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This
place needs a name...
Congratulations. You've just disproved my theory that
I am the only person who visits my website.
I've got a range of stuff for you to look at, including
3D models and photos relating to my interests. Use the
bar to the left to find a topic, or have a look through
the news.
01/03/04 A few new additions to the A-10. Soon to be re-textured also.
Link
25/02/04 New model - A-10 Thunderbolt. This is the first fully textured model i've made - and it looks good. I've even splashed out on its own page: Link
09/02/04 More MD-11 mk III shots. Haven't put together a page for them yet, I'm waiting to get a few more images together.
The model in Rhino. This is the sort of thing I work with when I'm actually building the model. The purple mess is the seats, represented as just cubes. These were the old wings.
The pilots, taking a seat in the economy class. I think the seats are to scale though I should edit the pilots to be smaller.
I doubt I'm going to be able to render this in Truespace untill I get more memory - which means nothing special in the image deparment, sorry. In this picture you see the wheel assembly as a mesh, which is required for Truespace. Each white dot is a mesh point, there are over 36000 in what you can see on the screen alone. The landing gear is the main barrier to rendering in truespace, in total they are around 120,000 polygons. By comparison, the rest of the aircraft (without seats or detailed engines) comes in at around 70,000 polygons. Above 50,000 and the computer struggles - it froze when i tried to anti-alias my render of the 70k poly model.
The only real solutions I can think of are buy more memory (256MB currently), and possibly upgrade to a newer version of truesapce - ofcourse, both cost money.
This should be on Airliners.net
Click here to see the older "mk I and mk II" models.
06/02/04 Check out the Aerospace Gallery for a concorde and an MD11 model. They have been up for a while but I haven't had the chance to update here for ages!
And, most excitingly, the MD-11 mk3. You can tell what it's supposed to be this time. New features include all new nose, wings, engines, landing gear, flaps, LE slats, seats, windows, doors, and 3 pilots! Just a preview for you for now:
20/10/03 The siege tank model has been revised - just sorted out a few detail, and I've taken a manual approach to meshes instead of getting Rhino to do it automatically. This has halved the poly count to about 45000, but truespace still strugles with it, and I haven't got round to texturing it. If your intrested, then this is the image I'm working off: Siege tank, except its in colour.
I have ideas for a few other Starcraft units to model. Could be interesting.
But! Look! A new model:
Its a "1st stage High pressure turbine nozzel/stator of a CF6 high bypass ratio turbofan"... made by General Electric. Its basically part of the turbine from one of these: link to General Electic's site. So far its just rendered in Rhino. And the mesh could be improved a bit - notice at the top of the blades (bits with the holes in them) the mesh doesnt line up - but its 123000 polygon points at the moment (and thats big). Its was quite interesting to do, I payed a lot of attention to getting the surfaces to blend well. The parts themselves are cast and welded together into pairs, so i wanted to get the 'welded' effect. It came out ok, but I know i could improve it. Plus rendered in truespace, it should be looking pretty good.
14/10/03 Quick update. The seige tank model from Starcraft is now done, having some trouble rendering it though in truespace because its quite a complex mesh - about 86300 polys - but I'll try and reduce that.
Also, I've managed to work out Truespace's depth of field feature. This adds blur to a render to create the effect of having a focus on something. For example, hold up you finger in the air, in front of your face. If you focus on the end of your finger then objects in the distance will appear blurred - which can be a nice effect to add into a render. As usuall, this new skill comes courtesy of the help index. I should look at it more.
14/10/03 Oh yeah! Turns out that most of the computers in the university library and reading rooms have a CDRW burner. Which is great news, cause now I can transfer all my recent stuff. Read below for further details of what I've been up to, or go
-here-
...to view some recent stuff.
At the moment I'm playing Starcraft a lot (tremendous game), so modeling is revolving around it, really. Working on a seige tank at the moment, should have a scene out of it soon. Perhaps i can apply some of the metaball (see above link) stuff I've been doing and create a few zerg. Cool.
08/10/03 Hello from a windy and rainy Glasgow. Not been too much going on at the moment, social life has kind of taken over. Oh, and PSP7 is trashed (best technical description)- but i have the CD now to re-install it so I should get back to doing some stuff soon.
I've been having a look at Truespace's website - just out of interest... GIMME TRUESPACE 6! Ah! Even truespace 4, but $199 is out of my price range (hell, thats half my money for a month). Volumetrics! OO! Radiosity! Oooo!...
Grr. I'll just have to make do for now.
30/09/03 Hello from Glasgow. After some panic over which hard disk I'd removed from my computer (long(ish) story), its now up and running in my flat. Which is nice, but it doesnt have internet access, which is hell. Today was the first day of term, and I'm taking the time left by a lack of tutorials through the first week to do a wee update here.
Models I've been working on through Fresher's week were:
* A screwdriver - it was on my desk, looks ok.
* A personal radio - it was on my desk too. Just done the front half so far.
* And, ever heard of the band 'The Darkness'? Well I modeled their space ship from the videos and album cover. Looks cool. Its intresting, if you havent seen it, there's a big round plate on the top, bit like a tortoise shell, with lots of antenae and detail underneath. I've got it pretty close. As an interesting point, it looks better rendered in Rhino than Truespace- rhino isn't as good (in my opinion atleast) for rendering, doesnt have the same shadowing, fog, blur, effects etc. But through a wierd effect (caused by the relevant scales of light sources and models, if you must know) 'blank' surfaces
appear with a kind of dirty, weathered texture. Its wierd to describe, but in some cases, like this model, its ups the realism factor quite a bit.
Unfortunatly, i dont know if i'll be able to get you any images of them. I'll investigate transfering work on floppy disk. My flat in the halls of residence is about 25 minutes walk from the uni, but there is a computing suite in the halls them selves, which could be handy (this being written from within the uni itself). Another thing about my lack of internet access (grrr) is I can't use front page anymore. Which is a pain, cause angelfire's editor sucks. Atleast i have all the HTML in place so I can work with that. If possible, I'll try to update this page in frontpage at home, and transfer by floppy disk... though I don't know the arrangements for that yet.
Thats all for now really.
20/09/03 Right. I'm off to university. Two
things: first, yey! I'm looking forward to my aerospace
engineering course, and Glasgow is a pretty cool place
in general. I've been down there for the past few
days, met loads of people, and moved my stuff into my
flat. Second thing: Boo! I don't ahve a phone port in
my flat, so no internet. I'm taking my pc, and might be
able to update this through the university's computers,
but maybe not... So that's this place for now. I'll
keep up the work. Thanks for looking about.
15/09/03 - Added two new animation, the first of a
jet engine spinning slowly, and the second, a cutaway
through each layer I used for my JT9D-7 model. Follow
this link
to the Aerospace gallery, also new.
14/09/03 - I went to the air show at RAF Leuchars
this weekend - and took my camera. The best photos
are up -here- for you to
have a look.
Also
pretty much finished with the JT9D-7 model. I got round
the low memory problems by dividing the model up into
layers. Much easier to work with too. The level of
detail is reasonable - I've done everything I can work
out from the (small) diagram I have. There's not
much detail on the external side of things, or shafts
and bearings, I really just wanted to model the blades.
Next
modelling plans are for a Rolls Royce Trent 800. Fairly
similar sort of thing, used on the Boeing 777s. I picked
up a nice poster at the air show, so I'll go for some
external detail this time!
In non-jet engine related
news, I'm off to uni this week. Glasgow
University, Masters degree in Aerospace engineering...
Maybe it is jet engine related news, then...
02/09/03 - Been pretty busy recently. Bit of an
absence over the summer, as I was away on holiday in
Ibiza and Greece. If I ever get the scanner
working, I'll pop some photo's up.
On the
modelling side of things, jet engines have been the main
theme of late. I've decoded True space's interface
of doom, and can now make a reasonable animation. Of
course, the problem with animations and video clips is
the file size is too big to store on Angelfire, my free
account at least.
Currently I'm working on an accurate model of a JT9D-7
Turbofan engine. Its going to be a reasonably accurate
model of the engines which first powered the Boeing
747's. All that really remains to do is the turbine
section, and a few external details. When it's
done, it'll be my most detailed model to date- if my
computer doesn't catch fire first.
Just for
your enjoyment, there's one image up. Its the best
I could get before Rhino stopped responding. With
over 750 fan blades now, 250 more to come, I'm going to
have to have a think about managing system resources
better.
23/05/03 - Added the new Biffy Clyro Section,
featuring links and some artwork.
04/04/03 - Today the site underwent a major over-haul,
this main page has been updated, the model gallery has
had my recent work added, and the GTFg Agyros mod for
FS2 is now available.
Sorry you still have to look at Angelfire's adverts - I
plan to upgrade my subscription soon.
Out of interest, you can
email me - though it's
well filtered, so good luck
trying to spam me.
Last edited
Monday, 19. April 2004 09:25 -0400 |
