mechaninac

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.

A bit more progress with the Tomahawk...

One of the only saving graces of this Robotech project is that it makes the production of the Beta/Tread fighter in toy form much likelier than before. Here's hoping.

Man, that's borderline pornographic...I love it. Stunning talent Ryuji, specially when your speed is taken into consideration...flawless.

I'm using a few models to acquire reference dimensions; namely: 1/100 Bandai Destroid Phalanx, 1/100 Imai Tomahawk, 1/72 Imai Defender (mostly for visual ref.). And here's a bit of tomahawk love...:

And where, pray tell, do you come by this ETA for the, AFAIK un-annouced, MPC Beta? Inquiring minds want to know. It's not that I don't believe you, but on the matter of the Beta ever actually seeing the light of day I'm extremely skeptical...especially since, IIRC, a prototype has yet to be shown.

One more update: Tarz, you work with Pro/E, heh? I'll give one guess as to what application I'm using to create my Destroid(s).

What he said; otherwise they can keep it.

Minor progress:

The Atelier Sai figures will be rather pricey then, but if they are fully articulated, a la Maxfactory's Guyvers, than I guess I'd rather wait for those.

No more 1/48s for you... j/k

This is what I could find from Yamato USA, but no info on actual size, price, or release date: