Highs and lows

 Hip Jiggerty Jig! First sale!

First of many! Well, a sale is enough for now.

Burn-in completed on the new system. Horrah!

Edit: It's 8 p.m. as I write this blog article. Clearly, the machine didn't clear quality control. Maybe there was a snag, or maybe they're just swamped. They could have had a big backlog of RTX 5090 orders to get through. Either way, this will be done on Monday unless they need to exchange a component and are forced to retest.

Hitting that wall

It's happened again. The prospect of selling stuff makes me really critical about the quality of my work. This scout ship is all done. It looks okay. However, it's half a decade old and has lousy mesh issues. I did some nipping and tucking, possibly making things worse.

The hull plates are a mess. There are rough mesh elements. All the bad things.

Alternate product

 So, the Lightning Sword is going back for some changes. It won't be product #2 for Blender Market. Last night, I thought of a good candidate for a quick turnaround: My Traveller-related Type-S Scout Ship, although it will need a name change to ensure that I completely dodge the possibility of IP infringement.

Improved UV maps. Not perfect, but it's a lot better. I look forward to seeing how much better my textures end up. Before worrying about that, I'm cleaning up and rebuilding sections. The aft landing gears are new and the front gear will be reworked. Also, the vernier thrusters, some of the back-plate details, and those blocks on the end of the top surface look messy because they stick out too much.

I'm aiming for submission tomorrow or Monday at the latest.

New Machine

Well, it looks like it failed its 24-hour burn-in. I hope this isn't uncovering something caused by incompatibility. Or maybe they spotted the 5090 is missing ROPs (Render Output Units), which a small number of 50-series cards contain silicon that's missing these pipeline elements. No great rush, this is still a good week before they said they'd be building, so it's all good so long as they can sort it out. 

Blender Market Product #2 shǎndiàn Jiàn Final modelling

 Yesterday was productive! I ran through the points I'd made in the critique. I then kitbashed the small secondary vehicle; in this case, I took an abandoned space cab front and married it to the rear of a different vehicle - a cargo tug. It's not the best design, but it absolutely rocks, given that I spent more time cleaning up than I did on its actual modelling. 

Abandoned pod

Krocadil light rig

Hello Kitty bash bash!

Here's some weird trivial: I turned the model upside down early in constructing that pod and forgot I'd done it. By the time I realised I couldn't accept the correction in my head, this was the right way, even though there were viewing ports weirdly at the bottom. Let's be fair; in space, there's no up or down, and these things are operated using conformal cameras that create a three-dimensional all-directions view for the controller and his AI. You don't need windows except for emergencies.

What next?

The Dragonfly rigs need cradles and airlock. 

Ready to be cradled. Is two enough? 

I might slightly scale the Dragonfly and add a beefier thruster at the rear. It was missing from the version I kit-bashed for some reason.

I'm going to redesign the cargo containers and make them look less sci-fi and more NASA. Simpler, more utilitarian, with more engineering elements. I might have them stored in a 3x2 cages.

Blender Market Approved!

 

It's approved..just hours after the Winter sale starts. I opted in! While this means a 25% drop in earnings, this first product is more about getting a few customers and going through the life cycle. My next product release will be priced quite a lot higher.

Blender Market Product #2 shǎndiàn Jiàn Crit1

 I'm well into the build. There are a few details that I've been ignoring. Time to do a crit where I stand back and try to tear down the build and find all the faults. 

Critique 1

• More breakup of the outline on the command cone, which someone has already pointed out, looks a lot like a traffic cone. 
• The Midjourney texture output interpreted the dark area at the top of the squashed sphere as a fabric sheet. It looks great. I think I'll update the model to include this element so long as test results look good enough to make the high polygon cost worthwhile.
• The Hab (squashed sphere) needs a lot of fine detail. I will get all this done using decals and a good normal map.
• The open framework around the two mission packs/winglets needs some detailing. I'll incorporate one or two sub-crafts. I have a "pod" that would be perfect for this if I can finish its modelling. 
• Cargo modules are space opera-ish (these were actually these were stolen from my Shift Carrier design, as was the fuel bladder). I will keep the outline and the 3x2 stack arrangement but make them look more "NASA". Again, this is partly inspired by the Midjourney output.
• Generally, there needs to be more detail in many areas, but not too much. Making the design overcluttered will work against its effectiveness.
• I'd like to add tension cables that hold the fuel tanks and connect them to the main bracing rings. A problem is that the cargo modules, as they are placed, would get in the way of the cables. I'd need to attach them to extended arms to clear the cargo pods, but this will look messy. I'll have a play.

There's less going on at the back. Maybe I'll add a fold-out emergency solar array and a small ordnance rail, specifically for decoy drones. The most pressing change is for improvements to the main propulsion thruster.

Blender Market Product #2 shǎndiàn Jiàn (Lightning Sword Combat Vehicle) Progress

 I'm still waiting for the people at Blender Market to review my Terrain Map Pack 2025. Hopefully, that will return in a day or two with minimal issues to address. I spotted a duplicate word on the front page about a minute after submitting the product, which locks the content until after the review.

While I'm waiting, I continue to build a space vehicle from Orbital Elements. A military vehicle built by one of the Chinese 3FO Jovian settlements. 

Command section (cone and ball) and Mission section (wedge arms)

Mission pods are bristling with ordnance. 

 
I wanted an inflatable bladder-style fuel tank. This was stolen from my earlier model of a Shift Carrier. I like the fabric blisters, but the whole thing is a bit too big.

The fuel bladder and the cargo modules have been shrunk so that they don't add too much bulk to the vehicle.

Midjourney added textures

I fed a render into Midjourney and asked it to give the plain model NASA space vehicle textures. This one came out great! This is the look I'm going for, with maybe a few colour bands and some Chinese labels here and there.

Blender Market Product #2 Jiàn de shǎndiàn (Sword of Lightning Combat Vehicle)

 For my next product that I will try to sell on Blender Market, I'm building a space vehicle from my Orbital Elements universe. This will be a Combat Patrol Vehicle called Jian de Shandian (Sword of Lightning).

Note: This is not a spaceship, a battleship, or a cruiser... In Orbital Elements, space vehicles don't use the ocean-going vessel analogy. Most space vehicles are known as "rigs", but this is too big to be a rig. A heavy rig is under 1000 displacement tons, I need a different name for this brute, which is 250m long.

"Defense platform" - no mobile
"Combat Patrol Vehicle"....better
"Heavy Attack Vehicle"...

I'll have this decided closer to building completion. I'll let the question rattle around the back of my head for a while.

Sketches

This sets the basic arrangement: Command module, Mission module (weapons), and at the back, the Engineering/Drives module.

Wings/arms for carrying turrets. Maybe!

I decided the vehicle's superstructure needs to be an open frame.

Initial Modelling

Blocking out

At the end of day one, I have a solid basis for the model. The weapons modules (wing things) are causing me the most problems. I've redone them a few times. They need to bristle with death-dealing weapons, but they never look right when I add surface systems and turrets. Another problem that kicked down the path was the fuel tankage. I would like to use inflated fuel bladders rather than solid tanks, but I've struggled to get the size right. I might extend the ship's length, which will help keep it balanced. I've added fuel tanks, which make it look bloated and too compact. It may end up looking more sword-like.

Product complete and submitted

 I spent much of yesterday and all of today putting together my first Blender product. It's done!

Now, I have to wait for the review to complete. Whenever you make a change, it goes through a review cycle, which is what you pay for, really. Fingers crossed that no issues are found. On to the next product!

And so it begins!

 
I've been accepted to the Blender Market as a creator. Next stop, create the first product and get it accepted.

Rocky pathway

There's a lot of work ahead! 

Website is live

 After what felt like having all my teeth pulled out, the website is now finished and live. For reasons beyond me, a necessary token DNS record that is required to prove my ownership was deleted. I followed a Squarespace support page that instructed me to delete old records. No system function could detect that the record was missing and no way for Google to regenerate it. Thankfully, Google support was pretty good when I finally got access to it.

Issues quickly resolved.

Home is where the index is...

Gallery

The reason for the investment in time and money is the requirement for an online portfolio to sell on Blender Market. At this point, it has wider benefits. It's been too long since I had a proper online presence beyond this and other Google-hosted blogs.

Terrain Map Pack 2025 (Volumes 1-x)

The next setback is that the Blender Market team takes 1-2 weeks to approve me. I am confident that I'll get it, although I may need to produce some proper collateral and samples. I should provide an entry-level pack that is free to download. I should also break the maps into many very low lost packs rather than sell the job lot, although I could maybe make that an option. Still, I can use the extra time to get the pack completed.



Next up...a model. I will finally create a space vehicle for sale.

Terrain Map Pack samples