reflections the marble floor would otherwise reflect clearly.

I used this texture for the cement supports which encase the light bulbs. I wanted the supports to look they are made out of strong solid cement girders/slabs. The spots on each tile also look like the concrete slabs are being reinforced with ReBar pieces which I can exaggerate using a parallax texture and normal map.

A quick note about destructible environments. If I was to use something like unreal engine 4 to create this animation it is quite possible to create a destructible environment. If the character was to shoot something this could be used to break apart the walls and exposing covered enemies. With these textures looking like the environment is created from separated pieces such as tiles and bricks the destructive effects could be coupled with the texture to make it look like the tiles and bricks themselves are falling apart.

I rendered another normal map for this texture that would be used to add bumb detail to the cement supports once again I found this effect looked a bit ugly and replaced it with a very subtle parallax effect to bring out the dips between the cement bricks and the before mention rebar indents.

This is what the scene looks like in Marmoset Toolbag 2 with all textures applied and lights in place. I gave the rims around the gravel a metallic silver material which can create reflections of the stones when looked at from a close distance. I also applied a transparent glass material to the bulb covers to show off the bulbs which have a simple glowing material applied to them. As you can see the white gloss map on the marble texture is creating a near perfect reflection of the lights and concrete walls. This is what I was aiming for but unfortunately the marble textures need more additional settings applied to make it looked alot more detailed when the camera comes close to it.

This can be seen easier in the image below. I also thought the scene looked far too bright and bleached of any colour or visual fidelity this could be because of the textures mixed with global lighting as I mentioned in an earlier post which is automatically applied to a new scene when created in Marmoset Toolbag 2.

I then lowered the effect of any global lights to make the scene much darker which I preferred but still found it too be too bright. This was because the brightness of all the lights that I have placed in the bulbs where too bright. You can also see in the image above the limitations of local reflections. From this camera angle you can see a horizon line where local reflections (objects reflecting off one another) cuts off. This is simply a limitation of marmoset toolbags ability to render reflection past a certain point.

Once I had gone around the scene and manual set each light to a desired brightness the scene looked like the image below. Lowering the brightness of the global lights next to null and lowering the brightness of the lights really brought out the shadows being cast by the lights. I thought this made the scene look a lot more realistic by making the lights look like they are coming from their true source.

I thought that the scene needed more colour still so I tested with slightly blue lights. I didn’t think much of it at the time but later in the project this proved to be quite effective at adding a lot of colour to the reflections and occlusion in the scene.

This is what the scene looks like with the user interface of Marmoset Toolbag 2. On the left is all settings from global effects like fog to rendering settings and camera post processing effect. On the right is all the material settings and the place to set up all textures.

Marmoset Toolbag 2 is great for testing textures in a scene because you can do it very efficiently with real time rendering which includes all special 3D effects such as specular reflections (sky box reflection of background image), ambient occlusion (advanced shadow projections), local reflections (Objects in the scene create reflections of each other) and much more like real time shadows. It almost acts like a game engine but used to view 3D models. Also it is very easy to edit texture in Marmoset by using simple sliders for example the depth of parallax can be handled by the texture and by a slider to turn off the effect or make it more visible.This means you can edit the texture later in Photoshop after to achieve the desired amount of effect on something when taking the textures and models into something like a game engine or Maya for rendering.

Close up image of editing the marble texture to have more disturbances in the reflections by toning down the gloss effects and turning of mirror reflections.This really brought out the gaps between the tiles which will be useful for any scene where the camera comes close to the floor.

The image below was rendered much later in the project in Marmoset Toolbag 3 (I will do a post on my revelations with this updated new software, it saved my hide as a month early Christmas present courtesy from mum) but I thought I would put it here to show the progression from the original scene render in marmoset toolbag 2. This is very close to what the scene looks like in the final animation. As you can see I managed to bring out all of the colour in the scene. I added a gold material to the floor rims which added some orange tints to the scene which mixed well with the very subtle blue hints in the lighting. I also used the post processing effects on the camera settings to enable chromatic aberration which I change to a pink and baby blue hue which mixes well with a vignette filter to make the edges of the video slightly more saturated. When this all came together I really like how the scene looked and it was ready to be animated in.

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newstwitter-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/02/bbc-earliest-evidence-of-life-on-earth-found-11/