Winter Competition...too...many..elements..to fix

 Yesterday, I reached a point in the creation of my competition entry where I was making change after change, but instead of each change taking me closer to a happy place, they spawned another set of change requirements. Add more light into this area, and it fixed one problem, but I then realised the texture isn't good any more because I can see it too well. The lamps don't look like they are consistently lighting the right areas, but when that's fixed, they ruin the look I was going for.

Cha..cha..changes. Too many.

What to do, where to go?

Option 1: Carry on. Go on, pull all your hair out.

Option 2: Restart from the basics and rebuild the scene elements. This has the benefit of opening up design and composition decisions that have been fixed in my head. The downside is that this will open up designed and composition decisions that may not be problems.

Option 3: Go away for a few days. Get a fresh eye. I have time! The deadline is the end of the month. This is the best option, but I worry that I won't return to it. I'll be too wrapped up in the next thing -- Traveller Ships ..for a publication. Honest, I'll finish it this time.

Winter Competition review point

 

The composition is mostly locked. I'm not building any more assets. So what's left to do?

Reflect and inflection

1. The dome wall texture is a bit mucky. I'll make it look more realistic in terms of casting patterns and stains. Maybe more lights and some garage-style shutter doors?

2. I'll put some unique decals on the two landers. Maybe I'll put some numbering on them. I might change their colour.

3. I should soften the silhouetting of the control tower and fuel tanks. They're almost black, but the tower is lighter. The tone should shift from lighter to darker, with the tower near black. I'll test that.

4. One of the lamps on the control tower is not lit, but it looks odd. I might need to make them consistent. There is not as much volumetric light being cast. I may tweak the volume fog a bit more to see if I can improve it.

5. I might darken the foreground snow bank. It has a blue cast on it to match the TT5 procedural snow.

Critique 1

Winter competition work-in-progress

I've just removed two attempts at populating the middle distance with a snow-covered forest. It just added clutter that didn't add anything, only distracted. I might try again near the end.
 

Two hours of control tower building...and ugh, its scale is off in key areas: Door, roof railings. What to do? I could scale those elements down, but .... <idea>

That works! Replicated the main building block. I now have a more slender, modular-looking building. I'll add lamps to that new middle tier. Progress!

Lander loiter or leave?

Manta Tactical Lift

 I'm in a good place, and the pressure to move on to other projects is too strong to ignore. Even if I felt I needed to stick with its development, I'd need a break at this point to cultivate a fresh eye. 

I'm getting on with either the informal Science Fiction scene competition with Berglmir or the True-VFX Community competition (actually set by Berglmir). The latter competition has a deadline, so I'll do that first. 

Sometimes, it just falls together

I started creating terrain heightmaps in World Creator. I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere, so I started to play with some of the results in Blender.

Starting point

A first brush at all elements

Of course, the lander was going to land on the scene.

I'm happy with this as a starting point. I need to add some additional points of interest. An antenna on the right-hand hill. So, snow clumps around the landing pads. Lighting and refuelling equipment. The concrete cylinder will need to be dressed up and lit. Maybe even a figure in the foreground. More atmospherics!

Lander: Even endier game: The final chapter

 Sarcasm aside, completing the lander model flew past me at high speed and is currently circling the landing strip and showing no indication that it intends to actually land.

Why? Standards, that's why. My standards levelled up about a year ahead of my actual skill level. So now I'm scrambling to fix the fixes that were originally fixes. This is good, though. This is me finally getting better because I'm making better judgements on what's good enough. When I'm back in a paid job, this will really slow me down. So, after getting better, I'll also need to get faster.

Not happy with the headlights.

Better headlights

Captain Leo is now in command

DecalMachine

Oh my god! DecalMachine, where have you been all my life? Answer: sitting on my storage drive waiting for me to test it, use it and fall in love with it.

What is DecalMachine?

The blurb says, "DECALmachine is a blender addon, which, through mesh Decals, allows for surface detailing in a very non-committal, non-destructive, UV-less way. As such it represents an alternative approach to hard surface texturing."

The big metallic pivots on the engine are not modelled, the're decals

The actual mesh. Note the wrapped plane from where the decal is projected.

Decals are incredible when used appropriately.

A quick test render

As I set up the duplicated Mantas, I realised that there were a lot of sloppy elements in play. Pivoting the engines and thrusters didn't work as it should. Some of the surface details looked sloppy. So, I stepped back from staging a scene to concentrate on a final modelling run.

Lander: End Game

 Yesterday, I only spent a little time on the lander, but it was pretty fun. My boys came home from school as I turned my attention to the cockpit build. I don't plan to do a detailed study, but I wanted it to look convincing from afar. I thought it would be fun to have my sons at the controls, so I quickly scanned their heads using my phone and Polycam. Leo's scan didn't turn out, and he didn't have the patience to sit for another attempt, so I'll try another scan this afternoon.

Noah in the cockpit

Subtle in situ, but all the details matter (Wire quote!)

Good enough for now

Today is the hard deadline for modelling, and there's a lot to do. The cargo module needs to panel lines. I may try these as normal maps/displacement. I'd like to do a lot of small fine-line panel lines throughout the bodywork, but I worry about lousy topology and UV problems.

The underneath of the hull needs some machinery to show how the container module is locked to the hull. Grapples/cables/robot arms...some thinking and designing to do. Also, I want some ribbing and structure work to break up the hull's blank underside.

This morning, I considered doing a utility helicopter variant of the cargo container with personnel doors on each side, like a Huey. I initially thought that this kind of monster VTOL doesn't suit that kind of operation; if this thing took off while personnel were near its thrusters, they'd be blasted into the air by the thrust. Sometimes, you have to fight on the whimsy and unrealistic side of the fight. I haven't made up my mind yet.

Looking further down the road

Animation. I didn't build this thing for "stills", I want to see it land and take off. I want to see the cargo module dropped. I want to see a couple more Mantas fly past... Yeah, they got renamed as Mantas. Meet the Embrae Industries Heavy Transport Vtol (HTV) 71 Mantas.

A quick break

 

Lens-Sim and True-Terrain-5

I made really good progress on the lander, so this morning, I created a little nature scene.

Lander

Some extensive rebuilding and mesh clean-up:

The engine pivots are now less stick-out after the engine root block was embedded within the engine using some boolean magic.

The command deck's viewing ports were rebuilt, and the cabin was carved out.

I'm toying with the idea of renaming the Embrae to Manta. A medium VTOL transporter

Quite a lot of surface details improved along with clean-up and consolidation.

It feels like we're on the last leg of a long tour. What remains to do:

• The cargo container needs some work around the hull's edges. I may build a seam line.
• Some hull details - complete the lamps. Add some more lights.
• The access ramp (at the back) needs building out.
• Final engine details,  some greebles around the thruster nozzle's root.                                                                                                                              

Then, some texture painting. Maybe I'll experiment with those cool normal-map decals.

Lander critique

critique

Critique time 

Taking a long break (until the following day) and returning to a project with a fresh eye is really important. There were a few things in this render that I'd missed entirely. This morning, I made a few notes before I start tackling the remaining issues. This has taken much longer than planned, which is now standard for my projects. When I started as a 3D hobbyist, I'd do quick and long projects. Quick projects were just sketches of a few minutes, while long projects could take up to three hours. Three hours! Imagine!! It was different back then. I had 16 MB of system memory and a graphics card with about 4MB. Even if you had very high standards, you would hit limits in terms of realism and detail, and to be clear, I didn't have high standards.

Today, the tools offer you near limitless artistic and photorealistic potential. It will be a question of how much time and effort you will put in and what you will accept before moving on to the next task. I think the answer comes from how patient you are and what standards you apply. I stopped doing 3D work for a long while when my standards had started to greatly exceed my skill level. Nothing I did was good enough. Looking back, it wasn't a question of skill but more about patience and care. I'm now less willing to let a bad element slide. I no longer hide bad elements in clutter. Obviously, this is all on a sliding scale. In a year, I'll have standards should be even higher, and things that I find acceptable today will not be tomorrow. Hopefully!

I really need to finish this because I have two competition submissions waiting in the wings. I will probably use the lander in one of them.

Dreams of a new system

Yesterday, NVidia announced their 500-series GPUs. My RTX 4090 is no longer king of the crop. The RTX 5090 takes that crown. I hoped to order a new system yesterday, but the release has been handled differently. It looks like a sales embargo lifts on the last day of the month, so this question will be kicked into February. I'm less confident that my chosen supplier, Scan.co.uk, will provide 5090 systems. We'll see in a few weeks. It will be a great relief to escape the technical problems of my current system. A replacement system will let me send this machine off for servicing...

Science fiction landscape test number 499! <sarcasm>

Lander progress #3

 I started trying to improve the existing engines. After a fair effort, I gave up and rebuilt them from scratch while maintaining the landing gear root so that the existing gears would fit.

New approach to the engines

Landed and airborne

I spent too long on this and am no longer improving the quality. Time to down tools for a bit.
What next? There are some engine elements that I may change. A bit of tidying up. Some more fine details work. Materials!

Lander progress #2

 Things managed to progress with the lander. I started working on the cargo module. I made a complete mess of it but had the presence to throw it away and start again. Much better results.

Cargo container. Just meh!

I recognised that the work was poor and just restarted.

Progress slows down

I added the rear engines. I intended for them to pivot for greater stability in VTOL, but we'll see. I like the simplicity of this arrangement. Next, I'm reworking the side-mounted engines, although it may be minor tweaks rather than starting them from scratch.

Nvidia to announce their 50-series GPUs. I have hope that the 5090 will not be stupidly more expensive than the 4090 as I think I may get one in the next system. 

Holiday's end

 The boys are returning to school, and I had to return to job-seeking. Let's see what 2025 brings...

Lander progress

Terrain play

In True-Terrain 5, I implemented an idea that I had about a year ago: a material pack that is based in block colours to block out a terrain.

Colour palette pack

Colour palette with a couple of PBR materials