chrono

What I'd really like to see Paramount do with Star Trek for the next few years is stay away from the episodic television and big screen motion pictures.  They have proven through their lack of advertising for the current series and the general lack of imagination that's plagued the whole franchise since TNG, and the dwindling fan base, that there isn't a market for them anymore.  Let it rest.  Instead, I think that if they released a movie of the week once a year or a short mini-series every few years, with innovative plot elements, fresh ideas and viewpoints, and peripheral stories framed within the context of any of the time frames that have been seen thus far, and some that haven't (ENTERPRISE-C era) there would be enough interest to make it a profitable and satisfying endeavor.

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.

The metallic one is even more beautiful than the regular one.

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.

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.

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.

IM An illustration major which is why I have certain tastes which I see unfulfilled with this book., i am also a big military aviation nut. I also LOVE mecha artwork. I am aware these people are from wildstorm but none of them are exactly "up there". The Jim lee cover is good and someone elses but the majority of these suck. I don't hate the artist, I hate the work.

Perspective is off and so is anatomy. I don't place any of these guys on the same level as Joe NG, jaCk Kirby, Jeff Matsuda, or Masamune Shirow. Or kaoru Shintai. Shintai's work is awesome, here is someone who KNOWS what airplanes look like. Shirow has good work too, he comes from a traditional art background. It's obvious he knows his stuff too. The robotech guys seem like amateurs in comparison. You want to see good people drawings take a look at Frank Cho, and ack Kirby.

Why do I say this work is BS's and rushed? Why do I agree that it is trendriding? Because truthfully I do not think it is that good. Joe Ng, he is good. Don Figueroa, GREAT at mecha, not as good at people. I like some of Udon but they lost a lot of appeal. They were good on the onset but this market has been so freaking saturated with pseudo manga that their work started losing appeal to me. And Pat Lee? NO. Jae Lee, who worked on DW's tf/gijoe book, is TONS better.

I hate the style Because it seems rushed, and it seems "forced". Forced as in WANTING to be a different anime look but not exactly getting there. I'm not getting worked up about this just trying to get you guys to see my frame of my mind. I normally ignore these books. When I heard HG gave the license I knew it was something to ignore. I knew it would suck. I saw for myself and it did. There are only a few people capable of doing a pseudo manga look and making it work and unfortunately these people are not it. Udon does good covers but interiors look like they are slacking off. To me that is not cool. This is all personal preference of course, but to me some of the work seems lazy. And I know all too well what lazy art and well made art is like, hell i'm exposed to it every day at school AND in free time. Always around it no matter what. Whoever drew these comics needs to know good anatomy as well and it kills me that even though this is bette than comico, that even after 20 years, WHOEVER HANDLES THE LICENSES IN THE USA STILL DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO DRAW VALKYRIES THAT WELL!! UGH FOR CHRIST SAKE IF YOU ARE GOPING TO DRAW A VAL;KYRIE FOR GOD'S SAKE STUDY THE DAMN THING RELIGIOUSLY BEFORE YOU EVEN PICK UP A PENCIL AND DRAW IT! The license to me was a waste of time.

Nothing personal just explaining my preferences. And yes it takes damn long as hell to do sequential art, I understand that, no need to school me like I said I'm in school for illustration and we do more than one can possibly imagine in a unbelievable span of time, and lose tons of sleep over it, so I definitely can tell if something is rushed or not.

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.

Seaplanes have the benefit of not needing an aircraft carrier and save alot of money too.

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.

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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.

Well after a lengthy lack of an update here's what happened. Basically I had gotten to near this point in the models build about 3 weeks ago when I started getting errors with the mesh. Well after a week of trying to work with it I figured out just what was going on. The model had some how developed boolean stress and was corrupted. This really hurt because I then had to re-think how I was going to model the various details. Sadly the ONLY approach I had left was to hand draw/add everything and leave the large pieces simply in a heiarchial state(glued). So it's taken me awhile to get much done on her and I'm finally nearing where I was before the mesh got corrupted.

The current mesh is now 559k and renders in about nine minutes under a fake GI light dome.

At first I thought it was an illusion because of the added wireframe overlay, but it IS sharp. So I'll adjust that. I'll also soften other areas too. Because I just checked the finished model and it's something like 1950 after triangulation.

I'm not sure what you mean Lestat.

Are you referring to the little top and bottom fins on the larger engines or the appearant sharpness in the bend area of the large engines themselves?

Not alot I can do with either without adding 10-30 faces and then I have to question whether it's actually worth doing because the game shader may be able to deal with that.

I'm gonna try and finish the model today, or at least get it to pre-triangulation.

Yeah sure.

Here you go it's a quickie screen capture and currently doesn't go more then 952 faces. Lots left to do yet. Gotta fix a few more things and hand triangulate this baby for it's best possible performance. I haven't worked on it since friday though, I've been working on it's older brother most of the weekend.

That's actually a superstition among tabletop gamers....they are ROCKET launchers, because they aren't MISSile launchers.

Rockets are dumbfire. Missiles are not. Bifors is not a company. Bofors is.

Oh, and one other thing. Count the number of missiles in those bays. Not 12, is it? On the models, I mean.

Oh, and Rockets are not generally referred to in rounds, they are in # of tubes in a launcher.

Oh, another thing. Since they are both the same thing, and look the same, and don't have a HUGE FRICKIN' sticker on them saying "Lockheed ATM-01 Rapier" how could we possibly differntiate them? So let me ask you this.

Who CARES?!

The creators of Macross, Studio Nue have specified these things. The Japanese text says rocket not missile. In Macross, the company is called Bifors, unlike the real life Bofors. Truth about designs and respect for the creators is something to care about.

I really hate to say this, but please we don't need you going around and correcting each and every error on the models forum, especially if you don't build them. For the purpose of the kit It doesn't really matter especially if it goes by the line art. I don't mean to be an ass, but its kinda annoying. We are happy enough to get these kits made in the first place, and just because you can pick out an error in its name (which has little to do with the cast) is not a modeling problem per say.If you want to make a thread about it nanashi, do it in the Movie and TV series thread please.

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To Noyhauser:

Excuse me sir, but I have right to post in any forum I wish to as long as its on-topic.

Also, I will correct misinformation as I see fit. If you get annoyed with me or my

posts. That is a personal problem and you can leave if you choose to.

______________________________________________________________________

People should be glad that there are people out there that want correct and accurate information. The same information can be seen in Macross Perfect Memory and on Macross Compendium.

There are such thing as guided rockets, even precision-guided rockets.

Anyways, these rockets are selfed guided-apparently with an electro-optical system See: http://nanashino.macrossmecha.info/missile...ors_rocket.html

Yes people should be happy that there are people out there that have the nessasary knownledge.

However unless they ask for the critism do not casually walk up and resolutely state that 'they' are wrong and that 'you' are right. The people you want to help will ignore you and any information you impart because you were a totally pompus arrogant ass about it too begin with! Offer the information don't state it! Regardless how 'correct' you feel you are.

Getting a person to really listen to you is an art everyone needs to learn.

Ranger565,

Man that's great stuff!! Maybe eventually the Macross fan built kits will get up to Gundam fan builds.

Avoid the 'Re-Mastered' RT like the plague/flu/old-folks home!!! The colors have been altered so badly that it looks positvely horrid! I mean the colors are so increased that they blur badly and they simply were not designed to be altered and it REALLY shows. Having the better sound isn't worth it.

Well maybe if you just play the sound tracks and then you are better off renting it and then ripping those tracks off so you can play them on a cd player instead of wasting time with a tv & dvd player.

Besides the 'Legacy' version is clearly superior even though it is bigger.

The_Woz,

Aviod using the following because of various problems with their usage:

- All NURBS functions. -

They are near total garbage for anything. Use Rhino3D if you want good NURBS.

- The Fillet/Chamfer tool. -

A total waste of time to use even for the most basic of uses. MASSIVELY error prone. There is a 'workaround', but it's time consuming and requires good working knowledge of SubD to work well.

- All Deforms. -

They are completely too imprecise to be usable beyond quick organics.

- Scaling tools. -

They do not scale correctly.

- All 3rd party plug-ins. -

THEY WILL CAUSE YOUR TS6 TO CRASH!

- All Spline tools. -

They are infinatly better in TS4.3.

- All animation tooling. -

Some of it's 'ok', but it's not stable enough for animating without cutting up your animation scene into smaller chunks.

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The ONLY 'PROS' I have for TS6 is it's SubD, and it's still somewhat bad because they removed TS5's version which was simply better to build with, and it's lowered rendering time compared to TS4.3.

To be honest you should've spent your money on Rhino3D, because it's COMPLETELY superior to TS for building man-made objects.