[X] My Assistant

[scooterlord]

Hello, have been working a lot lately, here is my latest progress. Rocker-bogie full modeled with finalized details - which means it only needs texturing; however I will proceed with texturing when I am done with all the modeling. With the current pace I am very hopeful I might be done sooner than I thought.

Sometimes I even amaze myself about how I reached this level of detail by looking at crappy reference photos. I try measure angles and find proportions in photoshop, and when I compare details later on with other reference they almost match - and I can't describe how great that feels.



Comments welcome as always.

edit: in the top render I forgot to put some nuts on the wheels which are added in the second render.

[eoincampbell]

A gasp again! You really a Lord?

[Poolio]

Am I seeing internal structure through the holes in the wheels? Wow. Your attention to detail is truly incredible. I always look forward to seeing your latest renderings.

[scooterlord]

Poolio -> You must have a lot of patience waiting for my renders to be posted!

Anyway, I am glad that people actually DO notice and recognise the amount of work, and although I have previously posted a render of the inside of wheels, here is a new one. Next step to finalize the camera mast - a loooot of small details to be added; doing those threads that hold the cables are a real pain!

[hendric]

Man, I just got a vision of that rocker-boogie as some kind of awesome Steampunk vehicle.

Scooterlord, your work is always awe-inspiring.

[AndyG]

Fabulous stuff, scooterlord.

But it does make me wonder ... in my working life I deal with Flash and a pile of vector goodness, Dreamweaver and pixel exactitude: all accuracy and exactness. With my hobby-hat on, I make models - boats usually - and one at the moment is a scaled up copy of scans of dubious plans of a 90 year old sailing vessel. Here, accuracy is "near enough" - aided by my wayward knife and wood butchery skills. The end result is "reasonably scale"; but that's ok from a distance. Do you find the clinical perfection of renders an intellectual problem or potential barrier with the photo-based source materials?

I'm curious! I have to firmly separate one versus the other.

Andy

[scooterlord]

Andy, its both. But since I am a perfectionist I spend long hours with the crappy photo references. I pick a standard object for which I have almost an orthogonal view, so that I can assume its dimensions are right and based on that I do the rest; I draw a linein photoshop, change its size and compare it to my fixed object. Logic also helps, perception as well. I also study the reflections, the shadows.. I should work in FBI sometime

Good feeling I get though when after designing partby part you reach to a point that you have to do something that exists in a blind spot but when comparing it to two fixed parts its size according to both ratio comparisons comes even.

So, There is a barrier that can be overcome though; determination, patience, imagination, logic, thoroughness, perception. Thats it. And loooooads of time of frustration and unavoidable remodeling.

[scooterlord]

Top cameras finalized. Here is a render for the followers' pleasure..

[scooterlord]

Hello, a new render of the finalized hga. I had posted a few renders very early in this thread, but I was not happy with it so I kinda remodeled the whole thing; a few surfaces didn't match, parts didn't fit, etc. Countless hours staring at the reference to make out the details, I hope I got them spot on; couldn't see the cables on the top part and the film holder on the far right, but from what I can make out, they seem to be fine. Enough with the talk, here we go...



Comments welcome as always.

I am pleased so far with the modeling process, so I'll take a break, I've been working straight 6-8 hours/day, stealing time from my other interests. Will come back as soon as I get results.

[eoincampbell]

Beautiful renderings, I hope you have a red carpet for the finished article

[nprev]

Scoot, all I can say is that every time you post one of these my jaw hits the floor. Just plain stunning.

[Leither]

Stunning, just absolutely stunning! The detail is incredible, right down to the cable ties - how long does it take to render one of those!! Clearly a labour of love. Looking forward to your next instalment.

[scooterlord]

Hey, glad you people enjoy seeing my work as much as I enjoy working on it! this render 1920x989 took about 35 mins to render on an i7 960 /w 6gb ram @1600mhz. Global illumination at medium sampling, antialiasing set at 3x3.

[ilbasso]

With the amount of detail you've achieved and the countless measurements you've taken, I don't doubt that you know every detail of the exterior of the MER better than any other individual.

[ElkGroveDan]

I was looking for a detailed, straight-on image of the Pancam and mast last week that was higher resolution than what I was finding on the Internet, and I almost came here to ask Scooterlord to render one for me from his model. Fortunately I eventually found an image acceptable for the project I was working on.