While working on a vintage airplane I encountered a strange problem. I had imported two colors from a photo I found online, and after applying them to my model I discovered that anything painted with those colors would not create shadows.

The two vertical squares were painted with textures made from cutting small sections of each color from the photo and saved as separate jpg's (to keep the size of the textures down). I also imported the original photo while attempting to solve this problem. The two horizontal squares were painted using the imported colors. The cube was there just to show that shadows were turned on. Hope this makes sense.

As you can see, none of the squares are casting shadows.

I decided to change the colors just a small bit to see what would happen. The RGB Green value was originally 50

When I changed it to 49, the altered color did indeed now cast shadows

The other color also cast shadows when slightly changed. But when I changed the RGB values back to the orignal setting, they continued to cast shadows.

Not an earth-shattering problem (especially considering the stuff going on nowadays) and now that I know how to solve it no biggie, but it drove me nuts for awhile and I was just curious if someone might know the reason for this.

I will include the SKP in case that might help.

SU question.skp

Thanks in advance for any input.

It's always nice to see a vehicle here, very nice work indeed! Any chance to see some more views, maybe the hidden geometry? Again, very impressive .

Nice work! Any chance you could explain the method you developed to do this? I have wanted to make something similar several times for my models, had to do it the hard way, very time-consuming.

Some of the best work I have seen here on the forums. Simply beautiful. Wish I could use SubD

I'm going to assume you guys are speaking in some foreign, possibly alien, language

@jmjohio said:

When I share my SU models with you do you put your grubby little hands all over them?

If only I could!

Jim,

So good to see more of your flawless and beautiful work here.

As a kid I spent many hours building plastic models, and my favorite was always the '32 five window models. It gave me the option of building it as a hot rod, but I always preferred them with the fenders. Just something about it that looked so perfect.

I remember once, when I was just a little kid my older brother had done something wrong, and as punishment my Dad brought out all of my brother's models (he spent a lot of time on those models and he was so proud of them) and spread them out on the living room floor in front of me. I had always wanted to play with them, but didn't dare touch them. But now nobody stopped me and my brother had to watch as I put my grubby little hands all over them. I don't remember how much I actually damaged them, but I think I do remember the look on my brother's face. I feel bad every time I think of this, and I really wish my Dad hadn't put me in that awful situation. But enuf of memory lane, don't know why I even brought this up.

Every now and then I revisit the SU '32 I started years ago. Sometimes I work on it a bit, but usually I just sigh and move on to something else (you are reason for this, hope you are proud of yourself)

Keep 'em coming!

Steve

Another amazing model from a truly amazing master modeler!

Some day when I have a year or two to spare I'm gonna try to model something like this (I will fail miserably, of course, but hey, you gotta try, right?)

@bryan k said:

Once the render program makes sense, you realize it's the set up time and waiting for test results that is the hardest part.

Actually I probably have the perfect setup for rendering. I've built a backup computer that is a perfect copy of my main computer (just different RAM). So I could 'cook' the render on it while still using my main computer.

Of course, that will never happen. Oh well.

JIM!!!!!

So good to see you here! How are you doing? Have you fully recovered from that fall and head injury? And what have you been up to? I sure hope you have been creating more fantastic SU models. You have way too much talent to not be. If you have I would love to see them, and I know everybody here would also.

Yeah, I know what you mean about having to crawl around under the mower, and paying dearly for it afterwards. I probably have mine raised maybe ten inches or so, and have been under it countless times trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with it. And of course you never have the tool you need once you manage to get down there. Between that and having to use my push mower to do the lawn, I'm lucky to crawl back to the house at night. Say, you wouldn't consider loaning me that zero-turn for a while, would you? Just for a couple of years.

I actually figured out a way to slap together a quick and dirty version of my stand, just to get me thru this current problem. And then, after I figured out what I would need to do, I realized that there would be no way to get the damned mower up there. If it had power to the rear wheels there wouldn't be a problem to solve! Just another example of how my brain is constantly falling short of the mark. Very frustrating

So you think I should take my show on the road and jump the shark, huh. Wasn't Caesars Palace the one where the video showed his body being totally mangled in slow motion? That was gruesome. I may need to pass on that.

Well, again, it's so good to see you here again. Try not to be a stranger. I hope this current craziness is not affecting you too badly. Personally I have painted over my door with lamb's blood, just to cover all the bases. You never know.

Steve

No, I gave up on ever being able to render a long time ago. It's simply beyond me. Not enuf active brain cells.

Mike,

I admire your determination to master rendering. Wish I could do that.

Very nice model. I really like the wrinkles on the sofa, very realistic. Well done!!

Steve

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, been dealing with major problems with my riding mower. A few days ago I was mowing, and suddenly got a huge cramp in my thigh muscle. Well, you know that when that happens you have to straighten your leg, immediately. To do that I had to stand up on the mower, but when I did so it started to shut down because of the stupid "safety" switch under the seat, and rather than just let it shut down like I should have, I decided to sit back down (with my leg sticking straight out to the side), which did keep the mower running, but somehow resulted in the mower not moving at all, no matter what I did. Pushed it back to the barn and since I haven't gotten around to building the tractor stand I described in another post, I had to labouriously get it raised up on stacks of short 2 X 8's. Determined that the belts were all ok, and now I'm checking into the variable speed pully and the transaxle. Meanwhile, I've been mowing using my push mower, which is less than ideal given a number of physical factors in my tired old body. Mow for 10 minutes, rest for 20 minutes, repeat. Absolute exhaustion, and not a small amount of pain. Awww, poor baby. At least I've been sleeping well. Anyhow, that's the beginning of my 'How I spent my Summer Vacation' essay. I'm hoping I get an 'A' on it.

Hope to post some stuff soon, maybe this evening. Want to get into how the robot was created (the real robot, not my model). It's pretty interesting (to me at least).

Thanks for all the kind words. Hope you are all doing well and staying safe in these insane times.

Steve

Sorry, had to get some sleep. Like a lot of people nowdays, my sleep schedule is pretty much out the window, so I sleep when I can.

Anyhow, here are some shots showing the geometry.

some closer shots showing the head, since it shows up as pretty much a black blob in the full figure shots.

If anyone would like some closer shots of some of the model, just let me know.

Wow, this is so weird - hadn't thought about this model for a long time, then just a couple of days ago I came across it and have been working on it since then. Then I received an email saying that someone had replied to this topic, after more than four years. Really strange.

Anyhow, thanks for the nice words, much appreciated as always.

First off, in reply to pbacot's question from back in 2016
@pbacot said:

Did you model Maria too?

No, it was a model that I got from the warehouse. Had to heavily modify her, broke her neck, her arms at the shoulders, elbow and wrists, and her legs at the knees and ankles. (I know, it sounds like I need some serious therapy, and I probably do, for a number of reasons). All in all, it was probably more trouble than just making her from scratch.

I will post some shots of the geometry later this morning.

Been working on her face, still cannot get it right. Very frustrating. I actually did start work on a full-size bust of her to hopefully help me with this, but set it aside upstairs for a while and then discovered that it had fallen off the table and had separated from the armature in a number of pieces (a homebuilt armature, not as stable as it should have been). There's just no way to get something like that back on the armature, so I threw in the towel on that little project. Very disappointing.

I'm looking forward to posting some of the background on Metropolis, this movie has such an unbelievable history.

@mike amos said:

I'm going to be boring and go with the WOW, very nice to see your models here, bloody marvelous.

Hey Mike,

Many thanks for the nice words

Steve

@bryan k said:

Very cool and clever design!

Yeah, ain't I the clever one

@pilou said:

:fro:
You must put that in the free Twinmotion 2019 (if you have loaded it) !

Looks like it would be fun, but for me it would just be one more thing I wouldn't be able to figure out. I'm really trying to minimize my frustration level

@tuna1957 said:

Pretty darn cool..... could very well make some $$$ with this sort of thing if you were so inclined. Curious if you can find pre-made metal ramps that are long enough to allow the mower deck to clear on the way up. Most of the ones I've seen for sale would be to steep.

Thanks, but won't be making any $$$ with this, it's just something to make life a little easier for me.

As far as the ramps go, I too was concerned with the deck clearing the ramps. I considered all my options and decided that a foldable ramp at least 10 feet long would do the trick. All of the ramps I'm considering are the longest I could find, keeping in mind that for strength and dependability adding a brace at the fold point is a must. This is one of the top contenders -

I think the deck would clear ok with these

@pbacot said:

As always truly masterful modeling and fine pure sketchup rendering!

I appreciate the kind words (keep 'em coming)