Mechmaster

There is talk of Games Workshop making a Warhammer 40K RPG but the present system is a miniature based, tabletop, tactical wargame. Now that you mention it though the Space Marine helmet does resemble a Zaku slightly.

Its not from a show, its an Imperial Space Marine from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 table-top war-game (my other hobby)

I'm a Cinema 4D user, been using it since the Amiga floppy disk version, many many years ago. I don't know Voltron but you seem to have a good solid start with those lions. The key to mixing CG with photos is... dirt! CG models always look too clean, so when you do your final texturing make sure and add some noise to the materials' diffusion channel to combat that CG cleanliness.

Looking good. What is the poly count for this so far?

Okay my friend, (and anyone else who wants a BIG pic of a Valk) you can download the file here... http://www.mechmaster.co.uk/temp/vf1j.rar The RAR file is just over 3Mb, once unpacked the image itself is around 7Mb. Its a TIF with alpha channel to remove the background and at 300 dpi should print out at 7.33 by 10 inches.

300 dpi is no problem, but that doesn't tell me how big you want it, can you give me a figure in pixels or inches? As for the background, if you are going to remove it totally then I can render the image as a TIFF file with an alpha channel and save you the work. I will see if I get time at the weekend, would you want fully coloured valks, or greyscale so people can make their own custom colour schemes? If I don't have time you could perhaps talk to scott8539 as he already has the models, or indeed you may have the models yourself by then and not need me anyway. I'm sorry mate, I never thought about that, I first started using Cinema 4D back in my Amiga days and when I had to move to the PC I continued to use IFFs out of habit. What you need is Irfanview, its free from http://www.irfanview.com/ If you deal with graphics files it is a very useful tool, its one of the few programs I feel I absolutley have to have on every PC I own. The batch conversion function in the File menu will do what you want in no time flat. Just browse to the directory with the tex files, change the "Files of type:" setting to IFF/ILBM, highlight the files and click the "Add" button, make sure Jpeg is selected as the output option and click "Start."

No problem, it will be good to see the models put to work rather than just having them sat around on my hard drive moaning about how long its been since they were last used. Help yourself (see above comment) As for converting the files, try the shareware version of quick3D from here - http://www.quick3d.org/index.html If that doesn't do the trick you should try Googling "3d file converter" and see what it finds, I seem to recall that there were a couple of other freeware programs available for this sort of task.

Looks like a fun project, I don't have time to become actively involved myself but I've recently made most of my Macross CG models available to the public domain following a request by another forum member. They are all in Maxon's Cinema 4D format and of varying quality as I made them some years ago but if you can use any of them then feel free. The download page is here - http://www.mechmaster.co.uk/macross/macross-dl.html Good luck with the project.

How about something like this? I can do it to any size you require, with whatever background colour you want. I can also adjust the viewing angle and pose to suit.

Yeah, that does look good. Whats missing from the body though is the huge vent or intake thing which isn't visible (or simply doesn't exist) in the cruiser mode. It helps fill that big gap between the armpits and the hips.

That looks really good, makes me want to go back and re-work my own model to take advantage of the much more powerful software and PC I'm now using. I actually started modifying it to be transformable but ended up getting sidetracked by something else, that must have been a year ago at least and I haven't touched it since. I'm just glad to have someone still using that model, I tend to build them and abandon them.

Got mine this morning, beautiful kit, I think it may just storm its way to the front of my build queue.

Its not so much the cost of the actual items that hits me hard as the cost of shipping, tax etc. Until recently my most expensive item was a tie between my Yellow Sub SDF1 cruiser mode and a 1/6 Sailor Moon kit. £120 ($224) each. Last month however I bought Bandai's 1/400 Musai cruiser, £64 ($119) for the item itself. Shipping, VAT, customs clearance fee and Saturday delivery charge boosted that to £133 ($248) more than doubling the original price. But hey, its only money, right?

This is currently registering around 10.5 on my droolometer! Keep up the amazing work, I can hardly wait for the announcement that you are ready to start shipping.

Wow, I don't get on the forum for a week or so and look what I miss. I hope I'm not too late. Please put me down for one.