@hornoxx said:

WOW !!!!!!!
these are all great (great in double word meaning) models - I'm so impressed. Same great graphics you have! Also great are the graphics you have created !!!
In particular I love your "Thomas the Tank Engine (?)" graphic because of the idea, the pure violett Background and the total black of the shadows...

Yes, keep posting !

Best

Thanks!

The challenge is to create one per day so if you look closely a lot of the components are re-used and kit-bashed as well as I took the whole car from the 3D warehouse.

The Hovercraft for example takes the well deck, boat lift and helicopter deck from my LCS2 model:

The anti gravity bulbs are just re-worked CIWS turrents.

The main objective that you have picked up on, is to just come up with some cool pallete and shading styles without using a rendering engine as the source.

It's a lot of layers in Photoshop, the car is just over 100 layers.

Good luck! My VR experiments are still ongoing, on hold a little while I expand my coding skills!

Sketch a day (ish).

Work has been slow this month so I have been practicing hand painting models in Photoshop rather than rendering. Most of these are kitbashes of previous models I have made with a couple of bits from the 3D warehouse such as the ammo drum on the drone, the dodge charger car body and the shipping container. Have been having lots of fun, the car specifically but I kind of cheated as that took two days!

@bryan k said:

Your kit bashing is incredible!

Thanks, yes I look back at some of things I used to make from scratch compared to mostly just recycling my old stuff with other components as I do now (like your cool wheels!) and feel sad sometimes.

I guess I just don't have the time to make anything scifi related anymore if nobody is paying for it. Most things I make for work are quite boring and my time is taken up with learning VR when I get free time. I guess that's the curse of going freelance, all time now = money

@boofredlay said:

Wow, love the detail.

Thanks, most of it will be shaded out as I am going to use 90-100% shadow in Photoshop. You can see my (not mine) Epcot Sphere (aka Liquid Hydrogen storage tanks) in the clay renders!

Nice work, the green material is spot on!

A bit of a kit-bash and mash up of ideas, everything from homeworld, sunshine, avatar, Pegasus and what not. Have been playing with more illustrative styles rather than rendering. I didn't model many new components for this almost everything is re-used but cleaned up a bit. Some part's are from things as far back as 2007...!

It's going to be part of something larger once I have time.

The ship itself splits in two, the larger front section is for long haul travel and the rear part just behind those radiators (midway) is for short haul. For example it may travel to Jupiter and then split off to explore the moons before re-attaching to travel home. The other ship is a cargo transport, I am hoping to create some sort of station that they are both docking at/with?

I have tried to keep the technology within reason. The smaller ship is powered by a Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) Engine with twelve sets of radiators (only two are extended in this image). It's also powered by powerful chemical rockets for deceleration and manoeuvring, these are housed on the two booms sticking out near the crew section.

The larger section is powered by nuclear fusion, the propellant is liquid hydrogen, heated by the fusion reaction. This is stored in the four massive tanks behind the aeroshield. The aeroshield on the front is for aerobraking and duct particle protection. The shield is composed of steel, carbon fibre, and beryllium. Crew size of five and with a mission duration six years the ship holds 57 tonnes of food and 80 tonnes of oxygen.

he crew section is a centrifuge for artificial gravity. It provides 0.5 g's including a storm cellar to shelter from solar proton storms. In addition, there is an artificial magnetic field to protect against Jupiter's radiation belts.

I will post more soon if I also have tomorrow off work!

Edit: Spelling
Edit 2: added in a Sketchup line export. A lot is lost as I worked on this with the expectation it's 10*10k px.

@miikka1978 said:

Has anybody any experience in creating miniature or scale model out of Sketchup models? I would need to create different size scale models, lets say size: 30cm x 30cm x 30cm or 50cm x 50cm x 50cm that are industrial equipment or heavy machinery/vehicle models. I would say that the material should be plastic, aluminum, etc.

Do you know any companies who can make these from Sketchup models?

You mean you just want to make a model to 'scale' or you need to export the SU model to a file to be printed or milled?

@filibis said:

Hey Liam, how's the process going?
Nowadays i'm trying to figure out more or less the same workflow for architectural visualizations but no luck. How do you overcome UV/Light mapping issue inside UE4? That would be great if you could share your experiences in a tutorial like content.

The sketchup export was quite easy and solved at the start, I am only making geometry in SU and was unwrapping in Blender as it was easier. Most of the time until now has been learning UE4 from scratch whenever I have time. I am hoping to post some detailed guides in May and will be sure to let you know.

@box said:

It might be a while before we have finished photos. There is a bit of on site work needed to complete them and they have been enclosed to keep them from public view until the opening. Plus we have a bit of an issue with one of them that may necessitate it's return to the studio for some serious remedial treatment. On top of that, the things are almost impossible to photograph. Too many reflections.

Oh good news, I thought silence = smash smash

@box said:

Here we go, the second one reaching its final position. First one in the foreground.

don't leave us hanging (no pun intended!)

Nice, what is the purpose of the small room directly behind the bookshelf?

Tomorrow, maybe we can all just start again somewhere else haha: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-news-conference-on-discovery-beyond-our-solar-system

Dr. Brand: We're not meant to save the world. We're meant to leave it, and this is the mission you were trained for.

@rich o brien said:

Friend Chicken Shop Simulator or Fried Chicken Shop Simulator?

Ha, the working title is 'Chicken Box' but I think it will only be my friends who will ever see it and tell me it's a good idea!

I am pushing out a build now and hoping to post it here tomorrow. If anybody has Google Cardboard, Gear VR or Occulus/Vive they should be able to load up the scene and navigate around. By next Monday I hope to have at least a build where you can interact with objects (Vive only I am afraid).

The SU>UE workflow has actually been ok, learning UE has been harder than I thought. I canned everything and moved to a SU>Unity workflow but have now moved back to UE as I have a better e-learning source for it.

If I can get this build right tomorrow then I will publish a PDF here than talks about general asset generation in Sketchup and exporting to the game engine. Then the steps you need to make in the game engine to get the 3D assets to function etc.

Once that has worked (or not) then I will move on to the next steps. The physics has been the hardest. Mainly I was exporting whole scenes in SU and then trying to split them up in UE, rather now I am exporting a multitude of assets from SU and compiling in Engine. It's all been much more granular than I originally thought....

Fingers crossed.

I have made a build that works I am trying to export it so that anybody with (any) VR headset can move around the scene posted above. Once it's working I will also post my workflow so far. I have deleted, restarted so many times there has been no point in documentation so far (except for my failures!). Tomorrow is hopefully d-day +1

I made some good progress today from SU>Unreal. I took a bit of a break and spent some time looking into Unity rather than UE.

Here is a scene from a game I am working on at the moment, Friend Chicken shop simulator! I will try and do some screen captures this week to show it in-engine.

Everything is made in SU, some of the props are from the 3D warehouse, once I have the mechanics working I will make a much better shop.If possible I will have a player on wither counter for multiplayer.

@rich o brien said:

Messing with making planets while recovering from manflu...

[attachment=2:1pr0bdf2]<!-- ia2 -->planet-00-lo.jpg<!-- ia2 -->[/attachment:1pr0bdf2]

[attachment=1:1pr0bdf2]<!-- ia1 -->planet-02.png<!-- ia1 -->[/attachment:1pr0bdf2]

[attachment=0:1pr0bdf2]<!-- ia0 -->planet-06.png<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:1pr0bdf2]

Nice, what's the workflow?

@unknownuser said:

Thank you for links Liam. Do you know if everything modelled in SU?
Wow Cotty! You really are productive!! And you work as electical engineer?

I believe so, I would drop them an email if you need to make sure.

Check out these folks:

(www.artstation.com)

(www.artstation.com)

(www.artstation.com)

(www.artstation.com)

There is also a good thread of stuff in the gallery section. Somebody also just posted an awesome clock in the gallery that i thought was real until I read the comments although that was more to do with rendering skill.

Check out these folks:

(www.artstation.com)

(www.artstation.com)

(www.artstation.com)

(www.artstation.com)