Can you guess what it is yet ? :)

[mrsparky]

No need to apologise, all knowledge is good knowledge.

And yes I knew the CA and baking soda. I sometimes use that on wooden stuff, but only if painting it afterwards. Like you say It's quicker than epoxy. Though if I'm not rushing my usual go to for filling is a sawdust/gorilla woodglue mix. All are applied after carefully masking off the areas to be filled with blue painters tape. It takes some time, but saves lots of sanding later on.

Not heard about the epoxy on silicone before, so thanks. Generally the only time I use silicone is with cornflour to make moulds. A process that absolutely stinks due to the acetic acid. Though recently someone treated me to some 2 part RTV silicone moulding rubber and this stuff is amazing. Especially when resin casting, the detail level is outstanding.

Indeed when working on the trashed train set I needed tunnel portals, but couldn't afford to pay £10 each for the 4 portals it needed. So I moulded and cast from a single plastic toy portal of unknown origin. Pulled the casts and noticed details I couldn't see on the original part, such a mould sink. So gotta be straight I was hooked Since then used to cast off old 1950/60's accessories, such as Triang and Merit, that are just not made anymore.

 

[mrsparky]

And tonight's update and this one is aimed at anyone new to 3d Just to show how things are done. For anyone with a little more experience, you may think ...hey that's wrong or badly explained. So please comment/expand as it'll help other artists.

If you think of a 3d model as you would of a real world plastic kit. Generally when you open the box it's plain, there's no paint or decals on it.
There is software out there where you can paint 3d models. But often 3d modellers will "map" (sometimes called UVmap) the mode. This is a process that 'flattens' the model and where you can assign parts of it to (what I call) a material zone.

For example, you might assign all the parts with concrete onto a material called concrete. This can take a while, but eventually you'll need up with a (or a series) of template(s). The template is coloured in then applied to the model. As you can see here compared to the other images, this is looking rather clean. That's because personally I like to work using layers/overlays of differing opacity levels to build up stuff like dirt and grunge.

 

[Kerya]

Stuff that costs a small fortune, so I made my own using ideas from Luke's APS on youtube. No airbrush either, so to spray mud on the tank involved a £1 can of compressed air, a drinking straw and 3 days of cleaning the kitchen.

Your better 1/2 has to love you very, very much.

I love watching your threads entertaining/educational - thank you!

 

[mrsparky]

Your better 1/2 has to love you very, very much.

I think she's just accepted that when a man-child has a "good idea", it's usually best (and cheaper) to let him work that obsession out of his system.
After all, it won't be long before he comes up with something equally stupid

Tonight's WIP - sorry incomplete as I got to enjoy the pleasures of UK train travel. Though fair play to the guard, instead of leaves on the line, we got Thomas forgot his face mask. Which was probably accurate than Southern's usual excuses!

 

[RAMWolff]

Looks like the back of the building where Rudy Giuliani gave his speech about "you know who" winning (NOT) the election! lol

 

[DanaTA]

Looks like the back of the building where Rudy Giuliani gave his speech about "you know who" winning (NOT) the election! lol

The one where he was melting? Only saw cuts of it on the news, don't make a habit of following them.

Actually, many such buildings that look like that in my old city.

Dana

 

[RAMWolff]

Yup and now he's infected! Poor man.... my heart doesn't break for him though, sadly!

 

[mrsparky]

I think it's sad when anyone gets infected..and yea even politicians...this bug is just evil.
That said, I also think artists challenging politicians with humour is fair game and dates back to time immortal. Gilray, Hogarth etc.
So onto tonight's WIPs....

1st one is a P4 render, 2nd is keyshot

 

[mrsparky]

Talking of such arty stuff.... I highly recommend the guidebook produced for this 2010 exhibition...Rude Britannia
Mixed in with the IWM - Weapons of Mass Communication show/book
and a regular weekly dose of Judge Dredd in 2000ad.

 

[DanaTA]

Looking really good!

Dana

 

[RAMWolff]

I forgot to ask. For Poser or for DS or for both?

I'm with Dana, looking very good!

 

[mrsparky]

Hopefully both, but my stuff always work in most major 3d software. Poser, DS, Vue, Carrara, Max, Lightwave, Keyshot etc.

BTW- sorry no update tonight, spent most of the day asleep with some kinda bug

 

[Stezza]

 

[mrsparky]

Sorry there's been no updates for a few days, been waylaid by a combo of some kinda winter bug.
Fortunately not Stezzas nifty looking meany

Which left me totally shattered, we're talking Olympic grade sleeping, and then xmas shopping.
Sometimes as the queues are so long for the shops, I even managed to do both at the same time before anyone noticed.

But back to whatever passes for normal in 2020 and another WIP.
Don't worry whatever I had hasn't sneaked down the internet and fried your brain as well as mine.

What you see here is a test to see if I like how I've mapped and laid out the material zones, or if theres any obvious errors.

For example, notice on the security sensor thingys, there's a separate zone.
That's because I noticed on some of these the panels are not always sensors, but are lights.
So if you use software that allows a material to be used as a light emitter, you can easily switch out the plastic texture/material to a light emitter.

On the red square I can see I didn't map a part correctly, that is actually a light-light, so I'll quickly remap that to the correct zone.
Then I can move onto colouring it all in.

 

[DanaTA]

A question. On the enlargement...how does that door open with that beam attached like it is. Is it a pair of sliding doors? If that center vertical thing is a support, what could actually be driven into the bay? Or am I misunderstanding what that is? It looks like the other door, which I presume is one that lifts up and rolls inward on tracks. And what's that red dot near the center of the enlargement image?

Dana

 

[robert952]

A question. On the enlargement...how does that door open with that beam attached like it is. Is it a pair of sliding doors? If that center vertical thing is a support, what could actually be driven into the bay? Or am I misunderstanding what that is?

Dana

Along similar lines of thought, does the purple support frame for the i-beam leave enough room for the overhead crane trolley to roll out? See here to illustrate my meaning: Link. (For more options and potential styling, I googled images for overhead crane i-beam.) I am with Dana on the way the door opens as a side opening vs roll up.

Here it seems a bit shallow but it's hard to tell from the distance and viewing angle. There are several ways to do it, depending on how you are running power to the hoist and trolley motors, whether the motors mount within the i-beam or hang under it and whether you will be using a hefty block and tackle arrangement.

The size of the trolley is very dependent on max load of the crane. You may want to consider some brackets similar to the leg braces to support the crane beam.

Great job. I love watching how this is all coming together.

 

[mrsparky]

Good Qs and the honest answer is I don't know how the crane(?) works. I'm basing this one on a mix of newspaper images and google streetview.
The former is OK for closer shots of the 1st door, which looks like a standard roller door, with a chemical warning sign (the red dot) next to it. Not so good is shots of the 2nd door and yes I wondered how to make that thing that's in the doors .

I didn't want to get into making complex cuts on the door, nor is there any form of interior on this one. So I used a bit of artistic licence and modelled a rough shape of where the bar exits the building.

As for the bar running through the frame, oddly it does look like it does on some photos. Probably the camera angle, but I left it there because the location looks strange in general. It's also possible that the door might need to be open for the crane carriage to run through.

The latter is easy, but it's not that accurate. For one thing streetview sometimes blends images from over time, making it hard to decide what something is. The other thing is distance and detail. If a building is away from where the google car was, or the cars view was blocked, it's hard to see what things are. Such as I didn't realise there's' a hole in the wall by the 2nd door until I saw it on a press photo.

Another thing about accuracy I found working this way is I'd model something, look at another streetview shot or photo, then realise my measurement was out. For instance the distance of a wall between 2 doors might need to be wider. It's almost like streetview creates "foreshortening". So again this one contains lots of licence and should be thought of as an impression, not as accurate.

Which is certainly true for the ground, the middle unit appears to be higher than the other two, perhaps on a slope.
That's a problem, as using poser etc is a bit like a train set, the ground needs to be level. By that I mean if modelled the slope and you loaded a figure into the scene, you'd be doing a lot of dialing on the up/down axis to avoid the figure going into the ground.

So I'm going to follow Hornby's approach and make a "Playmat", a flat ground with the fence on top of a mound or kerb.
Plus each of the buildings will avaliable to load as standalones as well as a complete set. That way there's more play value and it's less system resource heavy if you need that.

Note tonight's wip shows this isn;t finished, few more bugs to squash out, but it's getting close.

 

[mrsparky]

I've fixed the crane trolley bar- that now runs under the frame. Turns out the hole is actually a door, so grrrr.

As you'll see my modelling is a little off from the actual.
Which is down to what I said at about using google streetview/photos and foreshortening.

Now obviously I want a reasonable level of accuracy, but to what degree is what I'll discuss here. Photos are OK under fair use for the purpose of education/debate.

For the modelling ...the 2 red arrows show my model isn't wide enough there. Which, in theory, should be fixable by "stretching" the mesh and a quick remap. Plus some extra detail needs to be added in.

The red box is more tricky, as the 4 seasons zoom photo shows there's a door there. Cutting that out is likely to destroy the mapping. So door or no door, that's the Q. Part of me says no, because of the mapping issue, and I want this done soon. Mainly as I want to start on the traditional xmas freebie. But part of me says yes aim for accurate.

Next is colour, notice how the blue green is different in all 3 photos. The 4 seasons one is direct from them, it's a zoom background they put on twitter. Accurate, but a very dark colour and most press images are lighter. So here I'll go for the lighter and a hint at the top grunge.

White is also a problem, clearly on the real thing it's a very clean white. But that's a problem as you can see from the press images, the highlight is blown out. Something that rendering makes way worse than any photo. So here I'll use a model makers trick and create a "scale white". That's where you don't use a pure white, but one that's slightly grey. That way it won't blow and be so noticeable on the renders.

I've also redone the texture so the bricks don't seem so sharp, as that was bothering me.

 

[mrsparky]

Tonights wip and a bit of a backward step, as said last night the model was wrong and I had to decide what to do. So I've taken the drastic step of rebuilding the building. So the widths by the doors are now more accurate and the small door has been added.

That aspect was easy enough and the upside was a lot of the other parts (in white) could be recycled and won't need remapping. Big downside the wires now don't fit. Originally these came from a pack of meshes kindly made for me a while back by Kastaway. Some of these I will resuse, but some I'm going to make from scratch using Carrara's spline modeller.

A rather fiddly process and something I've never done before. So can't promise 100% real world accuracy, probably more of a reasonable representation. But on the upside it will lose the square clips on the 1st version, something I didn't like.

 

[mrsparky]

...and tonights...as you can see still "wiring" and this one was a real brain taxer!
But I think I've cracked a way to do it, which might help anyone facing the same challenge.

Take a segment of 'wire', in the shape you want. Be that a preexisting mesh, spline etc.
Stretch to length, rotate etc, then cut it in 1/2 down the length, deleting the unwanted bit.

This brings two bonuses:
1..it helps reduce the overall polycount of your model.

2..if you want to place the wire against (something like) a very thin wall you won't get it poking through the other side.
Which allows you to use really thick cables, for example if you wanted armoured power cables in a sci-fi set.

Place your segment in the desired location, repeat the above and line it up next to the 1st segment, leaving a small gap.
Now create a cylinder and slice that in 1/2. Kerching! There's a wire clip, just like in the real world.
Move that into place, aiming for around the point where the wire/cable etc starts to droop.

Obviously, in the large image, these clips are not yet in place.
Nor is it a perfect solution, it is time consuming, but so far it seems to work.