This entry will take you through a not-so-detailed process of modeling a car.

Click on each picture to see it full size because it probably won't be clear unless you do.

The Car

Started at 9:40PM, June 18

I have a box that is the basic size and has the right number of edge loops.

The edge loop that runs down the middle of the car now has it's shape.

A render of a little more sculpting around the edge.

Finished section at 10:15PM, June 18

Started section at 5:25AM, June 19

A lot more detail on the top.

Finished section at 6:15AM, June 19

Took 1hr 25min in all to get this.

Started section at 10:05PM, June 19

Finished the entire main shape of the car.

Rendered

Finished section at 10:32PM, June 19

Now, the next morning, (from 9:15 to 10:10), I had finished all the little details of the car when the computer shut down. I hadn't saved in a while so I lost it all back to the above picture. But I got it all back except the last ten minutes of work because Blender had auto saved it.

Started section at 10:50AM, June 19

Details finished - Solid mode in Blender.

Details finished - Wireframe mode in Blender.

A render of the finished details.

Finished section at 11:05AM, June 20

Started section at 11:10AM, June 20

I then added textures and made a weird small scene.

Final render from the front.

Final render from the back.

Finished at 1:00PM, June 20

Hope you enjoyed!

Bad news (at least for me). I discovered yesterday that the USB flash drive that I keep all my Blender stuff on, got corrupted! I lost almost three years of work. I think it has something to do with the fact that the computer that I work on the most, clicks off from time to time without warning.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the files backed up anywhere. So, a little piece of advice: make sure any files that you really want are backed up somewhere.

Now, this dosn't mean that I lost any thing that you can download from this blog. Only that I can't make them any better.

The next great demo release is here!!!  Just kidding, it is here but it's not necessarily great.

There are a few upgrades: a second level, a few more camera options (see the readme), and some cheat codes! (that's all I can think of right now)

 A couple of fixes that were suggested from last version: slower turning, no backing up camera.

Here's the link: Car Demo2.zip

Size: 11.3 MB

Just download and unzip. Be sure to read the 'readme' especially if you didn't play demo1.

If you have problems, questions, comments, or suggestions, let me know.

A few weeks ago, I wanted to see how long it would take me to make a certain object in both of two different programs. I decided to model my brother's toy lightsaber.

The first program I did it in was Gmax and this was the result.

It turned out better than I expected seeing as I hadn't had a lot of experience in that program.

The second program was Blender and this was the result.

Now, if this picture looks better than the other one, as far as quality goes, it is because Blender has a built in renderer and Gmax doesn't. So I had to print the screen into paint and save it from there.

I can't remember, (although I could at the time) but I think it took three or four hours to make it in Gmax and only thirty minutes to an hour in Blender. A pretty big difference, mostly due to the fact that I don't have as much experience in Gmax.

I haven't been doing any tags up till now but since I have little else to post about I will post some tags. However, I don't what them to show on my home page here so I will set the time of the post to before all my earliest posts (so they will show on the bottom of my blog) and put them under the 'Tags' category. Click on the 'Tags' link in the links section on my sidebar to view them.

Edit: Ok, everything seems to be working now so I have turned the script back on. Yay! 

I hope everybody had a great Christmas and new year.

I made this scene just over three years ago, back when I was just learning about 3D modeling. Back then I didn't know about Blender and I was using a program called Gmax. My brother helped me with this one (like most things back then) or it wouldn't have turned out nearly as good.

I have a new template for my blog now. You can view it by clicking the 'Soccer Field' radio button on the left top corner of the page.

I know, I am finally posting after almost six months.  I guess I'm a pretty bad blogger.

 I have a playable demo of my car game. Just download the 'Car Demo1.zip' folder, unzip it, then read 'Readme.txt'.

Download: Car Demo1.zip

Size: 7.32MB

I am open to questions, comments, and suggestions.

By the way, I got the new smilies from this post on BlenderNation.com.

I might add another template soon.

AI Player

Here is a demo of the AI Player. It will probably crash (hit the wall) a few times. It may even get stuck.

To download, click here: AICar.zip  Size: 5.43MB

Note: AICar.exe will not run unless folder is unzipped.

Blog Award

My blog was entered in and won a contest hosted by DoubleTalk!

Here is the award:

Thanks!

BTW, the halo template has nothing to do with the game 'Halo'.

Ok, I finally got the template changer thing to work.  If you want to change the template, just click one of the options in the top left corner of this page. Right now there are only three options: Halo (default), Rounded Rectangles, and None (no style sheet). I hope to add more later.

If anybody has trouble with it please let me know.

Live Action/Animation Combination Test

This is something I did a few weeks ago. I got the idea from Matt's blog (check out his post). He added live action to a scene he made with Blender which is much harder than what I did. I did it the other way around.

Here it is:

detonation.avi

Size: 4.56MB -  Duration: 0min 11sec

Here is a screenshot of me making the objects:

Combining the live action and animation:

AI Player for my Car Game

 I have decided that I need an AI (Artificial Intelligence) Player for my Car Game to make it really fun. So that's what I've been working on lately. Unfortunately making one of those is VERY hard to do. If I had to guess how much time I've spent on it in the last few weeks I would say probably 20hrs or more. Right now I have it where it can do basic turns and it knows when to slow down (most of the time ). The main problem that I have right now is how to get it to turn around when it is going the wrong way. Hopefully I'll be able to fix that soon.

If I can get it to work right I'll post a demo of it.

P.S. Blender 2.44 was recently released!!!

I am currently fixing/upgrading my template; some things may not work right now.

I hope to make it so you can select a template to view my blog in.

This is the first car I have ever made that actually looks somewhat realistic. It took me less than two days to make. The main reason I made this is because, like I said in the last post, I really needed a more realistic car for my game. I think it's quite an improvement.

New Explosion

  This is the same explosion as the last one (see last post) but, of course, used in a different scene. I animated the blocks using the Blender Game Engine. It took me a while to find a way to make the stack of blocks explode. I tried writing a Python script but it kept giving me an error whenever I added the "applyImpuse()" method. (I still don't know why ) The way I did it was when the missle object collided with the blocks, it would instantly turn invisible and grow to about five times it's original size forcing the blocks to move outward. It's not a very consistent method but it worked.

  Anyway, after that I just added the explosion objects to the scene. When it came time to render I calculated it would take about 15-20 hours to render the 600 frames on the computer I was using! So my brother offered to let me use his computer which is about four times faster! I accepted for obvious reasons. I don't know exactly how long it took to render because it started at 9:30 P.M. and I went to bed before it was done, but I had calculated it would take about 4-5 hours. When I woke up in the morning it was done.

Here it is:

• The explosion: Block_Explode.avi
• The explosion with a glow effect added by the Blender Sequencer: Block_Explode_Glow.avi

Here is a screenshot:

Game Update

  This is an update on the car game.

  I haven't done a whole lot of work on this game since the last time I posted about it (see above link). I've been thinking about totaly reconstructing the HUD to make it show a speedometer and stuff like that. In fact I even got to the point where I thought I needed to get or even make a new vehicle script. I didn't like the one I was using mainly because it didn't slide when you would go fast and turn sharply. Now this may sound pretty obvious, but the script had a property called "friction" set very high at "100.00"; I didn't think to turn that down, lol.

  So by way of more scripting I fixed the friction thing, got brakes, and even got gears for the car. Now I really need to get a more realistic looking car.

Later,

BlenderBoy

I made this explosion using particles. It could probably use some work:

Click here to view the animation of the explosion: explode0001_0100.avi