It’s a rainy saturday morning so I made this and decorated a cake I made yesterday.
Things to do:
But, it’s a start.
Cutting down speed paints to being properly speedy seems to be the way to go – used as they should be, not finished works but concept generation and quick ideation.
The 3D model version took about as long as it would have to flesh out the paintings to a respectable level (with my current skills).
Every villain’s lair needs to have an unassuming topside front to conceal the sprawling underground complexes. Mine, of course, happens to be the innocent Snapstag Cider Flyers Brewery, complete with plywood cows that would pop up and play a pre-recorded “Mooo!” any time an investigator ventured too close.
As we know, Portal 2 is awesome. It’s been a little over a year since it’s release and next week Valve is laying down the community driven map system with editor and I have to say, the UI looks slick. I was worried – there’s a lot of complexity in a test chamber and 3D editor interfaces are generally sort of terrible at intuition. My fears have been quelled, replaced by sheer excitement for the release. May 8th. Ask Siri to mark your calendars.
In other gaming news, a trailer that caught my attention:
A trailer of enigma no doubt. But gah! That’s in game footage. They wrote the graphics engine because they didn’t like any of the existing ones. It’s first person puzzle single player co-op (whatever that is). The teaser art (also in game footage) looks like this. You can find that trailer song here. They’re writing a blog and making notes about all of the development. This is the sentence structure of Brennan Letkeman swooning. Consider me a fan of this indie studio and all that they’ve done so far. Even if the game release itself is utter rubbish, that trailer is something to be proud of.
So good, you guys. So good.
Some things that I’ve been playing around with. May or may not ever finish them, but the ideas are there and people keep telling me to share the intermediate things.
I feel like the loft is off to a good start, but that back wall needs some love. Not sure yet. The external scene is, well, I’m terrible at them. I mean, that’s the point of practice, but still. I started a speed paint of almost that exact idea but realized half way through that doing the shading for each of those chimney stones is an ugly process.
The MK2 Stealth Chairs are the design we were originally going to make after we did the cardboard versions, but we got distracted and it never fully materialized. Someday, perhaps.
Funnily enough, not counting the render times themselves, making these takes about the same amount of time as my “speed” painting does. I’m both a pretty fast modeler and a pretty slow drawer, it seems. It is getting faster though. I was painting this morning and went to take a break only to realize it wasn’t as late as I thought it should have been. So that’s good. Improvement!
It’s like Yum Yum London discovered Glo Fi. Woah.
In related inquiries, is there a genre for that soundtrack? I have a bit of it, but it’s been called generically “chiptune” which is both somewhat fitting and somewhat entirely wrong. I wonder if there isn’t something more specific.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted my own work. Too long.
So, as we know Blender has had an ocean simulator for a little while now and I just got around to playing with it. I don’t really have much use for making oceans, but if I ever write a script for a Perfect Storm sequel, I’m totally set. Mostly, though, my version would just be like swimming pools and things becoming unrealistically angry and tidal wave over the sides onto those people who insist on sitting beside the pool but get all whiny when water touches them. You know the type. Like sunbathers, but sitting on lounge chairs beside indoor pools. Fluorescent tan.
Anyway, I’ve put the atrocious .blend file up for download but seriously, nothing’s even named or the renders made efficient or anything. You’ll have to throw in your own HDRi map for the world node texture there because for legal reasons I can’t redistribute the one I’m using. There’s no water textures or anything, it’s all procedurally generated (both by the ocean sim and by the proc. noise material).
Simply perfect.
I would watch a feature length film of this.
From the mind of Philippe Gamer, who has the perfect last name for a VFX and game development company guy.
It’s like a mix between Need for Speed and Trackmania which, now that I think about it, would be a pretty awesome game. They are so radically different, and so entirely solid on their own, but I think there would be a cool dynamic to try and stay on the crazy tracks while being bullied by the police.
Anyway. The video itself is well done and entertaining. There really isn’t much more to say. The developer really likes Japanese cars, I guess. Subtle advertisement, maybe? I’m not sure. The punchline is spot on.
Well done.
To download, right click and “save as…”
I couldn’t decide which style I liked better, so here’s both. I hope you don’t mind. Definitely click for full; 560px thumbnails don’t do justice.
Ah, but yes. It’s March 14th once again. 03/14: Pi Day. A holiday just as arbitrary as any other except you still have to go to work. In consolation, though, you should probably eat a pie. Pie is delicious! Also: wallpapers from your favorite design blog are always a plus, even if you only get to use them for one day.
Enjoy,
Wow.
People keep envisioning the one 3D printer per home thing and although I think it’ll eventually happen, I do believe we need to clear the first and biggest hurdle: cost to output ratio.
Right now the you can only print in ABS plastic which, while very good, doesn’t really allow for much in the way of truly useful things. Sure, figurines and little dodads are cool, but for this to effectively overrun the centralized manufacturing markets the technology is going to have to add integrated electronics printing and a multitude of materials. Look around your room, how many things are made of just one, pure material? Not many…
So because the output is limited, the cost seems relatively astronomical, even for a $1000 unit. Yes, this is much smaller / faster / cheaper than years ago, but for the everyman it’s still too expensive for what it can do for them.
Thus, you either have to increase output ability or decrease cost to match current output ability. Ideally, the two lines will intersect at some point and that will begin the mass market for these things.
The Makibox does the latter: for $300 it becomes so affordable that the material limits begin to seem alright and the entire venture looks more promising. And that’s pretty awesome.
You can read further here.