Jay-Lew

Howdy all! I finally got around to making a website for my 3d stuff for the first time in a LONG TIME! It's pretty basic right now, but I'll be making it more fancy here some time in the near future. Check it out and let me know what you all think. Thanks! Jason My 3d art site

Hey there! Your CG models are coming along quite nicely! I'm really not much for offering critique or criticism as each CG model here is nothing more than different 3D interpretation of the original Macross 2D art. Each artist who makes a CG Valk, or SDF-1, or whatever, brings their own ideas and styles to it. All art is considered subjective anyway, so there is no real right, or wrong way to do it, only what you and others enjoy, or do not enjoy. I just enjoy sharing my work, as well as seeing all the other wonderful artworks that others on this site share with us. ( keep it up you guys, being a BIG Macross / Robotech fan, I love having one place to go to to see all sorts of great 2D & 3D Macross art. Thanks to Shawn & Graham, this is one of the best fan site out there, PERIOD! ) Anyhow, sorry, I'm rambling again, the only real advice I can give you are my own personal insights and experiences I've had with doing my VF-1 in this thread, iF something similar to mine is what you are going for. - Even with a crappy machine, you can still turn out a pretty high res model, you just need to work on it 1 piece at a time, then put all the pieces together once they are done. Until just a couple of months ago, I wask working on a crappy 5 year old Pentium 4 machine still on an old AGP bus ( CRINGE!!!!!!!!!! ) As long as you hide everything except the piece you are working on, it's not too bad. Even my SDF-1 scene which is around 2,000,000 ploys did ok on the old POS!!!!!! If you are going for the high detail look, then you want to use allot of geometry for your details, faking it in texture can work, but typically doesn't look quite as good. ( Really, the only actual difference between my VF-1, and others on this site, is that I went a little nutty with the detail. I tend to be a bit of a freak when it comes to adding TONS of unnecessary detail to all my CG work. It's a bit odd too considering my unusually SHORT attention span! ) - proportions: The proportions are a bit wierd whe it come to translating 2D art to 3D art, especially with the VF-1's. Unfortunately, in the series, The actual dimentions and proportions of the VF-1's CHANGE from one drawing to another, especially from Fighter to Gerwalk to Battroid and back. So I haven't even attempted the whole transformation thing yet with my VF-1. You can try to find the nice balance with the proportions between the different modes, and I have seen some on this site, that do a pretty god job of it too, but I found that with mine, quick Gerwalk and Battroid mockups show that it will never look perfect in any 1 mode if you go for the balance. So I built mine to look perfect in fighter mode, which makes Battroid look wierd,.( legs are too skinny when the good looking fighter legs go to Battroid legs. ) So eventually, I plan to rebuild some of the parts to proportions that look good in Battroid, then when I end up animating it, I will do a very quick morph between the parts that have changing proportions. ( quick enough so that you shouldn't notice it with the chaos of transformation going on! ) - Textures: Make the textures VERY HIGH RES!!!!!!! It is essential if you plan on showing your model up close. Mine are pretty much made from scratch, except, find yourself a good looking base metal photo, and overlay your drawn maps to it just so that there is a little bit of surface info coming from it, not just pure color. Right now, my model only has diffuse maps on it. Eventually I plan on doing bump / Specular / Reflection maps, as well as dirtying up the diffuse maps a bit as they are a little too clean right now. It doesn't look like it has seen any action! So that is all the advice I can think of right now. The only other little things I could suggest, from an accuracy standpoint is, the tail fins are straight up and down, they should be slanted outward a bit ( 15 - 20 degrees if I remember correctly ), and I would suggest making the wings a little thinner, otherwise, looking great! If anyone is wondering about the reference material I used, it was: Macross Perfect Memory Book, and screencaps from the Robotech DVDs. Below is a render of the VF-1 with no textures so you can see how much detail was done with geometry instead of texture, as well as a wireframe. I've also included a couple of texture samples as well to check out. ( Wing and a Leg ) Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any more questions, would be happy to answer! Thanks! Jason

It's about 265,000 polys, and is made up of 124 textures so far ranging in size from 300 x 100, to upwards of 3000 x 2000 pixels

Also, here are some close-ups of the mapped cockpit in it's current form.

Howdy all! It's been a while since I have visited this site. My Macross project has been on hold for quite a while. Unfortunatly, life, work, and my somewhat limited attention span have conspired against me to impede my CG work. I've been working on other CG projects as well. Although, recently I was going through all my half-finished models and renders, and working on mustering the ambition to start finishing some of them, including some of my Macross stuff, so I'm hoping I'll get back to finishing my VF-1's and my SDF-1 / Macross island models here in the next few months. I was working on my VF-1 when I left off, and I got about half-way done mapping the cockpit. Here is my VF-1 as it stands right now ( I may have sent this one out already, but not sure, so if you all ahve seen it already, my apologies ) All the exterior details are mapped, landing gear, missles, extranious details etc. And the you can see from this render that some of the cockpit is done as well. I will let everyone know when I get back to it.

Yea, the fusulage textures need some tweaking. I was experemanting with the specular map. and it doesn't really work, I've just been to lazy to take it off right away. They also need to be higher resolution, cause they kinda break up when you get close enought to appreciate the cockpit detail. I'll go back and rework them a bit once the cockpit is done. Thanks for all the comments!

Hey all! Well the progress is continuing, slowly, but it is continuing. So while I have not finished the cockpit yet, here are a couple of images showing the current progress. Hope you all like it. Thanks Jason

Actually, I did get back into it just a few days ago. Finished mapping all the little extraneous details like to landing gear, the circular doo-dads on the nose, legs and near the wings, the missiles, and all the rest of the little details. I am currently working on the cockpit and the pilot. and I'm probably gonna do a set of VF-1S textures as well before I start doing the Battroid mode. I will post some new renders after I finish the cockpit. Thanks all! Jason

Hey all! Been busy with other projects lately, but will hopefully have time here soon to get back to finishing my VF-1 and back to working on my SDF-1 and Macross city. In the meantime, I got sick of my current VF-1 desktop so I whipped up a new one for mtself and thought I would share it with all of you if you would like. I have a larger one than this, full 1600 x 1200, but I cannot get it to upload to this forum, so I fanyone would like the higher res version, and knows how to get it to upload, please let me know. Thanks!

#1 Yes that is correct! It's my online gaming handle. I use it cause it's quite embarassing to get killed by someone who calls himself "Man Muffin!" #2 By Hero versions do you mean Fokker's Vf-1S / Hikaru's VF-1J / Max's VF-1A etc etc ? If so, then the answer is Yes, I will eventually make those versions, just not sure when I can get around to it.

Started working on the pilot ( mesh courdesy of scott8539 ). Did a few adjustments to the mesh, and got him rigged ( although the rigging setup needs a little bit of tweaking still ). Still need to make textures for him though. Here is a preliminary render. Later! Jason

You can just send me the mesh and textures, I can rig him in Max and pose him. An OBJ file ( if poser exports OBJ's ) would be great, if it doesn't export OBJ's, then a 3ds file will work also. Thanks! Jason

I like your Pilot, if you wanna send him to me, I'll pose him and put him in the cockpit and do more renders.

I built them a long time ago, had them just sitting around. THought it would be fun to just throw them in!

Here's the custom angle that Dante requested. Sorry it took so long, I was out of town for the holidays. Lemme know if the angle works for you. Enjoy! Jason

Howdy all! Glad to see that everyone is enjoying thease images. If anyone has any specific angles they want of the VF-1, just post what they would like, and I can do tailored renders. As far as a pilot goes, I haven't even thought about that yet. That's a whole other thing that I haven't gotten around to starting on yet, and probably won't anytime soon, however, if anyone here on the forums would like to model a pilot, I would be more than happy to put him in the cockpit and do more renders. Thanks, Jason

Hello all! Sorry that I haven't been able to do any updates lately, unfortunatly, my artwork has taken a back seat to life wich has become INSANELY busy over the last few months! I'm hoping to have time to get back to it here in a month or two. I will let you all know as soon as I get back to it. Thanks again for all the positive feedback and support! I've been seeing alot of really good stuff popping up here on the forums lately, keep up the great work all of you! I'll be rejoining you here some time soon. Thanks! Jason

Many of you have been following my Macross / Robotech CG progress, some have not. A bunch of you have requested that I start a new thread with my latest VF-1A pics for you all to have some Photoshop fun. Well here you all go! I did a few new poses for you as well. Feel free to edit them as you see fit. My only request is that if you use the off site, that you please credit me for the original model. Thanks! Enjoy! Jason

More updates. Hooray! I finished mapping all the major fuselage pieces. Now it's just the small details left, like the Missiles, landing gear, the gear bays, the vents above the intakes, etc. Then I gotta do the Bump / Specular / Reflection maps for it as it only has diffuse maps right now. Those will hopefully go alot quicker, as they are just derrivatives of the diffuse maps. I think I'm gonna stick with keeping the Gun Pod up higher, as it only looks good low if you are looking at the plane directly from the side. From any other angle, it looks a bit wierd cause it makes a bit of a gap between the gun and the fuselage. Keeping it flush looks better I think. The only thing left on this model that I am dredding, it mapping the cockpit. UGH! TOO MUCH DETAIL!!!!! It's gonna take a while for that. Anyhow, here are the pics. Enjoy!

Ok, so I'm doing a little tweaking, and as far as the placement of the gun pod goes, I tried pulling it down a little, but I'm not sure wich one I like better. I'm kinda partial to having it tucked up nice and high under the fusulage, for that more believable areodynamic look, but having it lower shows off the gun pod more. Hmmmm . . . . . just not sure. What do all of you think?

Thanks for your compliment. To answer your question, you are right about the Rear Landing Gear Doors, however, I did cut them up a while back into the 3 parts, but translated to 3D, that version just looked wierd. I think it's because the leg has to be wide enough to accomodate the landing gear, that when the doors are made wide enough to fill the gear bay, but cut in half to make them 3 pieces, they are just too short, and too fat. It just look odd, so again I decided to go for asthetically pleasing over accurate in that case. Also, I do believe the gun pod is slung a bit high ( good eye to "the white drew carey" I didn't even notice that untill you mentioned it. ) While the high gun pod does give the plane a more streamlined look, I think I will try lowering it a bit ans see wich way looks better. Again, I'll do some renders and see wich way looks the best. Thanks again all for your comments. I love to see so much enthusiasm over this work. It helps keep me from getting too distracted and actually trying to finish this stuff, especially since my attention span really isn't all that great. Jason

Thanks Nanashi, that's high praise! To answer your question, my SDF-1 model renders pretty quick, about 5 minutes to render, however, that is going to increase drasticly once I gert some maps, and directional lights put in the scene, right now there is just a skylight as the only light source. Also, my SDF isn't very accurate either, there is so much discrepency in the various scenes in the TV show, and the Perfect memory book, that I just decided to go for astetically pleasing over accurate. For all those wondering, the SDF-1 with the city so far is almost 2.5 million poly's.

A minor update, mapped the tail fins and the feet / thrust vector nossles. Everything is coming together, most of the major hull parts mapped, just a couiple more pieces, then on to the small details like the Gear, the Gear bays, landing lights, and then the ever so complicated COCKPIT " . . . cring!!!! . . . " That's gonna take a while! I'm on a mission to finish this thing here soon, so you should see lots of small updates here in the next few weeks. Hope you enjoy!

Howdy all, some more updates. Keeping the momentum, I might actually finish this VF before I get distracted by something else. Anyhow, I noticed that a few of you are interested in helping out, that would be great. I have a couple og things that need to be started on. First of all, the biggest thing I'm gonna need help with, is the characters. They take a long time, and there are alot of them. So if anyone would like to help out, or knows someone who wants to help, the characters would have the biggest beneficial impact right now. I'm also looking for someone to start modeling the SDF-1's bridge interior. I'm sure there is more things I can think of to help out, but I need to get a little farther along first before I can delegate. Anyone interested, please feel free to contact me. Here are the updates, enjoy!

Ok, here are some more minor updates. Man I like doing this stuff, but it takes FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I need to just lock myself in a room with no windows, TV, etc. Just 4 walls, a computer, and a little door to pass food and water through, and Just work, for a month straight!!!!!! For those of you asking, I am going to finish the maps for my VF-1A, then I'm not sure what is next. I'm either going to do a Battroid version of the VF-1A, or I will start the VT-1D trainer, or I will go back and finish the modeling of Macross City, and the Island, and maybey the Dadelus and Prometheus to put in the harbor. ( I also want to add some more geometric detail to the SDF-1 itself ) So let's have a vote, what do you guys want to see after I finish my VF-1A maps? VF-1A Battroid VT-1D in fighter mode More SDF-1 and Macross City modeled out So far I have had 1 guy express interest in helping out. I am going to sort out some assignments for him soon. Anyone else who is interested, I could use the help. Everyone who helps out will get full credit, when this thing gets finished some day! Thanks Jason