Doktor Gonzo

Hi, I'm looking for a left wing flap (for a Roy 1S, but any 1/48's flap would do.) Anyone able to help a brother out?

Obituary "There he goes - one of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.".

Rod: Gorgeous! Coby: Looks better than ZOIC's! Quick post of my own stuff to add: just a little demo of my rigged flight control surfaces. Please note that this is a screengrab, not a render, so don't expect "pretty": Control Surfaces

Read the first reply, it is from JMS, creator of Babylon 5

Hmmm, all good suggestions. The key layout is easily changable, I'll probably do that. The respawn invulnerability also - I knew it was a problem, but for some reason I never thought of just a few seconds of invulnerability - I was contemplating complicated schemes to detect passing rocks and delay the respawn. As for the sound issues... I'm a Flash noob, and I can't seem to figure out how to get things to settle down. It's not the samples, nor is it the stereo code - just seems to be something that happens if you try to play too many sounds at once. And the collision detection is the roughest of all - as it is, I'm using Flash's inbuilt methods, which for bitmaps are limited to simple bounding boxes. Getting more precision there would either require switching to vector rocks (something I'm not anxious to do, I named the dang thing Rasteroids after all!) or writing my own detection routine. And while that might be an interesting exercise, it'll have to wait until I have more time to toss at it...

hi... would you like to see my monster and MG Balls? Oh crap, I just totally lost it..... can't stop laughing to type.....

The descent imager camera doubles as a spectral radiometer - which, in English, means it should be capable of registering light wavelength, i.e. color. I'd bet that we'll be seeing some full color images in the days ahead...

According to the press conference, first pics should be coming out at roughly 3PM EST, or 2 and a quarter hours from now...

NASA tv is reporting that the probe transmitted for at least 90 minutes after touchdown. Provided there's any kind of interpretable data in that transmission, this ought to be incredibly interesting.

Oh, I completely agree. However, I do not at all understand why some of the people on this thread have taken these vague rumblings of the zombie hordes in LotD "evolving" and assumed it to mean that Romero will be giving us sprinting, agile zombies ala the DotD remake. I had assumed, like Graham and some others here did, that what we will be seeing is further development of the idea introduced with "Bub" in Day of the Dead, with the zombies regaining some ability to reason, plan, use tools etc. Personally, I think the idea of a nascent "zombie society" is a fascinating one...

Cross-post from the games board, thought I'd share Rasteroids

Agreed. Romero is essentially the originator of the flesh-eating zombie apocalypse genre - all others take their lead directly from him. And he has seldom been approached by newer filmmakers, even given all the modern techno-dazzle at their disposal. The reason? Romero's films have actual depth to them. The horror and the action are only the superficial attractants - the real "meat" of the trilogy lies in its nuanced character portrayals and biting social satire. While the films are (yes, Chrono) very much "of their day" in terms of production technique, they're hardly "dated". This is because themes of racial tension, of ruinous group disharmonics, of urban blight, of consumer culture shabbiness, of the military vs. science vs. religion.... are all pretty timeless. And these films explore them with gusto and a measure of subtlety, all while giving us heaping helpings of FULL-ON GIALLO HYPERGORE. By comparison, all Resident Evil gives us is Milla Jobovich in a towel.... which, dammit, goes a long way, but still...

Also the basis for a really funny Simpsons "Treehouse of Horrors" segment a bunch of years back...

...but I just made this, it's kinda cool, thought I'd share: Rasteroids

Hey, check it out: Had my colleague Dr. Spengler run the photo through his trusty electroectospectroanalyzer... the results are kinda eerie:

Man, that SO owned the real thing....

:: ::plead:: ::whimper::

I'd really appreciate it, thanks!

Please, somebody help! This kit needs buildin'!

Watch this immediately.

I was recently cleaning out a closet at my parents house when what should I find, but 6 sprues of robot parts! A quick evaluation confirmed it was an Orgroid (well, in all probability the old Revell "Robotech Defenders" release), and the parts all look to be there (I hope), but the directions are long since gone. Is there any chance that somebody with this kit could do me a BIG favor and shoot me a scan of the directons? Thanks!

Brian! Great to see you back, and nice helmet! Give us some more cool stuff soon....

I could try sending it, but the file is over 40 megs (lotta polygonal detail) - can your account handle that? And you can avoid having the leg spin like that by setting up a Pole Vector constraint. For that, you need the IK handle and a Locator. Select the IK handle, select the locator, activate the constraint. Now your knee will always point at the locator.

Here we go: This rig (polygons hidden for easy view) represents my GERWALK mode. The top image shows the rig with IK active (and with the IK handle as the currently selected object - I have just clicked where the "FK" is visible onscreen) and the IK handle's "Twist" component set to 0 (as can be seen in the attribute editor on the right.) As a result, the leg defaults to the forward-bent battroid configuration. But in the bottom pic, I set Twist=120. As a result, the joint bends around backwards, as it happens into a decent GERWALK stance.

Not quite what I am talking about Dat, but I did indeed do that - and it's even more complicated.... the kneepads are driven by a scripted formula when the legs are free for keyframe animation (i.e. in Battroid mode) but need to be connected to a driven key during transformation. To switch between one driving node or the other, I use the snippet of script I published a page or two back on this thread. KN: I'll try and grab some screencaps later to show you what I mean re: the leg IK handles and their Twist value...