mechaninac

1/60 destroids by Yamato...that would be sweet.

Cobywan: Now that is some sweet work!

Mech, speaking of the canopy, that was one of the harder single objects I had to model believe it or not. Simple extruding the basic outer shell inwards toward the pilot resulted in a jacked up looking glass canopy. My frame and canopy are two seperate objects, the canopy glass is about 1 inch thick and portions of the frame being anywhere from about an inch and a half to 4 inches in the thicker areas. This are just estimates proportionate to the valks dimensions as a whole.

You'd think it wouldn't be that problematic, but I know what you mean. I play around with LW whenever I have the chance and have tried using smooth shift to give uniform thickness to "skins" with complex curvatures and have gotten mixed results at best, and simply extruding the things results in varying thickness. That's where a solid modeler really shines: all you have to do is create your canopy shape out of surfaces and extrude it in to make it a shell, or if you create the shape as a solid all you need to do is tell the program to shell it for you with the thickness you want by selecting wish surfaces to remove and you're done; it actually takes less time to do it than it takes to explain it. As for creating canopy frames all that's necessary is for the frames to be offset outward or the glass areas to be offset inward, and the final part is one single piece.

Here's an example of what I mean. The part has a uniform 1.5mm shell thickness. (You can also see my Ishforn chassis above; it is fully shelled at 1.25mm wall thickness at the moment).

Now for my humble contribution. A small break from the Orguss Ishkicks. May I present the Ishforn (quite a ways to go yet).

Aztek, Datterboy:

I was only speaking from personal experience. Most meshes I've downloaded off the Net have been modeled with optimization and poly-count reduction in mind. Take a fighter's canopy for example: most people will create the outside shape, make the resulting polygons double-sided, and proceed to texture and/or assign material properties (extremely efficient, but the end result has no volume). The fact that you guys create everything as enclosed volumes speaks volumes to your dedication to realism (at the cost of increased polygons).

Cobywan:

Tooling out of wood and foam...I guess what you have in mind would me more akin to a solid resin kit then a styrene or hollow-cast one. That would definitely make things simpler.

Brianw76:

Stunning! Just stunning.

OK.  I am seeing some very incredible work going on here.  Much better than anything I would do in Macross CGI.

So this has me thinking that It would be great to put the best Variable CGI model through the CNC process of patterning.

Is anyone here interested?

Now, there's an idea! What scale would you CNC into? 1/32? 1/24? And wouldn't you need enclosed volumes as opposed to double sided surfaces that only mimic shells? The reason I ask is that I work as a designer/engineer and utilize Pro Engineer (a high-end parametric solid/surface engineering application, for those who don't recognize the program) as my primary design tool and know that non-volumetric models are useless for Stereo Lithography unless you close all gaps either before-hand or in the 3D-Lightyear application used to prepare the STL files for construction, but this can cause unwanted patching because the program is only doing it's best guess at filling in the blanks (perhaps tool path vectoring requirements for CNC are not as stringent as those for SLA; please enlighten me). Regardless, this is a bold and fantastic idea, and would love to see it done.

Only one word of warning: Beware of Harmony Gold...the pricks

Aztek, Rodovan....fantastic work!

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

I've never really noticed it on the show and would love to take credit for its design; alas, it is not an original. The commander version is an Orguss canon Gerwalk. I based my model off my original standard version Ishkick and Takatoku's toy of the mecha. I don't actualy own the thing, so all my model work was based from a couple of pictures I copied off an eBay auction (see bellow for the toy box).

And the rear 3/4:

And here is a "new" one: the commander version of the Ishkick:

Front 3/4:

And the rear 3/4:

Whew! Modeling is all done on this baby, except the cockpit interion, but that can wait.

Frontal 3/4 view:

MM, absofreakinlutely gorgeous.

Cool, I loved that series. Just like Stargate SG1, Farscape reveled in contemporary pop culture and Sci-Fi cliches. Bravo!

I saw a bit of a Galactica special on the upcoming miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel, and while I don't mind a retelling of the story I do not like the PC direction they've taken on one of my favorite characters from the series...THEY'VE MADE STARBUCK A WOMAN, DAMMIT! Starbuck was a womanizing, fast talking, cynical, arrogant, extremely loyal, hard-drinking gambler with an endearing child-like zest for adventure that made HIM a perfect counter-balance to Apollo's goodie-two-shoes persona. Now Starbuck is a Xena/Beca Valentine (Andromeda) clone.

Other changes that are a bit jarring to a series fan: Baltar looks like a wuss (In the series, while Baltar was a bit 2 dimensional, he was a cool villain); Cylons were created by humans (Cylons got their name from the extinct reptilian race ,that revered the human form as the epitome on perfection, that created them ); the council knows about Earth and Adama knows where it is (Only Adama held the old legends as fact but only had a vague idea where to look for the decedents of the 13th tribe)

The special effects are, not surprisingly, light years better than the original series, and the new Viper does look cool and instantly recognizable; but, as with many new shows and films based or related to older (60's, 70's, early 80's) sci-fi...cough-Star Wars-cough-Star Trek-cough...it lacks all of the charm or the original.

I just had to vent...I feel much better now

Aliens, shmaliens, when is sombody going to make a decent set of Colonial Marines figures? Every attempt so far as been somewhat half-assed 

Graham

The only good Marines figures were the GI JOE 12" conversion kits and the resin 1/35 scale Colonial Marines made by..er...forgot who they were ;p

The company that makes them is "EVA Models", or at least a version of it. Here is a link

Yes, there is a DYRL Roy pilot. The Strike VF-1S also icludes the ducting behind the intake (introduced in the VF-1A CF) that fills in that ugly a$$ gap in GERWALK mode that is so prominent on the first 3 1/60 releases. Other than that, as mentioned before, it has all the proper attachment holes and slots for the armor bits.

Pretty damn gorgeous looking. What are your plans for it?

Thanks for the compliment; it's always encouraging when others appreciate your work. As for plans...I don't really have any. The entire model you see is a parametric Pro Engineer assembly, and pretty much incompatible with any other software (I think Solidworks is an exception) unless I convert it to a "dumb" solid such as STEP or IGES formats, or export it to OBJ format for CGI applications; this is what I may eventually do. However, Pro E's OBJ converter leaves much to be desired as it creates some very funky surface triangulations, and requires extensive downstream clean-up to make the file an optimized mesh; if I ever do this I may yet release the model publicly. Another idea I was contemplating was to export an STL and make an SLA model of the thing in something like 1/35th scale; but getting free time and/or space on the company's machine is a difficult proposition at best.

Sergio

PS.: Your pilot looks great, but IMO the helmet visor should be larger towards the bottom. Other than that it's awesome.

Thank You for that Alpha Shot! Man I have been looking around for some good detail of one of these in a line drawing so I could model it out. Once again thanks a bunch!

Just need to find the Beta Fighter now

You are most welcome. As for the Tread/Beta...good luck ; I've never been able to find anything even close to usable anywhere.

Oops! the attachment didn't take...Let's try this one more time:

hellohikaru, where did you get that Legioss/Alpha?

And more importantly, do you have more views and/or bigger versions?

Phyrox

I made it myself  based on several pictures and the tiny profile at Morgenstein's mospeada site.

I have an updated version coming. I planned the top view but haven't done anything about it yet as i am quite busy.

Sorry for hijacking this; but since I have a multi-view drawing of the alpha that some may be interested in, I thought I'd post it here (this drawing is derived form a poor 3 view picture I got off the internet that someone scanned from an old Robotech magazine or the REF Field Guide Book). I don't know if it's entirely accurate, but it's as close as I was able to get given what I had to work with:

And a multiview. The model is not yet finished, I still have to add a lot of small details here and there, but it's close.

And here is a rear shot...

*BUMP*

C'mon guys, let's post some stuff!

Your wish is my command...or...You asked for it!

Sorry bout that guys - I wasn't trying to show off or anything, I just believe in educating the masses!

Fulcy, no need to be sorry. I too tend to elaborate on things I'm passionate about; information is never a redundant thing, and it enriches everyone's knowledge. My remark was meant as a joke, a bit of sarcasm, not a complaint or put-down. If I was misunderstood, then I should be the one to apologize.

I'm also interested in one or two standing pilots.

I've been wondering about this for awhile. Hasegawa has releaed plenty of Macross VF-1s and will soon produce Macross Zero Fighters ("Eric Cartman's" voice: Sweeeeet!); they've also made Macross Plus and M3 related models...BUT NO VF-11s YET . What do you all think? Will a definitive 1/72 version of the Thunderbolt ever happen?