well happy new year is all I can say to that.

..oh and tonight's WIP's...

Sometimes things don't work out and tonights WIP is one of those.

Inspired by looking at our garage hose reel, I thought give one of the hosereel insets some extra detail. Kinda like how plastic modellers include cockpit detail, while you can't see it, you know it's there.

Looks nice but it's 600k and 2 sides will be needed, so this one isn't suitable. But it won't get dumped, instead I keep a virtual spares box, which is this will go and later might be used as a car wheel, or spaceship gribble.

...tonights...

It's all looking damn good. I hope other folk are stopping by to see the work you're putting in here.

_It's all looking damn good. _

Thanks! Indeed 'getting it good' is why I've not updated anything for the last few nights - want to get the next hose reel just right. Which annoyingly isn't happening, but I'll figure it :)

I hope other folk are stopping by to see the work you're putting in here. At hivewire they are, but I don't know about here which is also kinda frustrating. But I guess that's my own fault if I'd done something "vital" to the future of poserdom, like a giant nipple morph the thread won't have got moved :)

mrsparky posted at 11:12AM Thu, 07 January 2021 - #4409580

But I guess that's my own fault if I'd done something "vital" to the future of poserdom, like a giant nipple morph the thread won't have got moved :)

Yeah, well I did try to argue yer case, mate.

sad to say that this forum is not videly visited. Same goes with the other 3d program forums. I'm surprised that the zbrush forum is a dead horse considering that many pposer creators use it.

Yea I know Sam and it's appreciated. Ghostman yep and that's why something like this happens it's so bl**dy frustrating.

Anyways tonight ... Bit of a departure here, stuck on the 2nd hose reel anyway. But one of the most striking images on TV news of what happened Thursday was the people wearing those emergency masks.

Now lets be honest here and ignore all that political fighty stuff and focus on the important thing here. How cool where those masks! Wouldn't you like one for your favourite characters ?

Just think of the scenes you could make, like Dawn in a shop making astronaut noises...so I started making one.

Cracked it! Well I think so... Solution (well for me or for anyone to wants to create something like a plastic carrier bag) was to create a rectangle with rounded corners and a rounded top.

Load into meshmixer and use the sculpt option until it resembles something like the real thing. You might need to make 2 separate parts and join together in your modeller.

Either way you'll get a very large mesh, around 12mb. So fire up meshlab, and play around with the decimation options until happy. Then it's some jiggling around in the modeller/mapper etc with smoothing/triangulation/remove co-planer etc.

Next was to add some thickness to just the lower section to give it an edge.
Followed by adding the clear vision screen & screen frame, so that part will be flat and level.

You could also model & map the vison screen and frame as separate materials. Say to give the screen a different colour from the main hood.

For the plastic effect, you could use an app native glass material, use that shader mentioned above, or (as the image) simply tinker with the transparency settings.

To to fit it just dial it into place, you might (ok will) get pokethrough. For body pokethrough, tinkering with the axis dials will reduce that. For hair, it depends on hair length.

Also don't forget to adjust the scale dial, depending on whatever figure you use. BTW - this one will be packaged up and put up for free over the weekend.

Pleased to say the mask is now available for free at my freebie site ...

PoserDirect

...plus I'll be uploading it to the freestuff here as well.

Looks good. :) Always good to re-use old watercanisters. hehe

Blimey! That's groovy. I notice you got V3 - with Grace Lion Hair, no less - to model it for you. I'd recognize those spaghetti arms anywhere. Always liked the hair, though, and I still use it to this day.

Looks good. :) Always good to re-use old watercanisters. hehe Oh yes :) Though credit where due, this idea was a print from Seemushk at Redbubble.

Sam, yea can't beat V3 for the 5 yard stare :) But seriously this is my go2 figure even now, especially with the Grace Lion Hair, one of the best hairs in my runtime and yea used all the time.

As for the mask, this was inspired after a really really long day helping someone move house. As the day went along, and the news was breaking about what had happened in the US, people down south in UK land started getting weirder and weirder. With quite a few saying have you seen and it was the end of the world. But of course no never explains what they've seen!

Wasn't until we got back here and turned on the TV news, there where those masks, which as well as looking like something out of a sci-fi movie, looked really cool. So I thought why not :)

and why is it when you get so close to the end of a project, the motivation wanes at the same real world work takes over...

That said here's, what (fingers x'd) should be the final bit of complex modelling, the 2nd hosereel. Now it's time to assemble this together with some ground.

and yea I know the hose is a tadge out on the vertical axis, noticed when rendering the WIP, though fixed that now.

Given recent events, I can see this set getting a lot of use in various ways.

Given recent events, I can see this set getting a lot of use in various ways. yea if I ever finish it :)

annoyingly I lost a major file - the 2nd rebuilt building. Fortunately I had an earlier version, though some wiring detail was lost. Not sure if I could it call a mistake or a lucky notice, but I also realised that the rebuilt building was a lot longer. Which would create problems when trying to get maximum size with the textures. So I broke the model up in extra material zones. Hence the colours on the image.

The image also shows where the small parts will be placed and what else needs to be done. The extinguisher just needs a new bracket around the outside, because that looks nice. though I'll leave the label as extinguishers do get replaced in the real world.

2 new parts, waterproof box and another hose reel, are also shown here.

I'll also be making a lectern, a mic stand and some logo boards. Though those will be simple to do, plus I'll be offering both pro and anti styles. So you can choose if you want to make your scenes about heroes or zeros. These won't be attached to the building, but separate load and dial in props, so that the model can be used in different ways.

After that it's the ground, which will be playmat style, something the buildings will sit on rather than being joined. That's because Carrra screws up the mapping/texturing when joining the parts together.

Me likey! That's a damn fine model, no mistake. May have been an annoyance to lose one version - it's happened to me several times - but it seems to have benefitted from a revisit.

Thanks and yea sometimes mistakes can be happy ones and one big benefit of 3d compared to wood is cost. Lost count of the amount of times that I've spent days woodworking and only created a very expensive pile of sawdust:)

As for tonights..

ok another update...this time lets talk one more detail and colours.

Just found a photo with these 2 weird looking tanks. Guessing these are gas..as is in natural gas, rather than what Americans call gasoline and Brit's call petrol. Then again they could be Solyent Green for all I know :)

Though as they look such strange shapes to me, the weirdness just seem to fit this whole situ, so just got to model them :) Which will be quick given the shapes.

Now for colour, as I#'ve mentioned before this is still an oddity. The press and 1 google-maps photos are clearly taken in very bright cloudless light. Yet the photo a zoom background posted by 4 seasons landscaping is totally different.

Plus you'll notice on some the white painted area is bleached out. So I've decided to run with I'd call a "comprise colour". Yes it's not 100% screen accurate, but it's close and shouldn't bleach too badly on renders.

Especially HDR which tends to look overbright, especially on flatscreen monitors. Like this one which isn't accurately colour calibrated. Kinda like how the USS enterprise's studio models never look like the ones on TV.

Finally, as last night bricks. One set under the windows will now be textured on rather than modelled. Plus looking at new photos, theres also some castellated style ones on the ends of the painted wall.
Which too will be textures.

tonights ...seems (and thanks to the nice suggestions at hivewire) that this one might be one made by a company called Granby. So inspired by those here's the start of that...

and tonights...

...and yes got a bit carried away with the detail here :)...

...note I've included the little black and yellow shape thing in what I think is a indication gauge, plus a suitably suitable warning label.

revised the detail on the gauge...

tonights...

took a breather from the tanks to play with the speakers...

..here's the 1st version of the back. Happy apart from the outside corners - they just need smoothing out. So why the speakers ? Because I think if you look at the press photos these shapes stand out.

Obviously (for copyright/design reasons)had to make some changes from the original.

Really nice details on these units. The exterior looks great all on its own.

Thanks, thought as you can see here..this part is proving to be a bit of a pig...

...and this is just the core stages of my attempts so far!

...and some press photos for reference...

Really nice progresse. :D

Thanks and yea it's getting there.

Think the problem with this bit was I'd fallen into a deadly self induced artistic trap. Fixating on a single detail and missing the blindingly obvious :) Compounded by refusing to not give in and take a breather.

Also didn't use life-long learnt tricks, like abstracting complex shapes. Fortunately life interverned and I had to stop yesterday. So I looked again today and can see it's nothing more a diamond with a hole in the middle!

Diamond is easy enough, a boolean cut gave me the measurements, so I can go back and re-hand model that area. Though I think I'll have to stick with a boolean cut for the hole and clean up. Not ideal as booleans are messy and hand modelling always gives better topology.

But I'm hopeful this way could work.

picture..

I use booleans in zbrush, but we got tools in ZB that clean it up really nice. Before i shunned booleans as much as possible since it was a PITA to clean up.

Good grief, man! This has gone from a superb model to flat out amazing.

I don't think there's any need to boolean that. I'd model it "squared up", set your edge flow how you want, then use a "shear" operation or a "proportional move" tool to get the angle. Something like this ...

I'm not sure what package you're working in, but I can't imagine there isn't a tool in all the major ones that will do similar at this point. So long as you set the alignment of the fall-off along the "corner" it'll work just fine. Alternatively, if you can't set the fall off on a 45 degree like that, rotate the object itself so it's aligned to one of the major axis, align your fall-off along that axis, then rotate the object back after the operation.

You've got some nice stuff in here! :)

Sorry there's been no updates, real life has been rather brown, dealing with a death and a near death.

ghostman - yea they are a PITA especially the clean up. Especially if I forget to use the merge command on the mesh before trying a Boolean. That's guaranteed to get the dog leaping my lap to offer some intensive therapy :)

Sam - thanks - though at this rate it'll be one for the history books by the time I've finished it :)

Warlock - thanks so much for that, not sure what you mean by edge flow, shear/proportional move tool.
Not sure if Carrara has the latter two or not. But your image has certainly saved the day here - literally in seconds!

Dunno what it was but for someone reason when I restarted this yesterday, I just couldn't grasp your idea. obviously, my brain being full of stuff, not your excellent suggestion. Just seemed to go around and around in ever frustrating circles, so I left it and started on another part.

Then I decided just one more try and bingo it worked, so thank so much!

As for the other part ...here's the start on the oil tank pump. Yea I learned this type was an old one, but it seems to suit the quirkiness of this model so why not :)

slight name change because of trademarks

Blimey! Sorry for your bereavement, mate. And all the other shite. Life chucks things around like a muck spreader, for sure.

Nice work on the pump, btw.

Thanks Sam and yea with 2020 and now 2021 it does feel like it. Though at least we've got 3d stuff to keep us moderately sane. Like tonight's this one was made by tracing over a photo found on google and the odd dash of the bevel command in C5.

Obviously can't show the photo here as it's a stock one (Alamy Image ID: EM2751) and I'm using my kidneys :) But I think it's pretty close considering it took about 4 hours from start to end modelling. Though not mapped or zoned yet.

tonights......gas pump has been mapped and zoned.

Good is...the idea of making the numbers (bottom right) a recessed section, like on the real thing, that's worked. As always using app specific materials. Mapping anything that needs text a lot larger.

Not good.... allowing the tech to "take over" some of the manual creative work and not the mark 1 human eyeball. In this case, what's usually great for retroing photos, some nice software found on giveaway of the day called Grungetastic. Plus while rendering noticed some scalped text.

But it's all fixable and you'll note the pipe needs to be made and added.

Love it. Some really nice modeling. :)

Thanks...and tonights ..well 5.06am if that counts :) .some improved maps...

...and tonights....the tank with the gas girl pump.

Yea I know the real one doesn't have this kinda pump, in reality there appears to be just an upright pipe. But it looks cool, so why not :)

Must admit the pipe on the pump looks a bit weedy, so I'm going to try and improve that.

Cracking work, me old mate. Turned into an epic and a half.

mrsparky posted at 11:37AM Tue, 23 February 2021 - #4406013

...and tonight's slightly less silly WIP... the powerlines.. and yep I know it's not accurate. Instead it's a hybrid based on various images of transformers, poles, wires etc, to give the flavour. It's also the largest in terms of mesh/file size - around 2mb - which I think isn't bad given the detail level.

Wow this looks great!

Thanks everyone and yea it's become a bit of an epic that I'd like to try and finish soon. Though in the last few weeks real life has been intervening way too much :( Only bit of modelling I've managed is what you see tonight, well this morning, it's for something else (more on that later). But I've been given the OK to include this into this model. Not sure if this kinda wheelie bin is used in the US or not, but I figure including it would be fun.

Nicely done. A trade waste bin, ISTR.

Thanks and here's the caster wheel, gotta be honest actually allowed myself to feel a tad proud of this bit. Mostly because it was such an a**e to make it so it feels visually right.

and as it's been a few days ...here's an incredibly boring update. Another hose holder for beside the 2nd building door. Plus the concrete plinth with what looks cut up railway track to stop vehicles from hitting the tanks. Obviously needs some proper textures.

The wheels for the bin aren't too different from the ones I made for my Marshall stack, other than the sticky out bit - which I presume could have a brake block if needed. The main difference is I made the wheels themselves as one piece and if I'd needed extra materials, I'd have added then on, rather than making separate bits.

The really interesting thing about modelling is, IMO, everyone has their own approach.

I guess the "railway track" parts are most likely RSJs.

The wheel part is one piece, and the axle pin is fixed to the bracket on my version: