Challenge #6 - TheUnlogicalOne - Chair for my Destroyer

[Zabiegly]

Coming along very nicely. Maybe some valves on the airsupply for manual shutdown. Though I do not know why someone would want to manually shut down someones air supply

[tobian]

LOL uh oh, this guy is serious, he's modelling the rivets!

Out of curiosity why does it have an air supply? Why aren't they hooked into a general life support?

Regardless, it's starting to look pretty sweet, but those screens got quite rigid, so it's going to be tough to move them out of the way.. especially if there are these space constraints you mentioned?! Awesome detail work so far!

[Larsen]

WOW dude... that's a really advanced chair... exelent progress

[TheUnlogicalOne]

The screens now swing to the side. As for the air supply, its an emergency system in case of depressurization.

On another note, my 3dsmax4 finally croaked (it does this every few months of use) so I need to reinstall it. I think it may have corrupted my file so I'm a little irritated. The mesh for the screens seems to be corrupt but everything else looks good. Unfortunately I spent a lot of time working on that so I'm not giving up. I hope it will load after i reinstall.

[TheUnlogicalOne]

Well, it looks like there is something wrong with the smooth modifier. I recovered most of the bits, but as soon as I add a smooth in the whole program crashes. Never seen that before but then again my computer rather cranky lately (I need to physically kick it to make it even detect the CD drive, never mind run it).

[TheUnlogicalOne]

Last post for tonight, I'm still not sure what causes max to corrupt the files, even does it without changing smoothing... Anyways, after a few restarts due to crashes I've got back to where I was. Started adding a bit of colour to things and fiddled with the screens. I think the backs are a little bland right now but I think I will just move the upper/lower cross bars up/down a bit more.

[TheUnlogicalOne]

Wow, are my posts really that painful to read?

Anyways, I've started working on the base again. It has a few access panels, vents and a door currently, along with the small computer. I'm don't really want to have just basic panels but I want it to look at least slightly believable so I'm sort of stumped as to what to put. I would love suggestions because I have never had much luck doing detailing stuff, I prefer the bigger picture work.

[tobian]

Yeah your design is really awful

Seriously this is starting to take shape really nicely! I love the swing arm concept for the screens, very simple and elegant, and solves your access and egress issues, and I really like your felt-style material on the chair!

The only thing I could say is you could make the metal shader a little more reflective, with some soft blur, and create some sort of light-panel rig above and round the chair, but use super bright white polygons to give a more realistic metal sheen. Otherwise this puppy is pretty damn near finished, and looking really good!

[TheUnlogicalOne]

Thanks, I'll work on the metal material some more. Materials are not my strong point so don't expect miracles. The white planes are an interesting idea, I'll give it a try.

[tobian]

hehe it's an old trick! basically create a low resolution fake of your environment. If your material is set up right you should get pleasing results. I did it in my hangar bay basically instead of 'lights' the material reflects the environment, but with a lot of reflection blur. It gives you more realistic lighting because the highlights are shaped, specularity just gives you round highlights for the most part, specularity is really just a fake form of reflection anyway! The main trick for those types of metal surfaces is to keep the refection low, but make the bright objects REALLY bright, I had mine at 200% luminosity. Hopefully you can do that in your software.