Work in Progress: Armored Train Car (Part II)

So here we are at the end of another weekend.  To the right is the first skin for the armored tank car.  I finished the UV layout and even managed to get the first of the two paint jobs I wanted to do done.  This one is not for the game but based off of the following three view drawing: German Army Heavy Armored Train Nr.51 (Plastic model) Color2.  While not an exact match, that was never my goal.  I could have tried for it, bu the number of polygons being used on smaller and smaller things was a limiting factor to keep it as a piece for the game.  Another thing I could have done was added the small detail to the texture, but I always feel that looks a little cheap.  Hopefully over the course of the week I can get the actual game skin finished.  With this project nearing completion, I am hoping to get a little more work done on the road models so at least the basic roadways are finished.  I am thinking I want to build a parking lot roadway skin also, based on the fifty foot straight piece.  I also want to build a track to put this car on, though that is not a real immediate priority.  Until the weekend,
~gunnah

I am calling it research

So this weekend is a beta event for a long awaited MMO.  I doubt I will get much done otherwise, but I may run out of things to do, though very unlikely.  I am hoping to finish the UV mapping for the armored tank car, only need to finish the turrets and that will be done.  O yeah, and sorry this is late.
~gunnah

Slow and Steady

Well, slow at least, not sure about how steady progress will be.  I am hoping by the end of the week to have the UV-map for the armored tank car finished, though who knows how life will work out.  I am down to my last handful of parts that need to be laid out, but these tend to be the more complicated pieces.  Trying not to get too far ahead of myself going then I want to get this skin done and that skin and then this object and this level, once this part of the project is finished, I would like to get back to finishing up the road pieces.  With the road pieces and car done, I will probably create a small set of tracks to put the car on, after all what good is a train without tracks?

Well, that seems like a reasonably sized post for the amount of work I can show.  So post again at the end of the week, probably late one more time.
~gunnah

One Problem after Another

While I could start with what I did for the project, that would be near nothing and nothing demonstrable, so I am going to leave that there for the moment and go into why I missed last weeks two posts.  The following is more of a rant and can safely be ignored from the prospective of the game, but it will be useful to me remembering why I missed a whole week.

Over the weekend when I made the last set of posts, I was starting to notice little red lines on my screen and did not know what it was.  As the weekend grew into early that week, the amount of lines grew and horizontal green lines started forming before my screen just went black.  So I had to order a new video card, killing whatever progress I was going to make that week, so I did not feel bad missing that Friday post.  I spent much of that Friday night into Saturday morning putting the new card in the computer.  Since I figured I had Sunday, I was not in a real hurry to get much done Saturday.  Then Sunday came and I was needed to go plant shopping and till some of the gardens.  So I had nothing done Sunday, hoping to do something for a surprise Monday night post.  Well Monday did not progress as I hoped, leaving me little to post for the whole three-day weekend.  I had a state exam in the middle of last week and since then I have been a little relaxed, enjoying not having anything looming over me for the time being.  Thus I have little to show but a mile of excuses, but when does life really work out how one plans it?

Well, hopefully this weekend and next week will be better.  O, and sorry for the late post,
~gunnah

Work in Progress: Armored Train Car (Part I)

First off, I complete missed Fridays post since I was out late Friday night and was too tired when I got in to make the post.  With that said, I would have little to post today if I had made that post since I did not get much done with the game.  To the left is the current state of my armored train model, a total of 3345 faces.  Creating the UV layouts is about half done, though the turrets may require quite a bit of work compared to the rest of the model and they are not done yet.  Once the UV layout is complete, I can start texturing which will make the image look a lot more interesting.  Not sure how much work I am going to be able to get done on this over the week, but I am hoping to get most of the UV layout finished.  Accompanying this model I am probably going to need three pieces of track, but those should go together quickly once this model is pretty much done - only one piece per section.  I have been contemplating the best way to get the gravel effect and I am hoping that a bump map will work since I do not want to budget that many faces for a detail likely overlooked.

On another note, I have a dozen or so 3D tutorials that I am looking to do in varying degrees of completion - some are just modeling while others go all the way to texturing.  Most are high-polygon count, which will be a nice change from what I have been doing.  When I get around to these projects, I will be sure to post images.  Also slightly unrelated, I am working on getting a Gallery section to show how far varying pieces of 3D art have come.  While that is not a priority, I would like to get that working in the near future.  Until next Friday, hopefully,

~gunnah

A bit of decoration

Okay, I could have dove right back into the project trying to remember how I did everything and where I left off but I decided to do something different.I have begun work on a larger piece of decoration for the motor pool I hope to eventually fill, an armored train car.  The car itself is historic, but I did not really choose it for any of its historical meaning and I will likely re-decal the car (probably making two skins, the historic and in-game, using the historic mostly to show off in a post), trying to make it my first big piece for this new map.  Right now I only have the body blocked out, Mother's Day took more out of me than I thought it would, totaling only about 200 triangles (or 100 faces).  As I add detail the number of faces will sky-rocket probably around 2000 to 2500 faces when all is said and done.  This is not that bad as the car is about half the size of a small house, approximately 50 feet in length, though only 12 feet wide, which I was giving three to four thousand faces.

Do not really have much  more to talk about and no pictures yet so I will end this post a little early.  Hope everyone has a good week,
~gunnah

And now back to our regularly scheduled program ...

Okay, not really, but life has simmered down quite a bit.  Sorry about missing posting last week, but you would have gotten something along the lines of: nothing done, wait for life to cool down.  Still nothing done, but I might get a few minutes to work on this project over the weekend.  Again, there will be no real pictures for this section of work until I am pretty much done and can show them together.  Hopefully I can finish the repeating set of roadways within a week or two and start the unique roadways b the end of the month.