chrono

Don't worry. I'll be doing a Large(4000*4000) render after I get the last bit of the Level 2 details in place.

>EXO<, thanks! '' Well after a MASSIVE program clusterF^CK and 8 hours of redoing everything that I had lost I've finished laying in the minor panel lines. I also found a VERY quick way of applying the next 5 greeble passes(Thank you Geometery Paint!), so I should have the Level 2 details finished by Wednesday and maybe earlier if things go well! Anyways here's a Level 2 detail scale VS distance test. The large image is about 50 meters away from the hull and the small image is roughly 350.

Oh and just to give you an idea of my real insanity.... I've scaled the ship up and the major panel lines are ONE meter wide. The current panels are inbetween 7-10 centimeters wide.

YOU hate to ask! How do you think I feel! I almost never work at the full polycount. Mainly because I only have a low-end video card. The current count is roughly 619K. I plan on subtracting about 100k, or so, but I'm gonna be adding that and more right back in various other details.

Old News: Level 1: Major panel lines Status: cleaning up errors and finalizing That's right Level 1. Altogether their are 4 total levels of addtional detail. Level 1 Major panel lines Level 2 Minor panel lines Level 3 Weapons intergration Level 4 Trench details New News: Current Status Level 1: Complete Level 2: 70% finished with pass 1(out of 6) I got tired of building panel details(and the repeated crashs) and did some material testing. Ignore the errors on the right side of the ship, they are mirroring light artifacts caused by the engines materials. The hull material I'm not exactly happy with but it's fairly close to what I want. Also I finally bought a new 3D program so I can finally fix some of the annoying errors on this ship. It also means that all of the other ships(or nearly anything else for that matter) will be built in that program.

I have to say this is by far the best pic. Second'd. The motion is passed.

I am throughly UN-impressed. Seeing the 'new' and 're-imagined' Batman material makes me wish for someone to give a rats ass about making the orginal.

It's not that there's no market, it's that Viacom has no clue how to exploit it and has run it into the ground with bad production and poor marketing. Hell, they got sued over it a while back by Activision(who felt that Viacom had screwed them by driving the liecnse into the ground after they bought game rights). There is no market within the US. Everybody else doesn't count according to H-wood. Frankly it was boring from the very beginning with flat actors and flat characters. It failed because it was a space opera that had no opera to it what so ever. Remember when Archer had to choice whether he was going to steal that techno-babble warp thingie from those aliens? That was a character turning point if there ever was one! Nothing happened. It had no life!

The main problem with the IP laws are that they are pretty well voided by the expense of suing the companys that you worked for, or who 'stole' the idea. Most, well over 99.9999999 % of the companys out there(exclucing most companys under 10 personel), company's require you to sign a waiver(ie anything you design using ANY of our assets is ours) as part of your requirements of employement. However the IP laws are a double edged sword. It's actually the legal system itself that makes the laws un-enforcable for the people without money. Don't needlessly blame the rich, since if you were in their shoes you'd be doing the same thing. But all that aside. I also see the comission market growing to take up the slack. The internet has already helped hundreds of small businesses to exist.

The image size really doesn't bug me much. But damn does that flash kill me! If you want comments then your gonna have to set-up a decently lite area where a camera flash is NOT needed. A box, a white sheet, and 3 lamps(those clip-on type extension arm ones work great) are all that you need.

As it should! Killer colors!! But if I get one I'm changed that blue to an emerald green.

The problem with that Cdr Fokker is that unless you have TONS of those ships firing and HEAVY ECM behind them their missiles are pretty meaningless against the sheer weight of anti-missile/mecha fire that the Zen have at the larger ship levels. It's not gonna be an easy thing to balance out.

The survey's were from around 8-10 months ago. Not really that hard to look up if your so inclined too. Oh pleaze! These people, and a large majority of 'artist' in general, are business people first and artists a far second. The ONLY reason that they can refuse is because they were in a position to from the beginning. Also many of the 'artists' are starting to keep control over their works more and more so they won't be taken by their publishers. Where the publishers were fine with getting the materials out of country and not caring how it was handled, unless it was very damned poorly. Supply and demand. .... and of course now poor quality books. Have you seen the CRAP that DC's manga line is! It looks like a 3rd grader pasted the books together. Viz's quality has taken a MASSIVE nosedive in not only book quality but also in translation. TokoyoPop well is being typical TP. So far only the DelRey, CPM Manga, Shonen Jump(a VIZ subdivision), and ADV manga lines are being responsible to their audiences.

What's the source for the 2% statistic? I prefer the way things are now with manga releases in the US than they were even five years ago. Darkhorse, MegaTokoyo, AnimAmerica and several other sites and company's themselves did a survey as to whether to flopped vs unflopped was a large issue. The MT, Darkhorse, and AniAmerica survey's showed 46% prefered flopped vs 48% prefered UN-flopped. 2% on nearly any consumer product is no where near enough for any major chance, unless their was an increase of profit involved. But then again this IS the disposable generation!

Personally I always cheat when it comes to balancing ships across races. Seriously though I give same class ships an equal value number, but change the values that equal the number. Pretty much a 1+2=3 situation where 3 is a number that is unchangable and where the class is theorically equal across all races. However adding in the 3D element throws alot of chaos into the equation. The worst problem is the balance of missile/fighters versus CIW's. Don't wanna end-up with 'super scout' syndromes! Also another number to be considered should be "range". A good example is the Zjent's amount of missile fire. Having a longer range, less durability, less damage and would benefit Spacy's CIW's and Vert's. Spacy would then have slightly shorter ranged, higher durability and higher damage missiles to off-set the lower amount of missile fire they would have. Oh and sometimes having plain graphics with weapon layouts is easier then just number crunching. Used that alot when I was MOD'ing SFC stuff.

OLD OLD news. They released this info back in July 2004. Going to the un-flopped version was solely a business move and has virtually nothing to do with fan demands. The demand for unflopped books is only 2% higher then flopped books the last time I saw and that was for the entire industry not just a single book line. Smaller books. Cheaper paper. Lower quality. Slightly lower price. And these equal massive monetary gains for the publisher. Unfortunatly english readers now have to deal with poor quality books. Hell I can get equally garbage translations and equal quality scans from the internet for free! One of the main reasons why I've stopped buying Darkhorse manga. It's reduced quality and high price.

Your opinion is pretty much to be expected from an Illustration major and most Illustrators in general. All of the mentioned artists except for Frank Cho all have obvious problems with their art. That aside I do agree that the work is clearly rushed and just plain poor from either a RT/Macross perspective AND an avid comic book readers standards. Though it is understandable given the source lacking offical materials. I soooooooo cannot wait for american comics to finally start using digital equipment in the creation process and not just the coloring and printing aspects either. The current way is incredibly poor for todays standards.

Finally broke down a got a Photobucket account. There are a total of 3 images right now. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v648/chr...pdate12905f.jpg This is the END of the OFFICAL version. All other details that I add will be subjective and simple guess work.

Yup seaplanes don't have the need of a aircraft carrier. However they save no money and are of limited usage. Because they need land support bases that cost in the millions to establish They are only good for tropical island hopping and very isolated areas with lakes nearby. Cool model though!

And the rear view.

I've finished the lower engine piece and added some further details(the last 7 thrusters are on). Next up is the black areas and small indent that the lower engine has above it. Hopefully then I can finally begin the surface detailing!

Sadly the ONLY thing impressive about these designs are the effort involved. The whole Mazinger 1901 series design ethos just doesn't look right on these models. It really takes away from the Getter 1 design and the drill arm on G2 looks like pretty sad combination between a chainsaw and drill chuck. However I'm liking the bad-assed arms on Getter 3!!! WTF is up with the lame-assed NGE wannabe faces?!?!

Yeah just abit big. The_Woz, I recently found out that if you model with large objects you get better flexiblity and better performance with some of the tools. I'm not saying to just change the object size and scene settings in the control panel! You actually have to have the object larger the the intial single scene start-up size. It's something like you have to model with the object in the hundreds of meters when the scene is set with meters as the scene settings. Also to help moving around such a scene place a cube or simple object roughly where you are working, so you can simply select that object and double click your mouse wheel to focus and rotate the view easier. It also helps to remind you where you stopped working last. BTW it's nicely coming together!!!

ALL, thanks! Mr March, Generally boolean stress is simply caused by too much usage of the boolean tool on a single model/mesh. Just think of it as hitting a single nail several dozen times. You know it's going to bend it's just when will it happen. Or just think of how poorly a fragmented harddrive performs. To be honest I was going to build most of the details into the wireframe before I extracted the final model, but frankly it would've take far more effort with little return. Lestat, No turrents or weaponary have been placed beyond the planning stages. I still need to dig-up information on the trench details. The same goes for the surface detail, which is already planned out and only needs to be added. The only real surface detail right now is the nacelles thrusters. --------------------------- My next steps are to clean-up the trenchs and add the detail greebles for them. After that I'll finish the bow thrusters and finalize the lower engine nacelle. Then I'll add the surface detail, surface greebles and weaponary.

...... and image number 2.