1/48+fp's, 1/60+fp's, 1/72, 1/2k, 1/3k,1/100 and now 1/144

[mickyg]

Seriously! If you could add some heat soak effect behind the engines, I'd be convinced it was real!

[MacrossJunkie]

Very beautiful work MJ!

Is that an actual background or render? I've been trying to experiment with some stuff.

I pulled the background from the commons on wikimedia. It's a public domain photo of Kandahar taken by the US gov't.

Seriously! If you could add some heat soak effect behind the engines, I'd be convinced it was real!

I did try to add some heat haze/wave effect coming from the engines. I ran a ripple filter on it a few times, but it's hard to see because the background is already pretty chaotic and it's hard to spot ripples on ripples. You can kinda see it on the thrusters themselves though. That was the best I could figure out to do based on the tools I had =(

I think I'll have to play around with GIMP some more to see if there are any other alternatives. I'm already proud of myself for finding a way to somewhat fake the contrails though.

Edit: okay, I googled images of jet exhaust. I am going to try to rework that part.

Edit 2: Here we go. I think it looks better now. Not perfect, but improved until I can find a better filter to simulate it.

Edited November 25, 2014 by MacrossJunkie

[Brand-X]

That's a fantastic composite! The filtering is excellent and I love how you've done some work to ensure the scene composition retains overall consistency in colour. my only minor nitpick would be that I think the lighting is a little off. In the background photo the lighting seems to be coming from what would be the right side of the valk, slightly angled to the front, while it looks as if the toy is lit from the rear. It's not a glaring problem though, as there aren't any real hard shadows.

[MacrossJunkie]

That's a fantastic composite! The filtering is excellent and I love how you've done some work to ensure the scene composition retains overall consistency in colour. my only minor nitpick would be that I think the lighting is a little off. In the background photo the lighting seems to be coming from what would be the right side of the valk, slightly angled to the front, while it looks as if the toy is lit from the rear. It's not a glaring problem though, as there aren't any real hard shadows.

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind. I held the light in the wrong place as I didn't study the background image close enough. I was thinking the light source was coming from the rear right of the plane as the background was brighter on the left side and I was thinking to myself that the sun was positioned low on that side, but now that you mention it, the shadows do indicate the light source coming from the other direction. Doh!

[VF-18S Hornet]

Thanks guys! I was pretty satisfied with the result. I think it was worth the extra effort to rework the 29.

Here's my first attempt at messing with making a composite image just to see how I would do. The VF-25 Master File inspired me to give it a try. I don't have any fancy software, just used GIMP.

Just when I think you have done some amazing work, then that is your FIRST attempt... Simply amazing work!

I have to agree that is good work for your first time.

[McFly!!]

Edit 2: Here we go. I think it looks better now. Not perfect, but improved until I can find a better filter to simulate it.

really like the inner part of the feet, how it's all blurred now!

[mickyg]

Edit 2 is much more obvious. Love how that came out!

[wmkjr]

MJ inspired me to fiddle around. Not as good, but I liked this scene so much I couldn't help it. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Edited November 28, 2014 by wmkjr

[Kanedas Bike]

Awesome picture/recreation of an awesome scene (one of the more iconic in the history of Macross IMHO).

Happy Thanksgiving!

-b.

[abbadon]

Those pictures look great! I might try them someday.

I tried copying the cover of the Macross Plus Bluray set, but wasn't happy with how it turned out.

I will have to reshoot that.

[Saburo]

Great job on the photo wmkjr!!

[MacrossJunkie]

I love it! Looks great. Did you make the background yourself?

[wmkjr]

Thanks everyone. Everybody should give it a go!

@MJ- yup, did it myself although I don't really know what I'm doing. Cut and paste here, smudge and blur there, tweak some colors and smoosh it together. Also, having a super posable display stand helps. I just look at the pic and try to get it close enough.

Edited November 28, 2014 by wmkjr

[yman1437]

Looks great! Is there a higher Res version?

[wmkjr]

800x600 is the largest for now. Try looking from my Flickr link below, for some reason pics look sharper when I look from there.

Edit: Try this one. For some reason I downloaded a bigger file 4288 x 2412 (1.5MB) but when I try to download from here it says file size is 1200 x 675 (45KB). It'll download just fine on my Flickr account.

Edited November 28, 2014 by wmkjr

[MacrossJunkie]

800x600 is the largest for now. Try looking from my Flickr link below, for some reason pics look sharper when I look from there.

Edit: Try this one. For some reason I downloaded a bigger file 4288 x 2412 (1.5MB) but when I try to download from here it says file size is 1200 x 675 (45KB). It'll download just fine on my Flickr account.

YF-19 and YF-21 9.jpg

The lighting on that looks pretty much perfect. The shot looks as good as you can get.

When you upload files to the forum gallery, there is some extra compression and quality loss and limits the image size.

If you want, you can use the BBCode share link on Flickr and modify it so it links direct to the image instead of the page. I usually do a direct image link and then wrap it in a link to the larger image.

Like this:

[url=https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7462/15277772863_e6ffa7f4fd_o.jpg][img=https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7462/15277772863_877dc2eaa2.jpg][/url]

which gets you your image as a smaller pic and gives you the original size when you click on it:

Edited November 28, 2014 by MacrossJunkie

[wmkjr]

Thank you MJ! Learn something new! I will try that next time. I'm not too familiar with all this tech stuff. All I know is that Flickr photos seems to look sharper than even my pic straight from my files. Must be something with my computer or windows photo gallery.

Edited November 28, 2014 by wmkjr

[MacrossJunkie]

Thank you MJ! Learn something new! I will try that next time. I'm not too familiar with all this tech stuff. All I know is that Flickr photos seems to look sharper than even my pic straight from my files. Must be something with my computer or windows photo gallery.

No problem. I don't think I was very clear on how I got the links though, so here's a more detailed explanation.

Going back to your image, if you click the "Share this photo" icon (right pointing arrow) and select BBCode. Select the smaller size first in the drop down and copy the stuff in the box below it.

It would have this for a 320x180 image:

[url=https://flic.kr/p/ph3zAX][img=https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7462/15277772863_877dc2eaa2_n.jpg][/url]
[url=https://flic.kr/p/ph3zAX]YF-19 and YF-21[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/people/127225170@N06/]Wm K[/url], on Flickr

Keep the stuff within the first set of "url" tags.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/ph3zAX][img=https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7462/15277772863_877dc2eaa2_n.jpg][/url]

Now select the larger image size you want and only copy the http link within the first set of "img" tags and replace the address after the "url=" above with the one you just copied.

[url=https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7462/15277772863_e6ffa7f4fd_o.jpg][img=https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7462/15277772863_877dc2eaa2_n.jpg][/url]

And that's it. The "url" portion is where the image will take you to when you click it and the "img" part is what image is shown in the post.

And now here are the rest of my Super Alto 29 pics. I decided to play around with HDR processing to see how my pics would look. I just added a tiny bit.

GERWALK

Battroid

Edited November 29, 2014 by MacrossJunkie

[mickyg]

Wow! That really pops!

Thanks for sharing the steps to show external pics too. You've been a great help with that in the past for Picasa/google plus sharing. In fact, all my current pic sharing knowhow was a direct result of you taking the time to show me the ropes.

[wmkjr]

Thanks again. Very helpful info!

[Saburo]

Great shots MJ and the YF-29 looks amazing as usual.

[Scyla]

The YF-29 Alto Custom has the best paint scheme of all the Durandals I think. Too bad Bandai won't reissue it again. On the other hand so many stuff is being released so I'm glad I don't have to invest money into this toy.

[VF-18S Hornet]

800x600 is the largest for now. Try looking from my Flickr link below, for some reason pics look sharper when I look from there.

Edit: Try this one. For some reason I downloaded a bigger file 4288 x 2412 (1.5MB) but when I try to download from here it says file size is 1200 x 675 (45KB). It'll download just fine on my Flickr account.

YF-19 and YF-21 9.jpg

When I saw that on Flickr, I was amazed I actually thought it was straight from the scene in the OVA where Guld and Isamu finally patched things up before the Ghost X-9 showed up, that was totally AWESOME. And to think I was going to do that for Macrossjunkie's YF-19 and YF-21 pics, looks like wmkjr beat me to it.

Edited November 30, 2014 by VF-18S Hornet

[wmkjr]

I say do it. MJ's valks plus professional grade editing would make it a killer shot!

[aaajin]

SV-51 Gamma shots spam :

High Speed mode :

Edited December 6, 2014 by aaajin

[wmkjr]

NIce shot. It looks like it's in a blanket of clouds.

[aaajin]

Thanks. Yea, kinda intended to make it looks like that, but shots dont look sharp enough since Im using point & shoot camera..or I suck at the settings . need to get a DSLR someday...anyways, playing dressing dolly with Hikkie 1S strike parts

Edited December 7, 2014 by aaajin

[yman1437]

nice shot of ivanov! Its such a bad bird! Always wonder why its not more popular

[Xigfrid]

It is!

[aaajin]

or it *could've been* !

issues plagueing the Ivanov first release made buyers to hold off from buying the toy. IIRC, frosty canopy (mine too), wrong wing joints (not on mine)...

the worse part is, in my case (and some others too) the upper hips are cracked (bought it cheap, so buyer's remorse wasnt in full throttle). The upper hips are comprised of 3 different sections, lowest on my left cracked & middle of my right cracked. From what I saw, the plastics are too thin and brittle on these parts, and the gerwalk-joint locking mechanism that pushes against the inner wall furhter stresses the plastic walls. It is almost certain that the walls will crack if mishandled (note : previous owner).

Luckily I did similar fix on a VF-22 Gamlin, so nothing drabs of ABS plastic cement cant fix! Seems to be holding up pretty well, but almost 4-5 hours out the window to do the fixing...jeeze.

*end of rant*

Edited December 7, 2014 by aaajin

[Rusty]

To me, the very most precious macross mecha ever made!!!

SV-51 Gamma shots spam :

High Speed mode :

[Sildani]

Lovely! Did all SV-51s come with super parts?

[aaajin]

Lovely! Did all SV-51s come with super parts?

Yes they all come with super parts as standard accessories.

[Scream Man]

Wow, how did u get the 51 to hold its wing positions

[aaajin]

I was surprised too that the wing roots on mine is pretty tight. Not super tight, but tight enough to hold that pose.