froobyone Posted November 23, 2012 Share Posted November 23, 2012 Hi folks. Long time no post. My railway, Hullbridge, has lain dormant and unused/unchanged for many months. The room it lives in inexplicably became a repository for all the the things that didn't have a place to live, somewhere else in the house. I probably don't have to add, that 98.5% of the stuff is mine. Very little of my betrothed's belongings have ended up in there, although, in her defence, she doesn't have a predilection for large remote control helicopters and for keeping boxes for things that realistically won't ever need a box again. Anyway, aimless ramble over, here's some of the modelling I have been doing recently. It's just for myself, not for ILM, so it counts as modelling for fun and maybe has a place here, maybe. Although I sure will be sending my portfolio off to ILM as they are making new Star Wars films and will no doubt need some AT-ATs. Lol. So here goes, my Imperial Walker, first featured in a little known cult film called The Empire Strikes Back. It is still a work in progress, still requiring some greebling and texturing. But the majority of it is there. First pics are clay renders the last two are beauty shots. Modelled in 3D Studio Max 2011. I hope you like them. Thanks for reading. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodyfox Posted November 24, 2012 Share Posted November 24, 2012 Fantastic stuff! I've made stuff with the kids to help with their play with toys etc... but this is in another league. Good luck with Disney/Lucasfilm. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
froobyone Posted November 24, 2012 Author Share Posted November 24, 2012 Thank you very much. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rob D2 Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 That's good . I am old enough to remember seeing star wars in 77... That jar jar binks was an arse though. Didn't like the new ones Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raffles Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 Very nice. Forgive the ignorance but ... "clay render?" Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
froobyone Posted November 25, 2012 Author Share Posted November 25, 2012 Hi and thanks. A clay render means a 3d model that hasn't had texture maps applied to it. It shows off the geometry without any "tricks" The tricks being things rounding corners and also bump or normal mapping, which adds details using an 2d image. They all amount to adding geometry which isn't actually there. A clay render shows what geometry is real. For instance the panel lines on the hull. You would normally do that with a bump map, so it would appear that it had panel lines, but in fact it was totally flat. Because I wanted this particular mesh to contain more detail than the actual studio model, I opted to make everything out of geometry. Once this model is textured, it will look old and battered, but the lumps and bumps of Imperial ownership, will only exist in a virtual way, the model itself will look like it does now underneath. I hope I've explained that in an easy to understand way. If not, here's an even quicker way to explain. It's a computer generated model that hasn't been painted yet. I found an example of what I mean on my PC. - Bonus One half is clay render, the other half is textured. HTH There are some other examples on my companies website listed in my sig in the image gallery. Thanks for reading. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jim s-w Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 That's good . I am old enough to remember seeing star wars in 77... That jar jar binks was an arse though. Didn't like the new ones I know what you mean. Not just binks though the original models in the first 3 films just looked so much more believable than the video game stuff in the newer ones. I know its not going to happen but i would love it for the next 3 if they abandonded the CGI stuff and went back to proper models. Nice wprk on the AT-AT froobyone, are you going to weather it? Cheers Jim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raffles Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 I understand now - thank you. [Columbo]Just one more thing...[/Columbo] How long did that take? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baby Deltic Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 Salacious Crumb was always my favorite. Its a shame he got blown up on Jabba The Hutt's sailing barge. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baby Deltic Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 Back to the model, its pretty amazing. Is it a static model or can it be made to walk? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
froobyone Posted November 25, 2012 Author Share Posted November 25, 2012 Hi and thanks. Jim I know what you mean about CGI, even though I work in this field I often see visual effect that would have been more impressive had it actually been built. When it really irks me is aerial sequences like dogfights. Movies like Pearl Harbour and I would imagine Red Tails (I haven't seen it yet), had spectacular air sequences, but because they were so obviously CGI, you got none of the thrill of watching real human beings wrestling real aircraft around the sky like they had to do for most of the shots in say Top Gun. I have to throw my hat into the ring and say on balance I do favour CGI as a movie making method, it allows things like Avatar to be made. I also prefer the photorealism of CGI over model making, but I can't help but love seeing miniatures shot the old way, there's something about the light. A good example of this would be the opening sequence of Star Wars, when the ISD looms in from the top of the screen. Doing that in CGI just doesn't look as good and I know, because I've done it. The lighting just never quite matches. and yes the texturing will be weathered. I have in mind a little idea about representing a captured AT-AT, working as mobile trading post on some far flung planet. Raffles, so far 14 days, and most of them have been day and night. I figure there's about 3 days worth of modelling to do, finish the underside and do a final greeble pass. (Greebling is adding the little fiddly bits that serve no purpose other than to have fiddly bits). Then I start UV unwrapping the whole thing, which is taking all of the surface polygons and laying them flat into single image 8k x 8k pixels. That will take another week to ten days. Once that's done then I can start to texture it in photoshop, using the UV unwrapped co-ordinates. Texturing is probably another week if I'm going to do it properly. Three separate texture files will be needed, one for colour, one for bump and one for specular. I'm not looking forward to it one tiny bit. Hope that answered your question. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
froobyone Posted November 25, 2012 Author Share Posted November 25, 2012 Sorry BD, didn't see your question until after I posted reply. At the moment, the parts are connected together in an animation hierarchy, if I move the hip, the whole leg moves, if I move the foot only the foot moves. In it's basic form it is like the studio model, posable and able to be animated in much the same way. The difference is in 3D animation the computer fills the frames in between moves automatically. However, I am planning on going a step further by making an animation rig, which I can only describe as being like a skeleton of joined objects called, weirdly, bones. Once you have the skeleton rigged and linked to it's child objects, you animate the rig and the model moves accordingly. I have been studying the movements of the Walkers on Hoth and it doesn't look like an easy job to animate. I may be biting off more than I can chew. If that's the case, then I will use editing techniques and just animate a few frames at a time. So yes, I hope to animate it. I could have saved a lot of time and reading then couldn't I, but just saying yes. o.O Edited for typos... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raffles Posted November 25, 2012 Share Posted November 25, 2012 It does Dan, thank you. Do keep us posted. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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