mechaninac

Thanks for the positive remarks everyone; they are greatly appreciated. Here's something I just recently started...the NICKICK:

Now for the ISHFORN GERWALK. Not even as close to completion as the "command type":

Here is the "command type" ISHKICK GERWALK...a bit further from completion than the "normal type":

Here are a couple renders of some Terram mecha from Super Dimension Century Orguss that I modeled over one year ago. They are not finished, but pretty damned close. First off the ubiquitous "normal type" ISHKICK GERWALK All models created and rendered with Pro Engineer.

CG Regult...ambitious. I'll be looking forward to seeing it.

Rod, that model of yours just keeps getting better and better. The "flames" look more like bright out gassing than rocket exhaust, but still look way cool. As for the hand, your modeling looks fine; the finger/palm proportions look good, but IMO, the DYRL? manipulator design is among the fugliest ever...the offset pinky is just plain odd. This is, of course, not your fault...it's just the nature of the beast. I've done a bit more work on my Tomahawk: The waist, arms, feet components are pretty much finished; the chassis parts are getting there. The legs...nothing done on that score yet; those will be next. Well here is a picture:

They are all graduates of the "Gorilla Thugs" package handling school. In order to ship something that delicate, and have it survive unscathed, through the deplorable manhandling of just about any parcel service it may be necessary to carve a "form fitting" foam cradle that almost completely cushions the figure to keep it from shifting. This foam sarcophagus should then be placed inside a snug box and this should be then string tied to the center of a larger box to keep it from traveling to the extremities and packing peanuts or crumpled newspapers placed around it for shock absorption. And don't forget to insure it just in case. Think of it as shipping nitroglycerin.

Thanks everyone for the positive feedback based on such a poor render. Dat, Rod: in due time. Real work is picking up again and beginning to intrude in my play time . As the model stands, its about 45 - 50% complete, so there is still a lot of modeling and fiddling to do. Edit: I need a website with good reference images of all the destroids with internal details, external storages, missiles and cockpit images. I've tried googling it but have come up snake eyes; if anyone can help it'd be greatly appreciated.

[Gold leader's voice over the comm. link] Stay on Topic...stay on Topic. [Gold leader's voice off] Nah! Go ahead and carry on...it's entertaining.

Dat, Rod...absolutely stunning. Like Knight said: Roy vs. Hikaru death match would be really nice . Now for my paltry contribution...I know it only has one leg, and the render isn't all that good, but WTH:

Sheetmetal and Pro Cable are built into the Foundation Package IIRC, aren't they? I haven't had many opportunities to use sheetmetal, and I've never had to use "cable". I work mostly (99.5% of the time) with complex organic and often ergonomic designs that are a monumental pain to define parametrically. As for parking your logic driven mind to step into the world of free form modeling...I feel your pain. I'll PM you with a tip for importing an image into Pro/E

Wow, that just keeps getting better and better. The only slight nitpick I have is an odd surface glitch you seem to have on the leg FP (see the attached image); otherwise, this is just about one of the best VF-1 FP CG interpretations I've ever seen. Bravo!

The company's department where I work utilizes AutoCAD for 2D layouts, minor drafting, and record keeping; and Pro/E for all 3D engineering work. Another department also uses Solid Works to accommodate vendors employing that modeler. Our Design department just got a copy of Rhino, but it's too early to see how well it'll work for us since nobody is knowledgeable enough in it to properly use it to anywhere near it's full potential. Pro/E is my "bread and butter"; it's a very comprehensive (first or second widely available parametric solid/surface modeler) engineering software that will go from surfaces to solids and back again and/or in combination...it also includes sheet metal functionality like many other high-end CAD programs; but it only exports a few widely usable cross-platform formats (IGES, STEP, VRML, OBJ, STL, etc. in 3D and DXF, DWG, etc, in 2D)

Saturday they'll show all five episodes back to back at 8:00 pm EST. Check local listings to be sure though. Chris Thanks for the heads-up on the compiled re-airing.

Just caught the second episode of "Clone Wars" (7:00PM ET), and thus far it's pretty good. The airing format has been revised to 15 minutes installments instead of the previous 5 min. segments; this is an immense improvement as it allows the story to flow much more smoothly. And now, the cartoon has elements linking it to the upcoming movie. IMO, this is proving to be an excellent preamble to "Revenge of the Sith"

Tarz, I do have wildfire 2.0, but have not yet migrated to it...it's very counter intuitive to anyone who is/was used to the older interface. For the creation of my destroid I'm currently using ver. 2001, as it's the one I'm most comfortable using (the gradient blue background is a dead giveaway). I didn't realize Wildfire came with a mechanica-like animation module built into it. I currently have the foundation package with advanced surfacing and assembly modules on both the 2001 and Wildfire and wasn't aware of any other goodies included with those setups by PTC. I may try my model in Wildfire just to see what happens; heck, I'm going to switch to it eventually anyway. For animating this thing, if I decide to do so, I'll export it to Wavefront and clean it up in Lightwave (Solid and Surface modelers always triangulate files in very weird ways). But I have other intentions for my model(s).

There is a method to my madness... It helps when the program you're using has a "global interfearance" detection function.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. It's a Pro Engineer model composed of individual part files put together into separate sub-assemblies (see attached image of chassis sub-asm) that are then combined into a master (my previous post) assembly file. Some of the components are linked to each other so that a change to one part causes any "children" to self update after the whole assembly is regenerated twice. The way I see it, I'm only 35-40% done with the Tomahawk.

Opus, stop trying to make me think... Here's more food for thought, paraphrasing something I once read: "Conspiracy theories are wonderfully useful things; they keep shallow, lazy minds from the labor of true thought."

After Rodovan's post I feel like my contribution is rather flimsy, but here it goes anyway...progress on the Destroid front:

A bit of progress on the Tomahawk...

IMO, Star Trek is no longer Star Trek when B&B are at the helm. They've been consistently driving the franchise towards mediocrity and irrelevance since GR died.

You got that right. The VF-4, VF-11, YF-19, and YF-21 would be on the top of my list of deserving designs to receive the 1/48 treatment.

In their own clueless way, Paramount and Co. are just piling more dirt on Star Trek's grave. If they just let Star Trek lie dormant for the next 5-10 years or, at least, until someone with a "real" idea with a good script comes along to resurrect this dead horse. Otherwise, they'll just have another theatrical bomb (IMO, Insurrection and Nemesis both stunk to high heaven) on their hands. That could be good in a way; it'll reinforce the fact, in their minds, that Star Trek no longer sells...not because it can't sell given a good, well told and well acted story, but because they just manage to screw it up on a repeated basis.