Friday! with Orbital Elements: Medium Rig

 I broke up the command module with bolted-on Cabins. 

Reaction mass tanks are now caged.

But I was beginning to lose confidence in the design again. I wanted to see if a more conventional command module might make me feel better about it.

I put the command module from the first "Big Rig" onto the front. Interesting! It adds a nice rocket vibe and certainly makes a bit more sense.  

I might recreate the command module's basic form while changing some elements. I like the idea of a detachable module with its own independent propulsion system.

Orbital Elements: Medium Rig #5

 Last night I used Hitem3D's agent to build a proposed comms array dish. Oh boy, it is incredible that Hitem3D can create something as complex and intricate as a large high-gain antenna dish. Alas, it is just not quite precise enough. Many elements look "sludgy" and partially melted.                                                                                              

I changed the prompt to target a more compact antenna, based on a real-life example. It's better, but still too much yuck to compensate for the yum. Maybe I can build a simpler form manually to ensure the basic model is simple and solid.                                                             

The lesson here: The agent is amazing at building objects you have no good photo references for, as long as you can describe them. However, not every subject is well suited to a generative build. Really spindly and complex elements get sludgy. The same problem occurs on surface details.

For instance, this astronaut in an orange flight suit has super details on the folds, but the surface details such as pockets and the backpack are not as convincing -- it's like they scream "generative element".

Medium Rig update

This morning, I woke up feeling unhappy with the progress. I seriously considered restarting. However, after a few minutes of fiddling, I started to see how problem areas, such as the forward module could be rescued.

I got into the details a little too soon, but in my defence, I started with the large details already established. 

Orbital Elements: Medium Rig #4

Steady progress on the Medium Rig

Lots of medium details on the main hull and command module.

I thought it was time to try Hitem3D's new agent, which generates source images using ChatGPT. You'll note the cargo cans are now super detailed. Nice start! I created a couple of radar dishes, but they were a bit too detailed.

I'll complete the command module tomorrow.

Orbital Elements: Medium Rig #3

 Build time!

The Medium Rig, codenamed "Canto Brite", has now started.

Concept

The blockout I used to create printouts for doing the sketching (with perfect-ish ellipses)

The MFI ring's structural frame is almost complete.

Orbital Elements: Medium Rig #2

Where's the Blender work? This is a Blender blog!

That's coming; it's good I recognise it's too soon to start building because too many elements still aren't decided.

I decided that having the cargo cans arranged along the main axis isn't good if you want to treat them as a large floor space. I've turned them around and docked them onto the main hull. You can now have airlock access to the cans.

 Clara looked at this from the other side of our dining table and said: "That looks a bit phallic". True! erm. So I'm adding elements to break up the "head".

This is starting to make me question the solid central beam. Comms arrays and a big antenna. I want to go back to an open frame with stuff bolted on.

Okay, it's time. Next update, you'll see the block-out in Blender. There's still room for design changes, bit I'm happy with the general form.

Orbital Elements: Medium Rig

 The latest version of the Medium Rig space vehicle is still being sketched out. I don't want to start building until I have a solid, reasonably detailed drawing to work from. I think there have been times when a project has gone bad because I lost something in the translation from sketch to model, or the sketch didn't clearly describe what the 3D version would look like. I think the last attempt at the Medium Rig ticked both these boxes. 

Frame vs solid truss? Hmmm

Cargo pods on the truss are more visually interesting but would increase loading. Worth the cost?

Stargard

For my tenth birthday, I got a set of weird but brilliant space warrior figures called the "Stargard" -- not to be confused with the city in Poland. They had bright yellow spacesuits and transparent-dome helmets. Retro cool! This morning, I took a break from terrain work to try recreating a few of the figures in Blender.

 I gave them off-the-shelf contemporary firearms because I couldn't remember what the originals carried. I think they were wrist-mounted sink plungers, which might explain why the entire toy range seemed to have been wiped out by Christmas that same year.

Blue plateau

Blue plateau at last,
the mountain no longer climbs,
Only the wind now tests me.

Terrain test and scene setup

Start of Week

Last week was another productivity slump (for Blender work). I completed three more iterations of the Service Road terrain test. I'm happy with the results, but I think I have a couple more cycles before I declare it ready for the next stage, more in the SOW. I made modest progress on Orbital Elements, but not much. Jeepers, what was I doing last week? Well, my brain has developed a bit of a fixation, and I'm trying to work through it. This week, more work, less endless rumination.

Raptor: Service Road update. I'll complete another iteration and add more detail to the edge of the road. It would be great to add some rock structures to provide flat rock projections in the right places. Some details might need to be added as bolt-on assets.

Other Raptor news: my Sparrow films Hoody should arrive very soon. Hurrah!

MSVC: I've done a lot of sketches. I think it's time I built a light rig using the new design rules.

I still like the idea of a fold-out MFI Ring. This week I will finalise a small-to-medium rig design for building.

Blender School idea

While working on the test scene above, it felt like time to stop relying on True Terrain 3, which has entered an era of very slow development as Richard and Zac juggle TrueVFX work with day jobs. This will mean learning the whole stack for terrain texturing so I can export a terrain, bake the materials, and then use Blender's default systems to finish the terrain. The one element I'm missing is the masking system in True Terrain, which broke in the last big update, as I've mentioned a few times. It makes realistic material masking difficult.

One option is to complete a terrain course; I have one in mind.
https://www.cgboost.com/courses/master-3d-environments-in-blender

I'll look into it more this week and decide over the weekend.

More figures

I realised that I'd not used Hitem3D for more than a week. Those credits won't spend themselves! I need to clarify when the credits need to be used by so I can make sure they don't go to waste.

Prince Albert (Sheffield city centre statue), A Division agent and a fashionable woman

Service Road

 Although this work is technically under an NDA, I judge that a fog-obscured render can get a pass.

A tale of two terrain generators

 I've somehow fallen into a new workflow where I use both World Creator (WC) and Gaea to create a terrain. I use WC's ability to quickly build and sculpt a basic terrain from primitive landforms. I then import the heightmap into Gaea in order to use its superior node-based filter system.

Then I can take the Gaea output and import it back into WC to make more tweaks...and presumably ping-pong between the two applications until I'm in a happy place.

World Creator base terrain

Imported into Blender 

Into the Octoberverse

 Month ten, already! Wow!

Last week I kept thinking, developing, and sketching for Orbital Elements, so I don't have much to log in this blog. This week, I'll be back here catching up.

I like how close this design comes to the first OE space vehicle. Most big ships are built on a super-strong stem, made out of space elevator material, which has mind-blowingly high tensile and compressive strength.

I need to account for heat management - that MF ring generates a lot of thermal energy, so there needs to be a big radiator array or some novel heat sink system -- maybe huge tanks of salt.

Playing with the idea that smaller vehicles still need really big MF rings. Maybe they fold out/inflate, or they just don't appear in the vehicle sketch.

Blender time! Astronaut created using Hitem3D

Start of Week

Last week was all Orbital Elements. This week, I'll confine this work to my evenings out -- Mondays and Thursdays, when I walk with Noah to Army Cadets.

Halo: Raptor

Time to appraise where I am and what I need to do. Have I become fixated on the details and accuracy? I feel like I've been led to a task that is more open-ended and can easily become impractical. I need more Gaea expertise, but more importantly, I need to really understand how terrains are engineered. 

The service road's walls are very steep, and it seems they need to be enhanced manually after the terrain is converted to a regular mesh.

A practice service road-like terrain

OE Vehicle project

As a side project that works in both streams, I'll create a highly detailed OE vehicle to showcase the new design rules.

Proof-of-workflow test