A year… No update for a year.

Well well… I had to re-learn how to correctly post something on that WordPress :p

All that was due to a range of things, laziness, less and less interest in starting or continuing super complex (for me) projects (read the Spook:/) , less interest in spending time reading and looking for documentation on warplanes, not more much fun in that… The problem is each time i start a project, i say to myself « this time i want to keep it simple » , then it starts all over again and i add details… And i have hard time managing that now.
Work also (i mean the one that pays the bills) takes time. And also , new interests (my Macintosh computers collection, MacOS and Linux…maybe more on that later) makes me busy.

Not that i have done no personal CG stuff in 2013 :) but really few things. No big projects, and mostly things done using old models and renders.
And i still like this blog. Vanitas vanitatum sed omnia vanitas. So decided to prepare a few posts showing these small things. Just trying to fill a bit of that 2013 blog emptiness :D here the first one.

So ! First 3d printing test. wanted to try for some time. Started with a simple thing, just a Hans pervitin Bust .

Had to prepare the mesh for 3d Printing, that is : fill all the « opened » meshes like the inside of the cap,…

base of the neck and oher things, cutting the harms, making a hollow stand to save a bit on printing material.  And weld all the pieces together as one Obj file.

Ordered it at Sculpteo.com, fast and pretty good service.

Sculpteo allow for intersecting parts, so you can combine together closed meshes. It has a lot of choices of materials too.

Done the thing only 10cm high, in cheapest white plastic  material, and it’s still 46 €… Bah…

All in all, i was impressed by the details, even the cap visor, witch i was afraid would be too thin turned out well.

Only problem is that the printing layers are very visible , I should have taken « polished white plastic » as material. Anyway, was happy for a first try.

Here some orthographic renders and details of that half-toon Fw-190-A8.

On this interesting link bellow :
Luftwaffe in Scale
See the difference with a realistic shaped Fw 190A-8.

detail :

Visible on the detail , under the wing, there is still some noise…
That’s from Cycles render, 250 samples was not enough for that .

Here some details of hans Pervitin marks on his Würger:

Kills marks doesn’t show all his kills, even at one time he started painting them on the rest of the fin…

Texture detail :

Until very recently unknown was this Luftwaffe ace, said to have scored even more kills than the famous Erich Hartmann. Kept secret because the Luftwaffe considered him like a kind « V-Waffe » wonder weapon of some sort , due to his success . His definitive score is yet unknown …

Hans pervitin was so « deadly » that it would shoot down almost anything he would meet in the air. This caused some problems when serving in regular Luftwaffe units as he shot several German planes and even some of his wingmens…

After more incidents of that kind that could be tolerable, A special unit was created for him , SonderJagdGruppe « PervitinVerrückt », with some volunteers pilots agreeing to fly with him. But those where very few. He ended flying most of the time alone …
In 1945 , he volunteered to join Me-262 unit JV-44, but general Galland refused, saying Hans pervitin flying a Me-262 would be terrible for the enemy, but also too dangerous to the precious few other jets the Luftwaffe had at the time…

Hans disappeared in flight in 1945. From various testimonies we know he was very disturbed (…more than usual) the morning of his last mission, saying he was obsessed by recurrent dreams he had of a red kitten named Stalin sleeping on his bed … He was never to be seen again.
These pictures of exceptional historical value shows his Focke-Wulf 190A-8 black 13 ,  having a white undulated fourth gruppe marking, maybe because it was considered the fourth gruppe of another regular unit, and the SJG- »PervitinVerrückt » red and black fuselage bands.
Hans pervitin personal markings consisted of a black cat drawing and « Schwarze Katze » name beneath the cockpit, and a big furious cat mouth painted on the plane nose.
The victories marks on the fin and rudder doesn’t show all of his kills, but it shows that at one time he didn’t had enough place on the rudder to paint them on, and started painting them even on the fin on top of the swastika…

—End of pseudo-serious text here— As you can see, finished more useless work. The Wurger pilot, not very sympathetic guy. He’s called Hans, and no more Franz like the earlier project… don’t know why i changed the name.
Also it’s completely redone only in Blender , just gave up finishing the previous Sculptris model for it. Was fun , but i was lazy having to retopo the model and rig it in Blender. So this one is not rigged, just posed as it is, can only move the eyes… Also wanted it to have a more toon look than the sculptris model.
Will prepare some more detailed views and some profiles later, and maybe some in flight shots. But will have to make an equipped version of the pilot.
Anyway, i’m happy with it.

It was a loooonnng break …
Anyway , motivation coming back slowly. done very few modeling, just some small things on the Spook model and some few other things, will try to post more often.
Also finally textured that ToonWürger… Here is a first image .
Blender 2.63, Cycles Render, postwork in Photoshop, cat quickly done in sulptris.
Turntable vid below :

Still working on the pilot. I’m redoing it all in Blender in fact.
will show the entire plane when the pilot is finished.

Ive not done much 3d since i came back from holidays. Just slooowly unwarpping that toony Fw-190A model .

Worked a bit on it yesterday , so here is the progress on that Würger pilot sculpt.

Polycount is 1618106 … doing details such as belt buckles, zip fasteners… ect , is what increases polycount a lot.

So i try to sculpt one detail then come back on it with the reduce brush before doing another one. I’ve came as high as 2000000 polys on this ones, before reducing. My computer became sluggish from 1800000… But so far so good.

And of course , i couldn’t help myself from importing it into Blender for some renders with the plane :p

Sculptris is a very addictive tool. Here are the progress on that Würger Pilot :

Btw, i try to follow this : Franz Pervitin Post…

here is a small vid showing how that Toon Fw-190 is rigged, if this can be of some interest :

Wurger Rig from Gaël Elégoët on Vimeo.

And here the very start of the pilot, this afternoon. In Sculptris A6 , very nice soft :

I try keep the expression as neutral as possible for the moment. But i want him to look very stressed and nervous later…
Undecided yet of what i will put on his head, a cap or a flying helmet… dunno.

About a month ago i had an idea of another toon fighter, this time a Fw-190A.

Did some drawings, and after that couldn’t get it out of my head. So decided to model it before working on the Spook ejection seat.
Also spent some time to rig it completely.
Note i had to shorten the landing-gear legs from my drawing, cause it wouldn’t retract correctly.

Ended up detailing far too much for a toon, hence « half-toon ». Not completely satisfied, cause while the general shape is toony as i wanted, the details are a bit too realistic…
Finished the modeling today , so to celebrate here a bunch of renders .

Some 2D stuff for a change…

These are some character studies for a cartoon german WWII pilot, of the same kind as Finn …

an ace of course, but a very stressed and nervous one, heavily addicted to Pervitin (methamphetamines, also known as « Göring’s Pill » ). Check links:
http://www.amphetamines.com/nazi.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pervitin#World_War_II
Had the idea of this character after seeing an excellent Tv documentary on french/german channel Arte about the use of Pervitin in the german armies of WWII and how it led to hundreds of thousands of speed addicted soldiers.
Note it was also used on the allies side as Benzedrine.
Crazy stuff… And not very funny, but anyway could make a good base for a character maybe …
His face design is not frozen yet, still undecided how he will really look like… Just trying…

Same for his toon Bf-109, it’s the first sketch, and it’s defitively not enough « Toony ».