thanks sam

...and tonights....

Might be hard to see, but that's the final modelling of the new much thinner wiring complete.

Remember these? They may look a little different from the ones in your country.

Hard to tell from pic, but could be the US equivalent of a Hayne's "manual". Which for those less blessed was "officially" a book that showed you how to dissemble/reassamble your vehicle. such as by year, model number etc. Reality? despite owning several an oil and blood stained copies you'd never manage to get all the bits back into the gearbox.

In the 21st century they do versions for anything from the USS Enterprise to Tardis's. Which probably explains why my Tardis never works :)

Thanks Randy. Sam, be interested to hear your technique for that.

...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.

Agh! I'd be sorely tempted to correct it.

Yea think I've got to, so that's what I've done. 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 spline modeller. A rather fiddly process as the screenshot below shows. 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.

Thanks - yea I like square as well, though sometimes...grrr..and tonight is one of those

As you'll see my modelling is a little off from the actual. Which is down to what I said at hivewire 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 theres 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.

Olympic grade sleeping? I can do that, no bother. :D

Yea normally no probs either, especially on buses..cue the old joke about the passengers getting upset, but seriously that one flattened me.

Oh, the joys of modelling stuff.

Oh yes...I just mapped this one, made a change and it decides it wants to map as 1:5 and not 1:1. Still looks alright, just prefer a square map. Then I messed up and selected the wrong bits, but as you can see it's nearly there now..couple of tweaks and job done.

To replace @4407600, I recommend a Trumpeter Paint Mixer, through that doesn't squeeze the teabag and I've never figured out why my tea tastes of Humbrol enamel.

And for @4407601, I trust an erstwhile gentleman would get his manservant to pull his boots on and not resort to such modern frippery:)

My dad had one of those, and AFAIK, my stepmom still has it.

Well I'm not ashamed to admit to grumpy old fart status :)

I bought a new one of those, also got the 1st one above. Plus I'd love to own a vintage (not modern) 2nd one. The 3rd, complete with original 1942 "Big Dick" logo, (the name of a dog, honest guv) is currently in a tub of oil as it was rusted solid.

Minyassa posted at 11:46PM Mon, 14 December 2020 - #4407385

Words cannot express how much I love this whole thread. This was a great idea. <3

Glad you're enjoying it!

Sorry there's been no updates for a few days, been waylaid by a combo of some kinda winter bug and being roped into xmas shopping. Which left me totally shattered, we're talking Olympic grade sleeping. Then 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.

And 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 there's 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.

and tonight's WIP is...

A poser 4 render...

...and something more 21st century...

Sorry Sam not clear there. I triangulate in Carrara. Lith is used for test for missing ones, but I don't triangulate in Lith because I find Poser doesn't like how Lith does it's triangulation.

Though yea I also find the whole triangulation thing a confusing PITA. If I want to unfold a model in Pepakura (turns meshes into paper models), triangulated models can sometimes confuse it. Yet Slice for Fusion360 (used to turn meshes into real world models), and my 3d printer software, doesn't seem to care if a mesh is triangulated or not.

Tonights 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 :)