Mechmaster

There is talk of Games Workshop making a Warhammer 40K RPG but the present system is a miniature based, tabletop, tactical wargame. Now that you mention it though the Space Marine helmet does resemble a Zaku slightly.

Its not from a show, its an Imperial Space Marine from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 table-top war-game (my other hobby)

I'm a Cinema 4D user, been using it since the Amiga floppy disk version, many many years ago. I don't know Voltron but you seem to have a good solid start with those lions. The key to mixing CG with photos is... dirt! CG models always look too clean, so when you do your final texturing make sure and add some noise to the materials' diffusion channel to combat that CG cleanliness.

Looking good. What is the poly count for this so far?

Okay my friend, (and anyone else who wants a BIG pic of a Valk) you can download the file here... http://www.mechmaster.co.uk/temp/vf1j.rar The RAR file is just over 3Mb, once unpacked the image itself is around 7Mb. Its a TIF with alpha channel to remove the background and at 300 dpi should print out at 7.33 by 10 inches.

300 dpi is no problem, but that doesn't tell me how big you want it, can you give me a figure in pixels or inches? As for the background, if you are going to remove it totally then I can render the image as a TIFF file with an alpha channel and save you the work. I will see if I get time at the weekend, would you want fully coloured valks, or greyscale so people can make their own custom colour schemes? If I don't have time you could perhaps talk to scott8539 as he already has the models, or indeed you may have the models yourself by then and not need me anyway. I'm sorry mate, I never thought about that, I first started using Cinema 4D back in my Amiga days and when I had to move to the PC I continued to use IFFs out of habit. What you need is Irfanview, its free from http://www.irfanview.com/ If you deal with graphics files it is a very useful tool, its one of the few programs I feel I absolutley have to have on every PC I own. The batch conversion function in the File menu will do what you want in no time flat. Just browse to the directory with the tex files, change the "Files of type:" setting to IFF/ILBM, highlight the files and click the "Add" button, make sure Jpeg is selected as the output option and click "Start."

No problem, it will be good to see the models put to work rather than just having them sat around on my hard drive moaning about how long its been since they were last used. Help yourself (see above comment) As for converting the files, try the shareware version of quick3D from here - http://www.quick3d.org/index.html If that doesn't do the trick you should try Googling "3d file converter" and see what it finds, I seem to recall that there were a couple of other freeware programs available for this sort of task.

Looks like a fun project, I don't have time to become actively involved myself but I've recently made most of my Macross CG models available to the public domain following a request by another forum member. They are all in Maxon's Cinema 4D format and of varying quality as I made them some years ago but if you can use any of them then feel free. The download page is here - http://www.mechmaster.co.uk/macross/macross-dl.html Good luck with the project.

How about something like this? I can do it to any size you require, with whatever background colour you want. I can also adjust the viewing angle and pose to suit.

Yeah, that does look good. Whats missing from the body though is the huge vent or intake thing which isn't visible (or simply doesn't exist) in the cruiser mode. It helps fill that big gap between the armpits and the hips.

That looks really good, makes me want to go back and re-work my own model to take advantage of the much more powerful software and PC I'm now using. I actually started modifying it to be transformable but ended up getting sidetracked by something else, that must have been a year ago at least and I haven't touched it since. I'm just glad to have someone still using that model, I tend to build them and abandon them.

Got mine this morning, beautiful kit, I think it may just storm its way to the front of my build queue.

Its not so much the cost of the actual items that hits me hard as the cost of shipping, tax etc. Until recently my most expensive item was a tie between my Yellow Sub SDF1 cruiser mode and a 1/6 Sailor Moon kit. £120 ($224) each. Last month however I bought Bandai's 1/400 Musai cruiser, £64 ($119) for the item itself. Shipping, VAT, customs clearance fee and Saturday delivery charge boosted that to £133 ($248) more than doubling the original price. But hey, its only money, right?

This is currently registering around 10.5 on my droolometer! Keep up the amazing work, I can hardly wait for the announcement that you are ready to start shipping.

Wow, I don't get on the forum for a week or so and look what I miss. I hope I'm not too late. Please put me down for one.

I just placed an order for 4 of the 5" bases. I will probably need more in the future.

about:blank - though I should probably set it to my webmail or Sluggy Freelance since they are usually the first places I go before I settle in for the serious surfing.

I'm 41, is that closer? I still watch anime and I my house simply bulges with anime models. I have encountered people who think that watching "cartoons" or collecting "toy robots" is immature but I never really cared what other people think about me. I'm happy being like this. To my way of thinking the opposite of immature is old and I'm in no hurry to go there.

If they are anything like the fans on my PC they will quickly get quite dirty. Also I'm not sure what such fans would be made of, would they be metal or some sort of carbon fibre material? I think this is one for some of our aviation experts to sort out. The model looks great so far, makes me want to break out some of my Hases, I've got about a dozen of them but haven't started any of them yet.

Ouch, maybe they would accept one of your kidneys in part exchange Thanks for the link, I am another Brit with supply problems, my local shop doesn't stock Mr. products at all and not much more than paints from Tamiya. That store could well be getting some business from me.

Nice work on the destroids HWR MKII, I like the Defender's muddy feet. Here are some of my destroids, the Spartan and Tomahawk are the Imai 1/100s, the Defender is the Imai 1/72. I built all of these nearly 20 years ago. Among the items currently littering my workbench are the two Nichimo 1/200 Defenders, awaiting completion. Other destroids in my collection include the Imai 1/72 Spartan, Arii 1/100 Defender and Imai 1/200 Monster all of which require repairs and repaints. I recently picked up a 1/72 scale Tomahawk and Spartan on evilBay. Honneamise is right about the Arii Tomahawk, the proportions are pretty bad. I was wondering how I was going to sort it out but now he has said it the answer is obvious and I will be picking up another Defender as soon as possible to produce a hybrid model. I'll just go beat myself with a stick for not thinking of that myself.

I guess I am probably a member though I'm not sure I'm sufficiently motivated to actually hate anyone. I don't have much to do with other people, to me they are just obstacles to avoid when walking down the street, their beliefs/opinions/obsessions are not my problem. Some things in this world I like, some I don't but I really can't be bothered to categorize them in order to give myself a label. I don't understand people who are obsessive about anything, sooner or later we will all be dead and gone and then what will it matter?

I'm not sure you should have blurred both the carrier and the background. Blurring the carrier gives a real sense of the speed of the fighters relative to it but I think the stars in the background would be so distant that they would show very little in the way of motion blur given that the fighters are flying pretty much at the camera. If they had been flying across the camera's field of view then I think the background blurring would work. Maybe I'm altogether wrong about it, I dunno, but just looking at the picture something about it just seems... off, somehow. The countermeasures pic looks a lot better now that you got rid of the fringing around the model, very cool.

Odd, the link worked ok when I tried it so I thought I did it right, but no problem, the pic is posted. I'm also looking forward to shots of the inside, I am so wanting to get one of those Yamato Scopedogs and every new pic of them I see pushes me that much closer to cracking open my piggybank and buying one. Edit: Replaced the pic with one taken this century.

Very nice. Weathering looks fine, you could even have got away with more, Votoms mecha will, as you have said, handle a LOT of weathering. I have a Takara 1/24 Scopedog that looks twice as banged up as yours, with rust, dirt and chipped paint by the bucket load It looks like it fell down a cliff, got hit by a truck and then was dragged through a swamp and left out in the rain. Heres a pic of mine - link Its a crap photo from my old camera, in real life the weathering is actually more obvious than it appears in this pic.