One More Update, On Both Projects This Time

 Wow, I really need to come up with more interesting post names...

So, as per usual, it's been a while since the last update. Since I have no idea how to introduce these things anymore, I'm just gonna get into the actual details of what I've been working on.

First up, of course, is project 1: The One Where You Jam Things Onto Google Earth. I did a test with the newly-retextured model, as shown in the previous post, placing it on Merchiston Avenue, the site of an actual police box (although the real-life counterpart is considerably more rusty and shambolic). The results were....

"Oh, ugh, ew! What's that unsightly lump?!"

That, my dear reader, is the attempt that Google's AI tools have made to recreate the real-life police box.

...Yeah. Not very artistically minded, are they?

I genuinely don't know what's happened here; it's not like they don't have any other reference images whatsoever, since the street's been captured in Street View. My guess would be that the tool working to modify the virtual Earth's topology only really has the satellite view to work from, which seems to be consistent with what's happened with the representations of the cars in that image (that weird red pointy thing is supposed to be a sedan). 

Mind you, I don't know why they'd impose that limitation on themselves, but I suppose getting 100% accurate recreations of 1960s street furniture wasn't really that high up on their priority list. It does make me more curious about how those tools actually work though, especially since there are other aspects of the scene that don't seem to add up (note the jagged distorted texture on the building walls; if it was entirely working from satellite view then I don't think it'd even have any reference for that side).

While the location was personally meaningful to me and made sense due to the IRL counterpart being located there, it's not exactly that awe-inspiring in terms of visual impact, is it? I mean, the only real impact it'd have on the scene if it were actually there was that it'd be blocking some poor sap's driveway. So, as is typical of my indecisive self, I decided to have it both ways:

Now that's something with a visual impact. I can tell you right now, my life would be 100% better if, every time I walked out of Pollock Halls, I turned and saw a massive police box looming over the city. Never mind the fact that it'd probably entirely block out what little sun there is in a place like Edinburgh; it would all be worth it just for the sheer absurdity of the image.

Okay, so that's done and dusted, I think. Let's move on to project 2: The One Where You Make A Cool Thing Of Your Choice In 3DS Max.

I have a niche, and I am not afraid to stick to it.

Yes, of course, it's the Enterprise D from Star Trek: The Next Generation. As you can see, the saucer section (barring some minor details) is pretty much done, while the bridge module needs a few details added. The lines you can see in the image are splines that I'm using to construct the more flow-y, curved stardrive section bit by bit (although, at the moment, I'm having difficulty with the conversion to Editable Mesh format).

I picked this because of two reasons: 1) the ship design itself is perfect for the skills I initially wanted to develop, namely the ability to expand outward from "hard-edged", geometric designs, and 2) I just love Star Trek TNG so much. It's honestly my favourite entry in the franchise, and I find myself going back to individual episodes as a sort of "comfort food".

There's a lot I have to do here; I need to finish the geometry of the secondary hull, figure out a way to create the warp nacelles, attach everything together, and find a set of textures and displacement maps so I can get the subtler hull details down without increasing the poly count by 100000. The last one is particularly challenging; I could just use projection mapping like I did before, but every single reference image I can find isn't neutrally lit. And I somehow need to find a way to finish off all of this before.... the 12th.

A little over a week from now.

Oh boy. I've got a task ahead of me.