[X] My Assistant

[mcaplinger]

Would love to hear some comments

I am in total awe of the amount of work this is and how well you have done it. I've never seen anyone try to render cable bundles in this much detail. Even those of us building the hardware rarely try to model them in any but the most schematic terms. For example, if you look at the external harnessing on MAHLI -- http://www.msss.com/msl/mahli/index.html -- we never tried to model any of that.

That said, and this is not a criticism at all, I note that you don't seem to have modeled the flex that connects the navcam/hazcam optical head to the main body of the electronics. http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_...ng_testing.html has some pictures of the Pancam that may be of use (the electronics are the same between Pancam, navcam, and hazcam.)

[scooterlord]

gee! that was quick!

thanks for your kind words first of all. Cable harnesses are b*tches to model and that is why the program I am working on doesn't utilize any physics - I don't know if any of 3ds, or maya do now, but anyway mine doesn't. Which means that you have to individually model each cable and they end up one going through the other, etc, their paths cross in other words. Let alone I don't have clear reference, or even reference photos of the same mer. Besides the 2 mers, the photos I collected have the harnesses tied up in different parts of the actual building process of the mer, so I have to decide which fits me best...

..as for the flexes, I leave them for the end. I know a lof of things are missing, but, I take it one step at a time. I am also lacking hga cabling, cables on the top side of the mer (I finished modeling the reflecting surface though) and lots and lots of other stuff. I thought I was almost done but since my eye is familiarized with the mer from all those hours of just gazing at them, I keep finding new details... oh, well... :/

[hendric]

Scooterlord,
Your work is awe-inspiring. I've downloaded Blender and messed around a bit for fun, but this is just amazing. Thanks for the time you are spending on this!

[scooterlord]

Hello there..

long time no see, I know, but the modeling process is not dead! It seems like I found my way out of the dead-end concerning the cables. I *roughly* sorted them out and thought I'd share a double-render, just for the people still interested in this. I still have the rear part of the mer cables to model, but I think I have reference I can walk-through easily (I HOPE) and after the rough modeling of the cables, I will detail model, detail the rest few details I am missing of the whole model and start texturing!

I am a bit concerned about the rendering process, since I only load part of the model every now and then, but my pc struggles already (Quad Core Q9550, 3Gb Ram).. oh, well, I'll deal with that when the time comes!



one more render...

[hendric]

Scooter,
Glad to see you're still working on it! I can't wait for the finished product.

[scooterlord]

Well, after all this time, I can't wait to see it finished myself! I've been having this at the back of my mind all this time, even when I wasn't working on it. Last part I'll be having trouble with is seeing where the cables meet at the end, and the detailing of the cables. Everything else is done! I haven't posted any renders of the top side of the mer, but is finished, all polygoned, I won't have it textured after all, to keep the details. It looks awesome, but it's just too big a file even to quick-render it...

...and last but not least, I am also glad that some of you are still interested in the project.

[djellison]

Interested? Astonished. That IDD is just superb.

[James Sorenson]

That thing is amazing! Great Work Scooterlord! Cant wait to see the finished product

[scooterlord]

Heh, looks nice, doesn't it? It just some random render using a random material. Trust me, when I'm done with it it will look a lot better. I did some test renders on the cables' material as well, and looks damn well...

I am between 3 renderers now... one is SUPER EXTRA WOW quality, but is really slow... I mean so slow you can't even test-render with it (maxwell) but has full material library, then there's brazil, which I know inside-out, but still takes a lot of time to render and create materials and then there's keyshot that's ULTRA FAST (the idd render was done using keyshot and took like just a minute (!!) to render) but I need to learn the material editor, which doesn't look very versatile...

I hope I find some time later tonight to sort-out the rest of the cables and hopefully model some..

[Ant103]

It's AMAZING, just AMAZING !!!

[ElkGroveDan]

Scooterlord you should probably check in on the MER Magnets discussion before you finish. Apparently there's no avoiding depicting your model as distinctly Spirit or Opportunity. Unless of course you decide to choose an intermediate configuration for the magnet that represents neither completed rover.

[scooterlord]

Hm, although I think I have done the model by using as much accuracy I could get by the photos, such small details might be overlooked. One has to see and compare pic with render to sort out details, and that would probably be people from this forum. Others will be excited by the level of detail no matter if it compares well to the true thing.. as I said, a lot STILL to be done, I'll be really happy once I am done with the cables. The cable configuration I am using will probably correspond to one of the two mers, so I'll use those pics for reference to finish the rest of the model..

[scooterlord]

So.. now I have these stuff to sort out.. anyone care to help? :PPpp Let a marathon of loooooong hours of study of sorting out begin...



I just noticed and wonder if anyone in here knows where the cables going at the bottom end. Do they go under the mer? :/ I have the next photo:



..and see BILLIONS of cables under there, but do they stay there? They seem to be connected to the outer shell, do they disconnect later and come with the mer? There seems to be some kind of net holding them..

...and this is what I have from the rear pancam:



..where do these cables go? :S

Last but not least, I just found some photos that show the rover in testing conditions:



..no cables here either. Well, this specific one might be naked because it's a test-mer or something. but it still makes me wonder. They have all of the mer's equipment connected, so why not have everything? :/


Hm.. just came across this:



...this picture shows the underbelly of the mars rover that is on mars. It shows NOTHING under it. No cables at all. So, where do the cables go? Do they disconnect after th landing? Any help is welcome!

[jamescanvin]

I'm pretty sure there are no cables that run along the underside of the WEB, we didn't hear anything about cable hazards during the extraction at Troy (where the underside MI pan you posted was taken).

I'm not sure which cables you are worried about in the first image. The ones in the bottom-centre that go up, across then back down again, are part of the lander rather than part of the rover. It's worth comparing that image with the 'empty nest' pan the same cables are sticking up on the left.


James

[scooterlord]

I am mostly worried about the cables on the back right side of the mer, the ones that are also shown in the third image (from the pancam view) and the 5-6 others that are tied perpendicular one to another...they seem to go downwards. Then what? Do they 'disconnect' in some way from the lander and be with no ends?

From the photos it looks like they are using that harness for remote controlling the mer :/ James, if you happen to know any more info, I would be glad to hear it. If I knew what was going on, I would have finished the project like a year ago..