Mechmaster

Finished playing with my CF's textures (for now) so here it is in a classic valk pose.

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Time for some CG Valkgirls

Originally I quite liked the plain "anime style" appearance of my battroid model but having seen some of the gorgeous high detail valks in this thread I decided to add panel lines to my own model. My VF1-A has just undergone a virtual respray and in addition to panel lines it even has a little "dirt" too. Here is the new look leg, what does everyone think? Is this a desirable effect or a huge, steaming pile of poo?

If you want to have a go at CG art before spending big money on one of the more powerful apps you could try Doga at www.doga.co.jp or Metasequoia at www21.ocn.ne.jp/~mizno/main_e.html They are Japanese shareware programs but I believe both have an English interface available. Doga is particularly suitable for beginners as it uses a system of prebuilt objects which can be combined and edited to create all manner of mecha. I've not tried Metasequoia myself but it looks to be more versatile than Doga, but probably has a steeper learning curve, on the plus side there is a freeware version so you could try it without having to pay anything.

I too would be interested to hear what anyone has to say on this, I seem to recall reading that the gains were not that great and that ordinary dual processors gave better results than a single hyperthreading chip.

Yes, you're right. It didn't occur to me at the time, I guess I was thinking more of the original anime and the Imai/Arii super valk kits which didn't have any markings on the legs, but the Hasegawas of course do have them and it looks better. I'll have to rectify it sometime. Thanks to everyone for the kind words.

CG Valkgirls coming soon... meanwhile; http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?...t=ST&f=3&t=3519

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I didn't modify the kit overmuch, most of the work involved getting rid of the marks of the mold release pins which dimpled every part. Bandai's Armoured Lady range are plastic injection kits but the parts breakdown is more akin to a resin kit with just a few big solid pieces so there were very few joins to clean up. A rummage in my bits box turned up the super parts from Arii's 1/100 transformable VF1 kit so I cut away the engine bells and the the missile launcher section of the FAST packs and replaced them with the more detailed Arii parts. The whole was sprayed with white auto primer and the other colours handpainted in enamels. The little round markings were drawn on with a technical pen and a 3mm circular stencil, all other markings are from Wave's Macross decal sheets. The nav lights below the knees were cut from self adhesive silver paper and painted with Tamiya coloured varnish. Finally it was sprayed with clear lacquer and then the flesh areas dulled down a bit with satin varnish.

I've had this kit kicking around my workshop for more than a decade now and since November (and indeed most of the next century) has been declared Valkgirl month I decided it was a good time to get it built.

Cool. So I guess you're working on the Ishforn now? Do you plan on doing any more Orguss mecha? I've always fancied doing the Orguss itself as its one of my favourites, but I tend to struggle with stuff that has a lot of complicated curves.

Here it is Dok, as anticipated the fat battroid legs really push the width out, the arms weren't too bad, it was mainly the shoulder armour that was bulked up. The fit between the chest and back sections was poor, the back being much flatter then the chest, leading to a mismatch. Considering that the model was never intended to transform it looks a lot better in fighter mode than I had expected.

Great work mechaninac. I haven't seen that commander type design before, is it actually from the show or is it an original design?

The bright colours and the harsh omnidirectional lighting reduce the realism, there isn't enough shadow. Also the backgrounds don't help, they are so obviously pictures and the models are so obvioulsy simply standing in front of them rather than being part of them. They really are nice models but the pictures would look more realistic if the models had more weathering and wear, plus more directional lighting and decent backdrops.

KAWAIIIII!

I'll give it a try sometime this weekend. I want to get round to building a fighter mode Valk at some point and I will be using as many parts from my battroid as I can as it will probably be easier to adapt existing pieces rather than build entirely new ones. I can do this as a sort of dry run to see how much work I am going to have to do later.