Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Robsoie]

Toying around a lot for fun with the most excellent and surprisngly very small brillant free digital sculpting application Sculptris :
http://www.drpetter.se/project_sculpt.html
(be sure to check their forum for some impressive collection of user made sculpture pieces)
Why not using it for some Bay12 board Crafting guild


If anyone is interested in contributing in a virtual crafting guild, just get Sculptris (or any similar program you may have, like the much more expensive Zbrush or Mudbox), or even the Blender sculpt mode and let's get the fun started.

Blender is an open source and free application that is nearly as feature and function packed as the much more expensive counterparts (3dsmax/maya) and is easy to learn due to the extensive amount of tutorials found all over the internet.
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

To see if it can catch some interest, i will start this crafting guild with the creation of a dwarfy head .

The sculpture created in Scultpris :

then once roughly finished (i intended to create the beard with Blender hair system) :


Exported in OBJ format to be imported in Blender :

a render of it with Blender :


Then after a use of the Blender particle system to create a beard and more facial hair, to be much more dwarfy :


Rendering it with Blender turns the hair particle to look a bit more like a sweeping brush , not that great but that was fun to do.


So anyone join the crafting huild ?

Not necessarly needing to have a piece made to fit in the Dwarf Fortress theme, but i'm eager to see the artistic talent you guys can display with those nifty applications (Blender can take time to learn, but Sculptris is surprisingly so natural that you can get sculpting satisfying pieces in no time even if you are a complete beginner in digital sculpting like i was few time ago).

[Armok]

THANK YOU FOR LINKING THIS!!!!

I have been looking for something like this, I am a uite serius 3d modeler (may be living of it some day, if I dont manage to get into AI reserch) but have not been able to aquire mudbox or zbrush. This fills a pronominent hole in my toolbox!

[Robsoie]

You'll love Sculptris, it is plain awesome for such a small free software.
It is not yet up to the comprehensive amount of functions the expensive alternatives (zbrush/mudbox) can do, but the incoming version 1.0 in a few weeks is said to be able to do much much more wonders than the current version, as i read from the few lucky beta testers that reported something about it.
Anyways, it "feels" very natural for the user, and is beginning to be a serious sculpting application.
Can't wait for the version 1.0

Anyways, time for more dwarfy craftwork.
This time i tried to sculpt a dwarf character very inspired from the "superdeformed" style of the DF available tilesets.
(the hands look weird because everything was pulled from the original sculpting sphere, i should have built a basic shape in Blender then imported it into Sculptris to sculpt the details instead of doing it entirely in Sculptris)


Tried to setup a small rendering in Blender after importing it (i am not yet familiar enough with the various Blender rendering setups, so the rendering looks a bit weird)

[Pathos]

THANK YOU FOR LINKING THIS!!!!

I have been looking for something like this, I am a uite serius 3d modeler (may be living of it some day, if I dont manage to get into AI reserch) but have not been able to aquire mudbox or zbrush. This fills a pronominent hole in my toolbox!

Armok always fill threads with the funnies. =D

[Armok]

huh? whats funny abaut that?

[ein]

THANK YOU FOR LINKING THIS!!!!

I have been looking for something like this, I am a uite serius 3d modeler (may be living of it some day, if I dont manage to get into AI reserch) but have not been able to aquire mudbox or zbrush. This fills a pronominent hole in my toolbox!

Armok always fill threads with the funnies. =D

Pathos always fill threads with the dissociative identity disorder. =D

Anyway, those are pretty awesome.

[alway]

I second Armok's initial statement. Blender's sculpt tool is nothing compared to this. And the compatibility of the two with little to no degradation in the model is awesome.
Horrors in the deep!!!

The best part is, that model only took like 20 mins to make!

Edit: got another one! A military dwarf missing his right arm and wearing adamantine plate and helm with an adamantine war hammer. The plate and helm are menacing with elf bone spikes.

[SolarShado]

Very cool... I'm definitely going to check this out!!

[Robsoie]

Wow, great dwarf alway, I just hope he is not near to throw a tantrum, that hammer looks really menacing

Some old pieces i have in my gallery sculpted with an older version of Sculptris, mostly inspired by superheroic dwarfy comic books :








there with a bit of added image manipulation :


this one was took from Blender, as Sculptris was unable to support hard edges and multiple objects (the helmet and the hard edge in the bottom of it), the head itself was made in Sculptris.


This old version of sculptris was much less smooth, it was crawling visually when i reached +/- 150.000 faces (average nothing in term of sculpting).
The current version has been incredibly optimised, i managed to sculpt piece some 500.000 and more faces with Sculptris always workable (something i can't do in Blender that crawl for me at such face count).

Sculptris is a really impressive piece of software, an ideal sculpting tool.

[Itnetlolor]

When I finally get my replacement graphics card and install it, I might see what I can do getting some shots of my 3DS work. That program's a bit tricky.

I think my main problem with one model I'm working on is getting joints to work properly through exclusively rotating. You know, like servo-operated machines. Basically, it's for rotating engine segments for a pair of flexible nacelle on an airship design I have. Essentially they're a series of trapezoidal cylinders set end-on-end with each other. As they rotate, the entire block changes it's angle. I could try to show what I mean using LDD screenshots. Essentially, it's a serpentine engine block. Really flexible, and durable because instead of actually flexing, segments articulate by rotation exclusively.

Spoiler: I think this should illustrate and explain what I'm trying to go for best (click to show/hide)

In regards to the numbers, Left = 90-degrees, right = 180-degrees
It was made some time ago, so I may or may not be quite accurate with terminology that's used here. I was having fun with the idea.

I limited myself to using 6 independently rotating segments, based both on the illustration's scaling, and how many bands were visible in the picture I made.

BTW, X = Base of the engine, and Y = Engine end, Nozzle angle

As for the many 90s and 180s, they are the overall angles of rotation for each segment. The overall angles and engine placements can get screwy if they aren't whole angle numbers like 90 or 180. Basically, 90 is a half-rotation, and 180 is a full rotation (when it comes to flex angle value), so with those as base numbers to use, let's say you have series of a couple 90s, a 180, and maybe a 45 and a 15 within the mix. Well, you need to know just how much it affects everything angle-wise.

With a series of 15-degree-per-segment, it should be plenty simple to determine the overall angle the engines are facing. As for version-B, where each segment side is incrementally set 5 more degrees per segment, it gets a little more challenging. On the plus side though, you have a much greater angle of attack.

As for doing the texturing for it, I'm rather iffy about the whole thing, and how to pull it off (at least imprinting parts, and adding different bump maps on certain polygons, instead of the entire model; or even paint-on-model style, I don't know how to access.). I'm mostly self-taught on the program (3DS Max).

Only other option in those regards I can think of is photo-manipulation between that and Photoshop. Provided a base color, I can texture by perspective however I want, provided it's an isolated element, then I can have that thing rendered and work being merged with a photo.

[SolarShado]

I don't know what you're getting at Itnetlolor, but it sounds interesting...

[Itnetlolor]

I don't know what you're getting at Itnetlolor, but it sounds interesting...

Here's another picture that illustrates it. Like I said, I don't have my replacement graphics card yet (Seeing as my last one burned out recently), so I can't show what I have so far, but here's the illustration I have it based on.

Spoiler: I also have it WIP in BSF (click to show/hide)

And the BSF version WIP (also not accurate to the drawing and model I made):

Basically, the front-side engine nacelles vastly improve the maneuverability of the ship immensely, include a unique ballast system internally within the ship, and this thing should also take advantage of some aerodynamics and literally drift across the skies like a massive (as in battleship size) rally car with a powerful beam weapon vaporizing the landscape.

I think I made this picture 4 years ago. Give or take a month. I actually want to see something like this at least be experimented with (as in, engineered and everything) to see if the concept could work. Even seeing if mobile internal ballast can even influence the flight path of aircraft; or if servo-operated serpent-engines are possible/logical.

At least personally, to see a battleship drift like a rally car would be both scary and awesome to witness. Also, considering how the nacelles operate, I think the ship can also do a barrel-roll. Hell, I even designed it to be able to barnstorm, impractical and outright dangerous dwarfy it may sound.

Anyway, I made some design improvements when working on it in 3D. I'm just missing some of the more vital parts, especially those nacelles and the wings they anchor on. Overall, the model itself looks awesome, despite being halfway done.

[abculatter_2]

Your idea is... interesting. Though I'm not sure I understand it completely. Do you mean that the entire engine is supposed to turn, as opposed to simply adding a vent to redirect the power, with an added ballast system for even crazier maneuverability? Or are the servo-whatevers supposed to be just rotatable vents? Also, whatever it's supposed to be, what are the disadvantages of such a system? And I don't mean just for end-product, but also for design and manufacture too (if it's just going to be a single super-cool ship or if they're very advanced humans/aliens I'd understand that they'd be able to have something more complex then something that has to be manufactured large-scale or with more modern construction)

[Itnetlolor]

It essentially redirects the power that comes out. The ballast system would adjust the pivot angle (along with the standard aircraft parts (aileron, elevator, rudder) to provide primary maneuverability) utilizing the weight to the ship's advantage. Adjusting this should also be of assistance in case it ever tailspins out of control. But that could only happen if it's really really high; or descending from near-orbital altitudes (more of an insult really).

So to put it, the frontside servo-engines are supposed to redirect engine power to increase mobility power, as well as operate as a VTOL system, while also providing extra lift in the same setting. It can also work as a method of cooking whatever's below the ship without needing to use any of the on-board auto-cannons.

There are a few design flaws regarding the design, I'll admit. If your intention is to sabotage the ship or anything of the sort, the engines (especially setting-B) can melt parts of the ship (or the wings they're on) right off; of course, heat-shields (or heat-resistant materials) would be applied to such areas. Other problems could also be when too much power is applied at certain angles, or if aerodynamics bites you on the ass, the engines could possibly shear themselves off (especially if you apply too much force too quickly; that, or counter the dynamics/airflow wind vs. raw power). But the internal skeleton of the ship should be able to withstand most of the forces involved, considering all the varying angles the engines would be facing over it's lifespan. The frontside wings are designed to flex enough to work with the engines attached to them while still being strong enough to properly handle such unusual equipment.

Design-wise overall, each individual segment is supposed to have their own servo units on each end so they can rotate independently, while affecting the overall angle of the exhaust. Because bending an engine like a straw would structurally compromise it too much, instead, there are pre-fabricated rotary segments that can be attached to the engine. Of course, they are made from a seriec of cylindars of variable forms, ranging from parallelogram to trapezoid in orientation. These segments, can affect the overall angle of the exhaust. It's a rather unique idea that is somewhat modular for the ship, so there can be as many or as few segments attached as needed. 6 segments is just the default number I decided upon. BTW, in case any of the segments gets compromised, they can always be jettisoned off, and keep the engine operational.

I guess I should mention that I have almost no engineering skill whatsoever (just graphic design really). I just designed the thing out of boredom and for fun. At the same time, I'm just curious if the concept could work, or if any engineers would be up for the challenge to make something this bizarre, or make it a more functional design engineering-wise. The engines, of course, I mean. I know this idea could possibly get us a little closer to personalized jetpacks providing a bit more freedom of control.

[SolarShado]

Your engines are basically this on a larger scale:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Right?

On the ballast idea:
I think the concept is good, but I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to just leave the weight out entirely... Being able to shift a weight like that would apply a force to the ship, but for it to be a large enough force to have a noticeable effect, the mass would have to be a considerable fraction of the entire ship I imagine.
At that point, I suspect be better to just leave it out, improving maneuverability by decreasing the total mass/inertia...

Plus, in zero-g I'm pretty sure the ballast would be useless...

Although... If the ballast itself is a crucial (or at least useful) component instead of dead weight, it could work... although keeping a mobile component like that connected to the rest of the ship could be troublesome.

What axis/axises would the ballast move in?