Orbital Elements: Medium Rig Crit time

 It's time to get this Medium Rig finished. It's been crawling this week, but it needs to be whizzing toward the finish line; otherwise... well, you know what happens in ADHD land: abandonment sadness.

It's been a long time since I did a proper review of an ongoing design; here goes!

Crit it!

Overall, I like the general layout. Mike Ward, a much-respected illustration tutor, told us to do a squint test for things like a piece's composition. It can work on a design's overall shape. I like the silhouette; it's probably what this boils down to. 

I don't want to break that, but I need to make sure the surface details are more consistent. The recycled Heavy Rig docking section doesn't quite match up, so I'll make sure that the forward sections and the command section to its rear have the same style and scale of panelling.

I've used the orange superstructure frame to try to tie things together, but there are elements that are not in sympathy with the overall design. The wide orange band at the front is just a paint colour, not an indicator of a structural element.  Change the colour, maybe? If so, where else might paint panels break up flow and yet compliment the yellow structure?

The read of the command section and the propulsion sections will be details areas. Not nurnies! I want these details to be really specific and functional. The propulsion system looks like a jet engine, with piping and conformal components. The Command Sections details will be more like externally mounted systems and stores. Maybe some repair drones?}

The hab module should have a few windows. They'll help establish scale. Possibly an airlock here and there.

Find a way to connect the orange bracings/structural elements with the  central frame that supports the MFI ring.

The MFI needs to look like its made of small complex things -- forward field-induction panels. Cables from the central area connect to the inductor plates. At the rear are radiators.

The shield held me back. I looked at earlier rad shields and the only one that looks right is the one on the Shamrayev.

The Shamrayev is a larger vehicle. Maybe heavier than a rig. Design rules will be a bit different.

Although this design predates the introduction of the MFI ring, I can see how one could be slipped into the propulsion vanes -- suddenly these look like oversized radiators. Maybe I need bigger radiators. It's a thought!

Fly-past days, weeks and...whoosh, here goes October

 Raptor Progress

Slow but steady. All the terrain-sculpting fun has gone into developing the service road cliffs. I'm happy with the progress! 

Cliff section sculpt

This element is really big, about 16 million polygons. Really, this is a miracle of Blender 5, which always seems to laugh off polycounts, at least until it crashes. On the subject of crashing, I've been getting a lot, but all on the older machine. This could be CPU erosion, and I need to start limiting more cores. We'll keep an eye on that. I use the secondary (4090) machine for sculpting because it has my Wacom tablet attached and all my lovely rock-sculpting brushes installed.

Quick test on instancing

Take the giant terrain element and create instances, then arrange them into a big scene that doesn't swallow all your system memory thanks to instancing!

Camera view

Yes, you can see the repeated elements, but this is a test. In anger, you could add more clutter to help hide repeating patterns.

Other stuff

This felt a bit Blender-schooly, so I didn't do any additional training. I will at the weekend. I wanted to collect some notes on the recent phone-camera addon. It's time I created something worth showing.

Other other stuff

The Medium Rig started to gather dust, so I jumped back on it yesterday.

The model is in serious need of a clean-up, but I am holding off until I complete the first pass on all the elements. Later today, I will complete the propulsion section and add a comms array, possibly on some clusters attached to the MFI ring. Some of the details need improving. I really want to do a better-than-usual job of the materials.

More sculpted terrains

 

I've been practising terrain sculpting on my secondary machine because it has a tablet/stylus and its Blender installation includes my VDM (Vector Displacement Map) brushes.

Base sculpting on a super-dense mesh

Base sculpt + VDM brush work

Ground-level view

Test Canyon with normal-based masking between two materials

Sunday Playtime

 Tomorrow, we're off to visit Clara's father, so today I dodged housework by playing with Blender. It was nice to mess around. I discovered and purchased a really interesting addon:

Camera Controller Plus (Bought on Gumroad)

Use a compatible smartphone as a camera controller. It's perfect for replicating natural handheld camera videos. It's probably pretty good for more formal camera control, but I need to investigate further.

It wasn't too hard to set up, although I get crashes when I try it on a more involved scene with a large terrain mesh and True Sky 3. 

Installation and calibration

Example video

Test scene that got too complicated

Hand-sculpted terrain

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