Very cool, Alex!

I love the design forms for the ship! Great stuff!

If I had one crit; I would say that the top surfaces of your ship get lost and I have trouble seeing the silhouette. In the SU model you don't have the covering shapes on the main deck that you have in the painting. That shape blends in the upper deck and the rear wing structure. Get what I mean?

Not everything has to be obvious, but you created a cool silhouette for the ship, and you might want to show it off.

Sweet!

New image of the day. Thanks for the inspiration Eric!

Worked on the driver's cab this morning.

Eric, crazy stuff! Reminds me of Lebius Woods! The forklift idea is right on. In fact if you look closely you can see a square at the head of the container that a crane attaches to for loading and unloading.

Holy cow. I didn't know he had a name. I rarely see that guy now that I changed my default model. That's about right in scale!

Thanks for the comments!

Durant - Am I bringing it? That's the most awesome comment I've ever gotten.

Jenu - "put Bryce in it" - what does that mean? Do you mean put it in Bryce? That's a great idea!

SchreiberBike - Nope, this beast doesn't exist. I was inspired by the unique styling of the M561 "Gama Goat" - so much so, you could almost say I ripped it off. I am creating a world in which things are borrowed, reused and rebuilt so this is part of the thematic concept.

Which brings me to a question for y'all. I am feeling less inspired by the container part of the trailer. I've been tweaking it for a while now, and I can't get it right. I'm going to redesign it to fit more with the front cab on my next run. Barring that, anyone have any ideas? I'd love to hear them or even see them.

My Fuel & Fire daily morning routine is coming back. The bringing, will be brought.

AdamB! Whatever you're sell'n I'm buy'n!

• I'd love to see your plugin do a global lighting pass using location and time settings.
• I also render my images using the "hidden line" face style. Would your lighting work with that?

My latest vehicle is an exercise in excess. This includes 3 engines and 50 functioning wheels. Most of these wheels are over 6 feet tall. Did I say excess?

The forums clip the images, so if you want to see the whole thing check out my blog post http://www.giantmonster.tv/giant/?p=428.

Happy New Year!

This Christmas I took my new MacBook to my mother's house and we called my sister over Skype. She lives in Australia and has a Mac as well. What fun, she could watch us and we could see her as she showed as around her place. It was great fun. I'd love to do more this Skype or iChat and perhaps even SketchUp. Anyone have iChat here?

I use to use a tablet laptop before I got my MacBook Pro. I used it to draw, but ultimately I didn't use it for much, hence when I needed to upgrade my portable I got a Mac.

As for the usefulness of a tablet pc, that depends on what you'll use it for. If you draw, it would be great. There are some great art tools out there (Artrage is a great app). But if you plan on using it for 3D, I don't think it's very useful. I use the keyboard a lot and the tablet ergonomics didn't work well with pen to screen + keyboard strikes. Folding the pc to just have the screen showing + hooking up a keyboard did work but it's kind of awkward, though that's your best bet.

You should ask yourself if you really need to tablet functionality, i.e., would you go out and draw with it in the park? In my case I didn't need it as much as I wanted. This comes from a person that uses the Wacom Inuos 3 on my desktop for EVERYTHING. My mouse sees very little action. I even hook it up to my MacBook, because I have a hard time using SketchUp with a mouse now. For the money I'd say get a great laptop. Tablet PC's are still pretty pricey.

Now that I am jumping between the PC and Mac I find that some commands are missing from the Mac. For example I can't find edit/item/zoom/extents (I think that's what it is on the PC). This missing command alone is going to slow me down big time.

Or am I missing something?

(are there any other differences that I might want to know about?)

GreenToaster,
Your cars have a lot of character but obviously you're looking for a way to make them better. From what I can tell, you have the modeling skills. When I was trying to improve my modeling skills I'd just start out trying to build cars that I love. Since I'm into "hot rods" I usually start out with a car and modify it. My personal example would be this post http://www.giantmonster.tv/giant/?p=20.

That's how I approach the modeling side.

The other skill set to develop is bringing the images in your head to life (in drawings or in 3D). For some that's easy, because they can "recall" those images very clearly and project those images into their "canvas". So modeling or drawing becomes like tracing. I sometimes have that vision and I can work from that.

In addition when I start building or designing anything I do research on the cars that I want my project to be "inspired by". Now with the web this type of research is so easy. Just do a search online and find some inspiration.

This reference work helps solidify the idea in my head. I'll draw sketches and even build up something in SketchUp. All this effort is working towards this vision in my head, refining and building up the concept.

The suddenly. Viola! It's done.

Here's a book that a friend of mine (who graduated from Art Center in automotive design) gave me a while back.

Amazon.com

(www.amazon.com)

There's some great things in it. Not saying that you should get this specific book, but there are plenty of vehicle design books out there. Any one of them could help you.

Have fun!

MY FIRST ROBOT!

This is my first SketchUp model. It was this experience that sold me on SketchUp as a modeling tool. The model is such an embarrassing mess. I'd rebuild it if I didn't have better things to do

Coen, I wouldn't worry about waking the beast known as google. You're not stealing anyone. It's a free market, and if you make something good, people will come. I have been a member of this forum early on and will remain so. The good thing is, I will be visiting more often.

Yeah, I agree. Coen just gave me some tips. He was holding back!

Great to see you here John!

Boy do I love Sydney! My sister lives there and I dream of it often.

Solo, and Boo,

Gee I thought all that was obvious

For this character I rigged him in both Maya and in SketchUp. I made the Maya version because I thought I'd better align interacting characters (i.e., this quadruped fighting with a biped) that I already needed to pose in Maya (soft body geometry). In the end I found that the export process was way too taxing on my SketchUp and my aging machine. I found that I could do the posing in SU almost just as fast as Maya. But when you add the export process, and the hardening and softening the appropriate poly-lines I found that just doing it SU was the way to go.

This is the best link to read to understand how I set up a rig:
http://www.giantmonster.tv/giant/?p=110

This rig was much more complicated than any of the vehicles I worked on.

The blue and beige "intersections" indicate where it's safe to rotate (and will not break the model).

My posing process really breaks down to this:

• all my objects are organized with layers. i use this to hide and show the model, the rig and the scene that I'm creating.
• i create a scene that just as the rig, one for the model, and one for the actual scene. you can see that i create a scene in the video.
• i click through these scenes to edit the rig, and see how it looks in the view i'm trying to create.
• all the parts you see above are specially grouped in a hierarchy that relates to how they should rotate.
• all the parts above (the raw geometry) are on the "rigging layer" and can be hidden and shown when I switch the layer on or off.
• the hierarchy of those rigging groups above are on "layer0" and that's why they do not "grey out" when layers are hidden.
• those groups also use the naming convention, "CN_nameOfgroup"
• the CN allows me to use the filter in the outliner to show only the items i want to rotate, no matter what layer is being shown.

Does this help?

So far my favorite space has been Edson's; large open room with lots of table space, and a wall of books selves. I have so many books it's not even funny. That's what I'm looking for whey I buy a home this year. Space for my computer, film gear, books, animation disk, and my flat file.

danny - I have so much movie crap (and toys) it's a bit ridiculous. I currently don't have enough wall space to hang all my posters and artwork. A garage sale is probably in my future.

Here's my cramped corner. I got this sit-stand desk a few months ago so I thought I'd share.

My machine isn't anything terribly special, it just sits under the desk and beeps once in a while.

@unknownuser said:

But you got to admit the X800 is a very good match for the Iphone if not more than a match.

Very good match yes, probably not a match I personally care about given I hate windows mobile, and enjoy the iPhone os/itunes combination.

I often don't compare items on a feature to feature level, but make sure that I can live with those features that I need. You have way more requirements than I have, and that makes the x800 better for you.

Since I've had the experience of both types of phones (windows mobile and iphone) and have made those comparisons. There are new versions of wm that are better, so my information might be outdated. That's why you should try before you buy, I mean really try. I all of the features on iphone way more than I ever did on my HTC.

My own experience:

• I write more on my iphone than I did on my HTC. Never really used the word doc in WM because it was so crippled, that I just used notes instead. I tried to use the excel app, but syncing was wonky, so keeping the doc I wanted synced was a pain - plus the excel app was crippled and I couldn't use the same features from PC to phone.
• Looking and photos and videos is better on the iphone. The screen was not as "amazing" on the HTC. (not sure about the x800)
• I never web browsed on the HTC unless I really needed to, because the default browser sucked really bad. You can download an opera browser for WM though, and that is much more like the "real internet".
• Setting up wifi at different locations is a lot easier and smooth as silk than wm.
• The iphone OS is way more usable than WM (imo). The phone functions work well, easy to access. The user shortcuts to account handling is much better.
• Just making a call on the iphone is easier. Making a call with wm wasn't intuitive. My GF would hate using my old phone, she loves using the iphone.
• Accessing general iphone features during a call is really easy to do. It was bad in WM.
• The system management is way better on the iphone, i.e., I used to have to purge the wm memory because it would get slow and not work every so often. I don't have to do that with the iphone, or at least I don't notice. I rarely reboot with it. I had to that with my HTC every day, plus flush the memory. I mean when you have to have a system tool that allowed you to manage ram usage, and force the user to use it, that's a bit hokey, don't you think.
• WM required a sync app on my home machine and a mail push app at work. My current iPhone setup doesn't require those things (given the fact that I already use itunes extensively before getting the phone).
• Photo system was poor. The iphone is just beautiful.
• The iphone feels 10x sturdier than the HTC and is easier to carry/find cases for.
• Hated the start menu concept in wm as a navigation tool.

Things I wish I had for the iPhone:

• landscape typing on all apps.
• better, more consistent UI to organize each widget list (like moving items up and down a list) across all of the list base widgets.
• integration of tasks and notes with outlook.
• a non-IT related solution to MS Exchange (ATT has one with their other smart phones - so I imagine that will come shortly).
• Perhaps a separation of my personal calendar and my work calendar.
• My Goggle maps integration - I want to be able to use my saved maps in the Map Widget.
• I would love the ability to modify the home screen (when new widgets come) to add my daily calendar schedule - I loved that on my old phone. No need to press any buttons to see what meetings I have.
• custom ring tones, I gotta have them (now you have to buy them in itunes).
• instant messaging widget.

Conclusion - As you can see, I have a bad taste in my mouth with regards to Windows Mobile 5. I have drunk the iphone coolaid.

Not sure why I wrote all this.