Volkswagen

I once owned a VW beetle (old style) so I thought I'd model a type II (the van) which is still on my wishlist to own.

A couple of blueprints to get me started:


http://carblueprints.info/blueprints/volkswagen/volkswagen-type-2-micro-bus-23-window-1967.gif


http://www.the-blueprints.com/blueprints-depot/cars/vw/vw-microbus.GIF

Turns out it needs to be a car, so another wish-list item 1960s Mini Cooper S 1275:


http://www.the-blueprints.com/blueprints-depot/cars/mini/austin-mini-cooper-s-1275-1964.gif

Week 15 - 6th January to 12th January 2014

Having trouble with the shaders for my pod racer. When adding the specular to tone down the chrome and add some dirt, all of a sudden the chrome goes all messy:

It turns out that Mudbox was saving TIFs with alpha channel transparency, and that probably caused the file node to feed an alpha channel rather than the greyscale from, say, the Red channel (thanks, Martin!).

Week 14 - 30th December to 5th January 2014

I’ve decided to rush in where angels fear to tread and go chrome. The mia_material_x_passes materials we were shown last term inspired me – the glossy chrome preset and it’s genuine Star Wars - the look of the Naboo Royal starship:

http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130121220218/starwars/images/f/f2/NabooRoyalStarshipTatooine.png

Further madness: use Mudbox to paint dirt onto this model – a program I don’t really know. Actually this was not so bad, the software is straightforward and I quickly got some results. This is how it looked with the diffuse map in the perspective panel with default rendering selected.

Imagine my surprise when the following pale result ensued:

I realised this was probably due to all that shininess, so I produced a specular map in Mudbox. This did not improve things much. Need to revisit! :(

Week 13 - 23rd December to 29th December 2013

Christmas!

I think my toy is just about modelled:

Week 11 - 9th December to 15th December 2013

Toy

This is my chosen toy (should have done a Gameboy!) 

 When modelling these lights, I was working in 3 (smoothed),

when un-smoothed '1' the geometry overlaps:

 

Apparently this should not be a problem.

Week 10 - 2nd December to 8th December 2013

Tron Bike (revisited)

Time to build a proper stab at the engine (sat 7)

The problem is my in-Maya reference plane is correctly aligned for the bike altogether - not for the jaunty angle of the engine - so I rotated it:

4.5 degrees in the y axis did the trick. I started with a simple 12 section cylinder for the inner grey core

A bit of scaling, extrusion and here we go:

It was as I was trying to close up the right end of the tube that I realised it was no longer circular. Ah yes that trick of making your edge-loops turn a corner - done here to the left of the protruding sections, but not yet to the right.

Week 9 - 25th November to 1st December 2013

Table

I found a nice, close-grained wood texture: http://bgfons.com/download/33:

as a start for my table’s wood grain effect. At this stage all I’ve done is to Lighten the colour by adding a layer of pale orangey-yellow, with an opacity of 50% and blending mode of linear dodge, then taking a 2k square section of that as my diffuse.

Much of this week seems to have been spent struggling with trying to make cameras fit pictures for Digital Imaging! However I have managed to progress the pod racer a bit: