Tralfaz

Wow! You've captured the lines of the 63 split window vette really well! The car just screams to be red or black though Looking forward to see more. Al

Thanks again. Eric created an EVA pod, which he is letting me use with the Discovery project. The pod is an exquisite model and extremely well modelled. Eric has left no detail unmodelled. Thank you Eric for allowing me to use this great model. I've put the pod into the pod bay to see what it would look like. Other than my lighting and textures not being up to par yet, I think things are coming along really well. 2001 was filmed in a very wide screen format. And than Kubrik also liked using wide angle lenses in the pod bay scenes. Never realized this until I tried to duplicate a camera angle from the film, and found there was no way I would be able to do it. And due to the distortion of the wide angle lenses, this is probably why I was having problems with the scale of the interior and having to rescale it a couple of times. Al

If you want to select your hood (and it is just one separate mesh), all you need to do is select 1 or a group of control points, then click the forward slash '/' key. It will select all control points associated with the entire mesh. Once you have the mesh selected, give that group a name and you can re-select it any time you need to. Actually, there are some pretty useful hot keys. Say you wanted all the model except your the hood. Either select the 'hood' group or follow the above instructions if you haven't created a group. Once the hood mesh has been selected, press the period '.' key. This will invert your selection. Your hood will be deselected and all other control points will be selected. The comma ',' key will select all control points along a splines path. The eight '8' key will switch you to wire frame mode. The nine '9' key will put you into shaded mode. The zero '0' key will put you into shaded and wire frame mode. The back slash '\' key will toggle you between a perspective and straight on view (not sure what the correct terminology is). Just found this one by accident a couple of days ago. The 's' key will toggle between scale and normal mode. The 'r' key will toggle between rotate and normal mode. Also, the numbers on the keypad will switch between different view modes. (e.g. '4' = left view, '8' = rear view, '5' = top view, etc.) These are just a few of the keys that I use fairly often. Al [edit] One more key that I am using a lot these days is the 'y' key. Select one control point, then press the 'y' key. A new control point is placed half way along the spline between the original control point and the next control point. This is really, really handy. [/edit]

Thanks everyone. Is that an offer Robert??? You would be free to play around with any textures, materials or lighting that you wanted to. Just say the word. Once finished, this model will be released into the Contrubutors Cue and it would be great if the textures and lighting were better than they currently are. Quick update. While trying to get those darned velcro walkway patterns laid out, I found out once again that my scale of the interior was off. Would really love to have some good blueprints of the pod bay. The one that I did find, wasn't even close. Anyway, got the velcro walkways done, reworked the wall layout, reworked the ceiling and started working on the HAL console. The layout is getting closer to how the original pod bay looked in the movie, but still have some more work to do. Al

Another great Thomas model Stian. Reminds me of when my son was young and we would watch the TV shows together and play with the little toy engines. And now he is in University. Where does the time go? Al

Come on you guys... I'm blushing. Trust me though, there are lots of flaws in there. Played around some more with the lighting, pod platforms and started working on the velcro walkways. Al

OH MY GOD!!!! I'm so jealous. I tried to model this a while ago and gave up after I couldn't get the cut out for the neon voice light look right. HOW THE HECK DID YOU DO THIS?!?!?!? I had asked Stian for his help and even with Stian's model example, I still couldn't get it smooth. Al, would you PLEASE post a wire frame so I could at least see the splinage? George Hi George, I can post a wire frame if you would like, but I have posted the model for download in the Contributors Cue/Models section. You can find it here. Al

Your project is looking pretty good Darkwing. I know what you mean Robert. It would have been so easy for Hal to off Dave once he got back onto the Discovery. Dave didn't have a helmet in the emergency airlock, so Hal could have opened the pod bay door, thereby trapping Dave inside the airlock. Or Hal could have driven the remaining eva pod at Dave and got him inside the pod bay area. That area is zero gravity, so it should have been fairly easy. Anyway, here is a quick update. Did some more work on the ceiling. You can also see the proper pod bay doors, and have roughed in the platforms for the pods. Oh, and there is only one light inside the pod bay right now. Will play around with lighting a bit later. Al

Thanks for all your suggestions, and will give them a try later on tonight. When I worked on MMC5 (a long time ago now), I think I had tried adding lights to a model in bones mode, then the model went entirely black. I added lights to the street lamps, and a light inside the house to light the windows for the night scene. It rendered okay, but was really difficult to see or work on anything in model (object) mode. I am trying to recall this from my old fading memory so this may or may not have actually happened this way. I can't remember if everything went black when I went into bones mode or if everything was black once the lights had been added. In the Pod Bay, it looks like there are some lights between the ceiling and the front hull, which provides some indirect lighting on the inside hull. There are also several, what looks like flourescent fixtures, in the ceiling. Then in the spare parts room, there are smaller light panels in the walls and that room appears to have a slight yellowish cast to it. Would you use a couple of lights to provide the light, and then set the ambience value on the light panels to make them look as if they are lit up? Al

Hi Gerry, When it comes to lighting and texturing, it is really hit and miss with me. I truly don't understand the different types of lights and what they do. And why with some lights it doesn't really matter where they are placed in a chor, but the direction they point does matter. A good case in point is my B9 Robot model. Played and played with it until I got something that seemed decent enough. Then Mark redid some of the textures and lighting and it was like night and day difference in the final render. There is just sooooooo much to learn. I realize now why you have lighting teams, texturing teams, modelling teams, effects teams and so on in a movie or project. There is a downloadable pdf from 3DTotal on lighting techniques. The PDFs are for other packages, but I am thinking the techniques could be translated to A:M as well. For around $15 USD, I think it may be worth the risk. Al

Started working on the Pod Bay interior for the Discover model. To make this model it's own complete set, I am going to include the Pod Bay doors and front wall sections (interior and exterior). The slider to control the doors will be part of this model now, and not the Discovery. So far, I have the rear and left walls modelled (with temporary textures on them). The floor and ceiling are blocked out as well. It's been tricky trying to get everything to scale without having any blue prints to work from, just screen grabs from the movie. The front section with the pod bay door openings, is just a temporary piece so I can get the other parts modelled and scaled in place. I actually do have the interior of the doors done, they just aren't showing yet. I am just using standard lighting to light this set so far. I am not sure how to light this model properly, so that it can also be used with the Discovery model. How would I get the lights to work on just the interior of the set? For instance, I don't want the lights in the pod bay to affect the exterior of the Discovery or the cockpit. Is it best to create the lights in an action, than apply the action to this particular model? Any help would be appreciated, as I really have no idea of what I am doing... Thanks... Al

The vette is looking pretty good. If you have the Dark Tree shaders and the AM Simbiont plug-in, you could use their paint shader. It does a really great job of doing a metallic paint. You can get the shaders here. And get AM Simbiont here. I used the paint shader on the Honda Rebel I modelled a while back. Al

I've just gotten back into photography this year. I've tried some astrophotography (moon, stars), nothing too fancy though. Still learning the ins and outs of the cameras and lenses. Played around with HDR photography as well, very cool stuff. The IS is very nice to have. Works fairly well, and helps keep things sharp. I also have a Canon S3 IS point and shoot camera, which is a very good camera as well. If you are interested, you can browse through my Photobucket Account. Have some photos and models up there. Al

Great start on a great camera Photoman. I've got the Rebel XTi with the 17-85 IS, 55-250mm IS (nifty 250) and 50mm 2.8 (nifty 50) lenses. What type of photography are you into? Al

Thank you Nancy and Robert. As for the engines, you are correct. They were to be atomic engines that would pulse at regular intervals, thereby propelling the Discovery through space. Finished the texturing the ship tonight. Applied different shades of greys to the many panels on the Discovery. I've got a couple of ideas that I want to do with the Discovery and will be working on them in the near future. Al

Thank you everyone. Nah, I want to go for the minimalistic approach.... Seriously though, modelling is now complete. (hopefully...) Good heavens, just checked how many patches are in the rear engine module. This does not include the 3 engines, just the module. Sitting at 33,177 patches. Al

Hi Ken, This is looking pretty good, but I do have to agree with the tops of the roof looking a bit too bright. Once you start doing a fly through, it may not even be all that noticeable. Maybe you could have a nice big full moon to account for the brighter roof tops... Hope you are able to post a video of the fly through (and in cross-eyed 3D!!!). Al

Yes, Sir Nigel is the latest Nexus model to be developed by the Tyrell Corporation. Thanks Ken. After taking a break to work on the B9, it's time to come back and finish up the Discovery. Started doing some more work on the engines. Still have the detail to complete on the top, bottom and back of the engine body portion. I hope to texture a lot of the panel detail and shading using decals. Al

Okay, let's split it! IMDB shows it as 1956. Al Edit: Oops! Beat me to it......

Forbidden planet was first with Robbie the Robot. It was made in 1955 and Lost In Space was done in the early 1960's. Al

And now a quick video of all the lights and whirly gigs buzzing away..... Lights need some fine tuning though... robot_auto_.mov Al

You can find robcat's concertina model in this post... robcat's concertina model Al

Thanks everyone. I saw that sight already Mark. Got some reference photos from there. Pretty amazing that they can find a market for these robots for that amount of money! I appreciate your trying to create an arm rig Paul. I was hoping to have the lights flash randomly through an expression Rob. I suppose it would be a lot easier to just create an action that flashes the lights, then have it repeat itself. From what I have read, there were definitely two different finishes on the robot (as there was a hero robot, and a stunt robot). One of them had a smoother silver finish and the other was a more textured silver finish. I was trying to go for the more textured finish, but am totally open to other options. A lot of the photos of the replicas have the smoother shinier finish, so I tried using a metallic paint shader from Darksim for the body color. Let me know if this is any better or not. Might need to be a bit brigher silver... Thanks... Al

I did a quick animation test of the robot. A huge thanks goes out to robcat for providing his concertina model which showed me how to rig the robot's arms. Couldn't have done it without him. In the video, you will see the robot's arms in action, the torso swivel, the head go up and down, the radar dishes (ears) rotate and the mount for the radar dishes swivel. Also, in the bubble, the blades near the top of the blade also rotate. The blades and radar dishes are controlled through expressions. Now, I just need to figure out how to animate the blinking lights through an expression. Al B9.mov

Yeah, it is a bit dark. But after 4 hour renders, I decided that last one was a keeper!! LOL! I did take the image into Photoshop when I got home today and tweaked it a bit. Also, I found a spot in "Invaders From The 5th Dimension" which shows Bob May's legs. It was clearer in the video then in a still, but you will get the idea. You can definitely see the 'shorts' and a power cable coming out from behind the robot. If you look really closely, you can see the back of one of Bob's legs. I also did a check into Scotty's missing finger, and sure enough there were some photos of him showing the missing digit. Weird that I never caught onto it during all the viewings of the old episodes... Al