Egypt trip

I went to Egypt to get away from all the holiday chaos.

Took some photo’s again:

Manitoba Wip 17

Been a while. I work on this from time to time. I think the mood and colors are finally settling in. Still got greater plans for it than this, but first I really need to tackle the rocks and the rest of the plane debris. After that I can really start wrapping this up as a finished whole, which should be fun.

It’s interesting to note that the biggest difference here is made by being able to tweak the Dynamic tonemapper, the rigid system from the previous months was very hard to work with for me. Also the exponential heightfog is just great for getting moody colors in there.

GZ81 Update

Just to post something, sneak preview of my spaceship.

Ship is nearing completion, enviro still needs a lot of love. Got totally inspired by Halo Reach for it though.

Eat3D DVD

Finally! My Eat3D DVD has been released. A lot of hard work went into this, not just by myself but also Riki and his team at Eat3D. Thanks for this opportunity, Riki! Go check it out, perhaps buy it and support Riki’s great company, and give us some feedback!

I’m gonna put a detailed project page about this on my portfolio soon!

(also i’m still working on the spaceship from last post)

Naganata wip

Just to post something on this blog, a WIP of a spaceship. Concept by Dasnewten.

No normalmaps, because that’s no fun. And this project is all about being fun and easy to work on.

Also there will probably be a big announcment in the coming month, about what I spent a lot of time on the past months.

California roadtrip

I went on a two weeks trip to California. Took quite a few pictures and really tried to focus on framing interesting images. Made me realize I should get more into photography and maybe get a decent camera. These were shot with a Lumix FZ27.

I picked the most interesting ones for my blog:

Crazy GMC Bus

I found another cool vehicle! From a thread over at VWvortex which I actually found through my referers.

“Had a 302 GMC 6 cylinder
You drive from the top roof like the bridge on the Enterprise
The 2 front stacked front bumpers are gone. They were 57 Chrysler.
I think the roof was a 49 Hudson
The tail lights were a combination of Kaiser Grilles and 63 Ford tail lights.
Had another fastback roof for the back of the body.
Seen it on the side of the road my whole life then one day it was gone.”

“I took the photos about 20 years ago. The bus has been crushed in Newton NC. From what I remember it had 2 – 1957 Chrysler bumpers stacked on top of each other for the front bumper. FBook member Eddie Ward remembers seeing it being hauled behind a wrecker the day it was taken from the Hubbies Bubble Bar in Denver, NC.”

“The bus you are talking about was called custom family cruiser it was built by a man in his drive way from a bus and alot of old car parts, When it was finished it was even used in the charlotte thanksgiving day parade. I would go over to my uncles house every sunday morning with my dad and we would pass the mans house, he built it in his driveway. If you know anyone that worked at holmanand moody back when they first moved to the airport location they can tell you about it. The man lived just down the street. He drove it for many years , i went into the service and lost track of it. When it was painted the lower portion was dark blue the top was white. all the chrome was like new and it was really cool , brings back some old memories . I guess it was finished it the early 60’s.”

I wish stuff like this would appear on the net like, once a week! Or better, that things like this populated the roads!

Luckily this guy is keeping the dream alive, check out the evolution:

I found that picture about a year ago, totally loved it.

Check out that spanner! And his inverted trailer!

It actually crashed looking like this and was thought to be dead forever.

But recently came back sicker than ever. He’s actually got one of those Bosozoku intercooler hose setups!!

I do hope to one day, build a car with such style. My own 92 Celica’s pretty banged up already, but I don’t think I can make those dreams come true in this country…

Manitoba WIP 1

I’m doing an outdoor enviro. Based on one of those pictures i posted a while back.

Here’s what I have so far:

The environment is almost done. Some tweaks left, set up the materials for the far-away terrain and add the ocean in the distance, and optimize the trees (they’re not so good for performance atm).

After that I’ll model a wrecked Curtiss C46 Commando plane to lie on the rocks.

Jaguar Retro Ad

The students at the school where I work are tasked to create a retro advertisement with the 3D vehicle they are modeling. I took one of my older models, a 1951 Jaguar XK120, and made an example of what is expected. Mostly to show the post processing I did on this image.

It was rendered in Mental Ray, took about 18 minutes at 720p.

(I know it says XK150, but I just copied the text from another Jag ad)

here’s the original render, to compare:

Street Rod lighting

I really should post more. I just really tend to forget I have a blog where Ican dump some stuff that shouldn’t go on the frontpage.

Here’s something I made a month or two ago:

It’s a lighting study using just 3DS Max scanline and standard lights. Nothing advanced, just the pure basics, so I’d push myself to actually understand the lighting. It’s not perfect yet, and I was putting materials on this until I sort of abandoned it