motrJR

Definitely my favorite mechanical design and well executed. Just sick! Top 3 for me, certainly.

I did prefer some design cues from the original concept more but I realize how hard it can be to transfer concept to model 1:1, especially with mechanically operating parts. Regardless, easily among the best here. Very safe bet to make that you're among the winners imo . The final render's composition is beautiful.

Unfortunately I am sadly going to have to bow out as I just couldn't get the rest of the process down in a way that I was content with, being new to this and all. Good luck to all those who finish and are in the running. And of course thanks to Pilgway for the contest and opportunity which worked out to be such a motivated period where I learned so much in my attempt. I really fell in love with the 3D process because of this and for that I am all sorts of grateful for the driven introduction. It's been a priceless experience even though I never achieved a finished piece

Thanks! Actually yeah, it was originally intended it to be land, air, and sea-worthy (I'm going to put the wing-cloth material on the arms in a bit ...and it's supposed to have a second set of supplementary wings in addition to the ones on the main arms [but Idk if I'll get to that... right now I'll just be happy with getting to having a decent render in any form or fashion..]).

Here I finally started to figure it out ... Instancer makes things easier with jumbled messes and custom geometries I figured out... And here I am today! ....my very first "completed" model (I still have some things I want to add, but I am happy with the detail and the dynamics possibilities)! Now it's time to do my first retopo, baking, texturing, rendering and everything! Just hope to God I can pull it off...

Time to put up! So there's my concept... Learning the software... Really didn't know what I was doing... (couldn't quite figure out how to make the forms I imagined...)

Wow. I am totally confused. I don't know what happened, but when I first made this post I tried both the GL and DX versions. I explicitly remember going back and forth trying each one multiple times. They were both slow as heck but the DX version was slightly better. Then I did that other stuff. Anyway... Now... weeks later (after having to reduce res all over the place on my model) I just accidentally hit the GL version and it's blazing fast. Smh. What.

Thanks Carlosan. Honestly, I'm not quite sure what I'm seeing in that video... though I haven't gotten into the retopo part of the whole thing. Maybe it will make more sense to me after I've gotten more acquainted with the process... As for the funny performance, I've set up a larger page file on my hdd, uninstalled a bunch of programs that were apparently running services sucking up memory, and finally reinstalled my Intuos 4 drivers (same up-to-date drivers as before I think)... it just seems that it didn't "migrate" well with installing 4.7? I don't know how to put it... It would jump (the cursor) and since uninstalling and reinstalling I haven't had that problem. Maybe it wasn't the latest driver actually... Idk for certain. Anyway, still kind of weirded out that the 4.7 was running so much less smoothly than 4.5 initially. It's running good now so that's all that matters I guess!

Whoops, meant to say proficient but just as well... I don't run a lot when modeling aside from netflix in a tiny window to the side. Which brings another point: never noticed any extreme framerate drop (in netflix) until post upgrade. Anyway, I imagine the software just might get a little wonky upon big updates? This is my first "upgrade" (really just long-term trialing during the competition) so I'm not sure (don't really follow any software so closely/use any extensively enough to know if this is a common during such transitions for outliers).

I don't know if this is the correct forum to post this in. If it needs to be moved please do. My computer is this: i7-3770k @ 4.3 GHz, Radeon HD 7850 HD 2 GB (bottleneck!), 16 MB RAM, 500 GB HDD plenty of space, Windows 10. Ever since upgrading to 4.7 for the latest and greatest, I've experienced some funny slowdown I didn't expect (fyi, I use the DX version as GL is not usable with my setup). The same model that ran fine in 4.5 is quite a bit slower in 4.7, to the point of near un-usabilty. Also the free memory seems to have taken an absolute nosedive. I even deleted a ton of the model (revamping), and yet the memory is lingering around 4700 whereas I would expect it to be somewhere like 8000 at this point in 4.5. I am a computer efficient person but not clear on all the technicalities. I have tried closing all sorts of things running, for instance GameJolt client, Smartware, etc. in the taskbar and it helps some but are there any reasons I'm not aware of for all of this? Or anything I can do to really help out performance? I already did the Windows appearance thing for performance but I don't know what else to do. It almost seems at this point that if I get the model more complicated I'll have to go back to 4.5 just for usability-sake. Also, as I'm totally new to the whole retopo, texturing-baking thing I was wondering if I could technically take a model portion, retopop/texture/bake, and then use that more optimized model within 3D Coat while sculpting the rest ...as a sort of workflow I guess. Anyway, anybody got any tips or experiencing similar?

I guess I'm weird then cause I really like elements of different ones besides 001 + 002 much more entirely. Oh well. Good luck with the bg - can't wait to see the final thing.

Nice. The driver looks like an evil steampunk Bender. Love it.

I'm going to say my peace and that's it: I think this is a fine decision because.... [reasons already stated above by RabenWulf. I was about to repeat it all...]. As a newbie I have learned a TON throughout this highly motivated period, ultra-extended trial, and was really bummed when I knew I literally couldn't finish my model, do my first retopo, first texturing and rendering I've ever done all in a mere week to finish out. This truly helps people like me who were at a natural disadvantage, as well as others obviously: busy schedules, latecomers, etc. Yeah, the real world is harsh, unforgiving, has firm deadlines, and is in no way accommodating except in the rarest of occasions - so I'm just thankful to Pilgway for the extension and I hope that my best will be good enough to compete - not just to win, but also for anybody who might win, to give Pilgway something they can be excited to display and use effectively, to further their own success, which by extension is beneficial to us all (just not the fewer number who have a ready entry currently) by the whole nature of the industry, etc. In the end it's as much about both as it one or the other to me and this extension gives ANYBODY the chance to deliver an even better product to Andrew and the team, who I think we can all say we appreciate their hard work? I honestly don't understand why anybody would get upset at the opportunity to do just that. Why not use it?

Hmm... I guess I will resume and finish my entry after all!

Ugh. Of course right after I posted this I tried simply reopening the file (for a different reason) and it's all working well. I guess that's all I have to do every time. Never mind.

Well... I don't know how to phrase this correctly to search for it so here it goes: Often times I will open up the program and all of the materials on my model go awry. It's hard to say how... I don't have enough knowledge to do that. It's still there but missing a lot of depth and color, etc. For example, on one that I constructed for glass I can literally see a parking lot scene with a couple of cars that when fully working would be obscured by the other characteristics of the material. Right now the only solution I have is to literally click on every layer and reclick the material. As you can imagine, this gets to be very time-consuming. Is there something I don't know that I could be doing to cause this or to correct it more effectively??

I gotta say... I love the design!!! Can't wait to see the final model!

Moving along... I switched the object to voxels after getting over my fear of the new thing... added some planned parts with 3DC, and did the jaw-pincher in Blender (after a few days & tries [still learning that too, box-modelling with a subdivision modifier is WAY cooler than I initially thought ]). Also I had to do something else for a few days, but I'm getting back to it now. Hopefully.

If nobody has got into contact with you yet, in the official contest thread here, see Daniel's post here at the bottom: http://3dcoat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/19259-contest-1-may-10-july-10/&page=3 And good luck! It's my first 3D Coat project as well, plus some ;).

Thanks. I've never really understood a lot of the terms used in artful 3D modelling. After hearing the term decimation I searched and found a video with a decimation brush too, and realized that I used such a thing a lot when I used Sculptris for the 2-3 weeks that I played with it. Forgot all about it until then. The vid was an old version of 3D Coat so it was different but I found it under Clean Clay. I do now realize that I need to look over more of the tools and it will be self-explanatory if I do. But I know that I could use the menu method too with some freezing, correct?, to retain the details. I'm still a little unclear on the other things such as grid space relations, total geometry capabilities, etc. but I'm sure I'll figure it out as I go along. I know I've already hit a wall when up-res'ing just tinkering. I'll just worry about the shapes and clean it up as much as I can if I've gotzta. Thanks again, Carlosan!

I've finally gotten done -for the most part- with the very custom-geometry/shaped particular part I've been working on in Blender. Turned out good -like I wanted it to, I'm happy with the result... I am working off a sketch but I thought it'd be more fun to post the odd piece by piece as it came together for a little added fun & wonder, letting its assembly slowly reveal what it is as it comes along. (I'll post the sketch later on down the line just for comparison.) One thing is for sure though: I need to hurry up because at this rate I will be halfway done by the deadline. Thankfully quite a bit of the rest of it consists of more general shapes and that part, at least, should fly by in comparison. j Only wondering (and I posted in the newbie section about this): I did subdivided this maybe one too many times exporting from Blender and brought it in as a surface sculpt. It's around 2.3 mil triangles. Will this be a problem or should I be able to hide it and work on the other layers/parts without issue? The rest's geometry will A LOT be less tightly controlled... just fyi, if that's a big factor for consideration (that will be details only where needed). And sorry if I posted pictures wrong as I'm new with this and could only use the insert from URL option. Guess it works, but I'd rather do the tiny pics thing that you have to click on.

EDIT: I guess when you're importing and it says 250,000 estimated polygons and then it turns out to be 2,300,000 that's a factor? Idk. Is that too much for a single small piece?

So I'm trying to get my contest entry going and it's a bit hairy because of the shape of it (thin and pointy at spots, etc.) and I'm just trying to figure out the best way of doing it. I poly-modeled the main difficult detailed piece in Blender as I just couldn't deal with it in 3DC just figuring the software (and more) out. And now I'm importing the object in (to hopefully do more modelling and assembling in 3D Coat alone, without Blender). So I'm am learning and have a couple of questions: 1) So far I have come to the conclusion that I should basically import the detailed piece into surface mode if I want the thinness and pointy/fine shapes/details retained, therefore I should have it generally finished. Then I can add on with other layers' extra shapes. Is this correct? 2) What is the general amount of polys I should shoot for and relation to the underlying grid? Essentially this piece you could say is just the top for the cockpit (or is the cockpit more or less). And it is really like 1/12th of the height and width of the vehicle model at least. When I import and size it by eye I can generally get it in any kind of range of polys from 200,000 or so (or less of course) to 2 million (and more of course). Can anyone offer me a little bit of suggestion there? Thanks for any incoming help!

So I'm a total 3D Coat newbie (and in a large way 3D modeling in general too..). Tried it before and couldn't get the hang of it (or Zbrush for that matter). Was trying Zbrush again, and this time getting along quite good, happened upon this contest cause I got a feeling, wanting to do something more unique, etc. Saw it, got excited and instantly jumped tracks!! Now here comes the challenge. I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew. Nothing I want to share yet but I do have a design I LOVE - but I couldn't have possibly made a more difficult one for a beginner. but that's okay. It's worth doing and I can gratefully say that I have a lot time. I just hope it will be enough! So far I am doing some polygon modeling in Blender and will be doing the sculpting and painting in 3D Coat of course. Hope to have something to show soon.

Just wanted to add that I had previously sat through a pose tutorial and all I saw was a mask (looking back I think that brush/pen-mask part was the point) and scale and rotate thing happen essentially. Due to it and the name I was under the impression it was the Zbrush equivalent of the transpose tool, which to my limited knowledge cannot function *so* dynamically (maybe I just don't know though). Love the 3D Coat cage thing. Naturally intuitive. I just got myself personally acquainted with it and though it took a little bit to get use to, with backface and symmetry settings, it was everything I hoped for. Love it!