To date, DST has made four different versions of the MAX Stealth Jet. What's one more?



Here's a little video of it in action. It only looks slow in the video, I had to slow the video down so you could recognize the jet. If I showed you at full speed, all you'd see is a gray blur. It's proven that the shark head nose art increases speed (and awesomeness) by three orders of magnitude.



I'd love to see this as an actual, produced version. They could include several more stickers with all sorts of iconic nose art.

Time for another Minimate video. Like all the others, when the idea for this popped into my head I figured it wouldn't take too long. And like all the others, I was wrong.



When I started it was an excerise in deforming a model with shape keys. I just wanted to see what it could do. How it got from "Can I hinge the torso?" to the final video, I'll never know.

I had to recreate all the Spider-Man image maps because they didn't have a high enough resolution for the closeups. Now they're all up to 4096x4096. The table texture took some work as well. It's the most realistic wood texture I've made.



I love that keyboard and surprisingly it wasn't difficult to model. Once you create one key the rest are either simple duplicates or duplicates with a bit of stretching. The front row did need some rework, but it was quick. Look for this model to reappear in later projects.



The pen is what ate up most of the time. The modeling was simple, but the rendering and material tweaking just about broke me. I had a problem where I couldn't get the transparency clear enough, yet still visible. After a long back-and-forth series of tweaking and test rendering I discovered the problem wasn't the transparency but the reflections. I gave it a slight mirror finish to catch reflections of the desk and Minimate. Foolishly, I also applied it to the interior surface of the tube. All of the inner-reflections clouded the tube and caused much frustration. It also added to large render times.



Please don't go cutting open your Minimates looking for the eyeballs. I still hear the screams.

Remember way back during Comic-Con when I said I'd have a new computer generated animation ready to show? Well, I didn't think it was going to take two months to finish. When I got back I saw a few things I wanted to change, a couple scenes I wanted to add... and the Comic Cover Contest at the Multiverse didn't help matters. Nevertheless it's now "done", not perfect mind you, just done. Using the the Stealth Jet and Pilot from the Mobile Action Xtreme line, I've created a short with lots of swooshing noises and a recognizable (perhaps?) anthem.
Read More...

Well unfortunately, I didn't get the large rendering project done before Comic-Con like I had planned. As penance, I threw together a couple new turnarounds using existing Minimate models, both Spider-Man. The first is the basic Spidey from the Day-O Dancing Animation.



The second is 'tron-ified' Spider-Man from this post.



I'll have a work-in-progress version of the long teased 'large rendering project' at Comic-Con. If you're in the San Diego area and interested in seeing it, just ask. It should be easy to pick me out from the other 130,000 con-goers, right?

The 'large' Minimate animation project I'm working on is taking longer than I originally estimated. So in the meantime I'm posting another turnaround from a completed project. This one is Cyclops from a short video I posted several months ago.



There will probably be one more of these before the large project is complete. (Hopefully before SDCC.) On the plus side, I'm getting better with LMMS by creating the short sound tracks behind the turnarounds. Now if I could only get some talent...

Here's another Minimate 3D model, the inscrutable Victor von Doom. This was a very straightforward build. The belt/skirt and holster were easy to put together. The hood and the cape took more effort but still came out nice. It really mimics the look of the plastic Minimate cape.



This would have been posted a couple days ago, but I didn't realize I had forgotten something until after I uploaded the complete video to youtube. I overlooked the clasp on the cape. It existed, I just didn't import it from the other project before rendering the turnaround. I don't know how I missed something so obvious.

As I complete new Blender projects I'm slowly building a library of models (Minimate and otherwise) that I'll be able to use in the future. Here's one, the Doombot.



I had actually finished this model before he was released in Wave 37, so it doesn't quite match the 'official' figure. There weren't many promotional images that showed a good view either so I tried using some refernce images from the comics. It ended up close, but not exact. Totally missed the chestcap. Oh well.

Once DST announced they were making Knight Rider Minimates, I knew what my next animation project was going to be. It didn't matter how hard it was going to be or or how long it was going to take... KITT was going to live!
Read More...