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Angry Art

• Angry Art, Sketchup

  Getting lifted lifts lift modeling enjoyment

  08.23.10 | Permalink | Comment?

  

  Yesterday morning I did some modeling and killing before we left for a day of birthday celebrations. First I finished off my electric hoist I started the night before, then I got a start on a block and tackle. Both of these are for the book’s appendix, which I plan to have finished by week’s end.

  

  These were the last two tools I had to model, but I still have quite a few drawings to finish before the entire appendix is done. Some of them are impossible to decipher because the fax came through so shitty, but I’m trying to get all the ones I can see out of the way before I go clearing it up over the phone with James (which always has potential to take hours). Most of those drawings are simple (from what I can make out) and shouldn’t take much time. Today I have to edit the spreadsheet data in each section of the book (booooooooring), then I’ll finish what drawings I can.

• Angry Art, Sketchup

  Cobras on the level

  08.17.10 | Permalink | Comment?

  

  As promised, here are the beautiful renderings of my amazingly accurate sight-level. Each image rendered for about 12 hours before I stopped them.  I’m still just using Indigo (all the other engines I’ve tried are crap compared to my free version of Indigo). In the book, these will appear as just simple line drawings, but I really wanted to see how cool it looked after I rendered it. It’s not the most amazing thing but I’m proud of not only how it turned out, but also how quickly I modeled it.

  

  

  
  
  

  Click to marvel at my cobra talents.

• Angry Art, Sketchup, The Mighty One

  Baby Barbarian

  07.12.10 | Permalink | Comment?

  

  Here’s some Mighty renderings I made over the last few days. I’ve added a cape and battle axe at my brother’s request, as well as some hair which I felt was appropriate (he’s got more than his father already, a regular occurrence in our family it seems).

  I think I’m going to make a version of him with P.J.’s on. Every baby (robot or not) wears P.J.’s. I’m thinking it would be sweet to make him P.J.’s with little humans all over them since Holly and I got Felix a pair of P.J.’s with robots on them. Not sure how hard it would be, so I might have to cop out in a couple ways (i.e. wingdings, clipart).

  

  I did this rendering without any light source except for the light emitting materials in the model (as oppossed to background/ambient light like above). I will turn both into desktop wallpapers for myself and my brother, because I can’t decide which I like better. You can view slightly larger versions by clicking each image if that’s what you’re into.

  I think the next time I am bored, with nothing to do, I will download and fiddle with a different renderer for Sketchup. I have seen some that work lightning fast compared to Indigo, but I’ve refrained from trying them thus far due to lack of motivation to learn another new program I can’t afford.

• Angry Art, Random, Sketchup

  Paradax

  07.08.10 | Permalink | Comment?

  

  The other day I was working on some accessories for my brother’s model of Mighty Felix when my friend Shawn dropped by for a visit. I had just finished making an ax and was working on a set of arms to hold it when Shawn pointed out that from our point of view it looked like a dude was holding an ax, but HE IS the ax! I quickly saw what he was talking about and we decided to call him Paradax (get it?).

  A warning to Sketchup’ers out there: Smoking pot while modeling can result in lengthy conversations about questions without answers, and ridiculous renderings of things that don’t make sense. However, it’s also awesome.

• Angry Art, Random, Sketchup, The Mighty One

  Mighty models

  07.06.10 | Permalink | Comment?

  

  I’ve been trying to go see my nephew for the last few days, but it never seems to work out. I was supposed to go on Sunday, but my brother and family weren’t home in the morning, and we were at Holly’s parent’s all evening. Then I wanted to go last night when Holly got home, but after reading numerous updates about how little sleep the new parents have been getting I was hesitant to call for fear of waking anyone up.

  Possibly tonight I will have a chance, but we’ll see. My brother has an interview in the evening with some union or something, but I’m hoping afterwards he’ll have time for us to visit. I know he’s dying to see the UFC from the past weekend (which I have) so perhaps I can bribe him.

  

  I also need to give him the M.F. Loomis model I made for him. I want to make some changes, and my brother had a few requests so I will spend a few minutes this afternoon fixing it.

  Above is a new X-family portrait.

  I really wish I had a rapid-prototyper.

• Angry Art, Life, Sketchup

  Shredgar Fantastic

  06.24.10 | Permalink | Comment?

  

  Now that I’m finished with James’ residence drawings it’s time to get back to the book. I’m still working on fixing text sizes in images, and I have to get all the manuscript edits from James. He’s been compiling a list of errors and edits that I need to take care of, and now we need to spend some time on the phone going over the book basically page by page. I know you’re probably thinking “There’s got to be an easier way Cobra!!?!?”, but you’re wrong. There’s a million easier ways. None of them however, are as little work on his end as talking over the phone.

  Since this week is his last week of the log course, he’s really busy, and likely won’t have time to make that call. I decided to use some of my free time to get on a request my brother made for a robot of his soon to be born child. Some of you Cobra cohorts might recall my xmas gift of robot art I made for my brother and his girlfriend Lisa. My brother is interested in using the models I’ve created to make comics to document his families early days. I think it’s a really cool idea, and I’ve been missing making robots and rendering things, so I spent a few hours the other night working on the model above.

  My brother believes his child will be born a rock god. They still don’t know the sex, so I just assumed the uber-potent Cobra genes will guarantee a male offspring. I figure if it turns out female, I’ll just add a little hair curl or something and make the rattle glow pink instead of red (if I’m allowed). I had tons of fun making it, and I keep thinking of more and more I could add. Perhaps when I get back from lunch with my mum, I will do some more modeling. Although, I really want to spend some time today checking out a handful of render plugins for Sketchup. Jon sent me a link to a guys blog that turned me on to a bunch of things I’m curious about.

  Click the image for a slightly larger version.

• Angry Art, Sketchup

  Hookers

  04.21.10 | Permalink | Comment?

  

  I almost forgot to post this guy. I made him one day because I wanted to make something new but didn’t have much time. He’s super simple, and after I made him I decided it would be awesome if I had a rapid-prototyper and could make a much cooler version of Barrel of Monkeys using pudgy little robots. That’s where this image began, but I couldn’t figure out where to go with it so it became a robot eating robots. I still might make another rendering that tries to mimic a kid playing Barrel of Monkeys with a big pile of robots.

  

  I also liked the way he looked in the dark, but his emitters weren’t enough to illuminate all of him (or even enough of him to make out the overall silouette) on their own, so I added a second robot, then a third, and it still wasn’t enough. I decided to add another object that was positioned infront of all the models which emits bright light. It brings the light up enough for me, but I have no explanation as to what it is, or why they are crowded around it as a family. If I wasn’t thinking about a million book related issues right now, I’d spare some brain and make up a back story. For now, just enjoy the pretty pictures.

• Angry Art, Sketchup

  Refulgent Robots

  04.21.10 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  

  I made the above image hoping to learn more about lights in Indigo, because I dig the way these images with no outside light source look. It’s a tribe of primitive positronic pygmies dancing around an illuminated alter (ya, that’s an alter). I’m not sure why, but it doesn’t really matter.

  All that matters is I learned not to mix high wattage light emitters with highly reflective materials, unless you have a massive amount of processing power or time. This image I let render for about 50 something hours while I was out hiking and enjoying the nice weather last week.

  

  Holly took Friday and Monday off (probably for my birthday!) so we hung out a bunch, did some seek and find games on the internet, and cleaned the house. I decided to try rendering the same image again using a background light source since I knew I wouldn’t be doing any work on my machine for the next couple days.

  This one rendered for about 43 hours before I stopped it so I could disassemble and clean my computer. I much prefer the darker version, but this one looks more “render-y” even though it rendered for less time.

  I think this means the light reflections render faster when they aren’t the only source of light. Or, it means the speckling is less noticeable when there is other background light.

  

  I also created an image of a giant robot feasting on some tiny Barrel of Monkeys type robots. This one rendered for about 20 something hours and looks pretty cool. I think I will turn it, along with the others, into desktop images. I don’t know what else I could do with them. I would have left this to render longer, but I needed to use my machine to get some actual work done. I want so badly to buy the full version of Indigo just so I could render at larger resolutions. Then I could fit more stuff in.

  On a side note, I recently purchased a replacement PS3 for mine with a dead Blu-ray drive, so I’m looking forward to fiddling with the old one and seeing if I can use any of it’s power to render faster.

• Angry Art, Life, Sketchup

  Angry 8 Star Army Automaton

  04.12.10 | Permalink | Comment?

  

  Here’s a rendering I did of the army robot I modeled on the weekend. It turned out okay, but I really need to try some other rendering engines to see how well they work. I used Indigo again for these, but I have been reading about alternatives and want to try them all. Unfortunately I will have to wait, because I have plenty of work to do this week.

  I have to redo some drawings for the Bents section this morning, then carry on with laying out the rest of the text. I had a chat with James last night, and he’s decided to change some text already. We knew there was going to be corrections, but I had no idea how many or how large they would be. I asked that he keep them all until the end so I can finish Bents, then move on to correcting his text for P&B while he and the students edit the Bents section.

  

  I am trying to look at work differently these days, since I’m now paid on an hourly basis. Before when changes and corrections needed to be made it was pushing back my deadline, but not increasing my peycheque. Now if he needs those things I’m trying to view it as a chance for longer employment. I enjoy working from home and not having to wear pants or talk to jerks all day, so I shouldn’t get pissed when I have to spend hours fixing things, right? It’s just allowing me more chance to get out of the hole I’m in, and that’s exactly what I need. In fact, maybe I should sabotage the entire project!! Mwa Ha Ha!! Then maybe I can make money as well as get out of the hole – it would feel good to contribute.

  

  I looked into 3d printing of Sketchup models again last night. I thought if it wasn’t too expensive I might try and get one done, but it looks like you still need to do a lot of work to prepare your models for printing before you can just get them printed. Again, I doubt I’ll have time for this anytime soon, so it will have to wait.

  I want to take carving classes. I would love to carve little robot guys out of wood and add little led lights, then sell them to people as lame as me who would think they are cool. Although I often doubt there is anyone as lame as me out there.

• Angry Art, Life, Sketchup

  Cobra conquest continues

  04.09.10 | Permalink | Comment?

  

  I feel pretty good about myself today. I got lots of positive feedback yesterday, and it left me feeling like I can do anything. First I got a call from my brother regarding his project and how it blew his teacher away. Apparently his instructor liked it so much he asked if Chris could prepare a version with the course title as a header, instead of his group’s fake company name, which he can use this weekend at an open house where they try and rope people into going to Mohawk. Hopefully that means his group won the contest they were having, and I was right all along – I kept telling him there was no way anyone would have something as detailed and visually accurate as what we made.

  The second thing that made me feel good was a phone call from James regarding the Post and Beam book, and his thoughts on what I’ve done so far on the Bents. He printed and distributed the P&B booklet to the students yesterday, and said he loved the way it looked. Unfortunately this phone call came after I emailed him at 2:30 in the morning our time (I guess I need to remind him Holly has kids), when I hit a roadblock in the Bents book. I emailed him my work so I could ask his opinion on how to proceed, and after he mulled it over he decided to call back and discuss some options.

  I suppose it’s my fault for having a nap in the evening which resulted in me being up all night, and when everyone bailed on the Nazi zombie battle I was so bored I decided to do work.

  Working from home rule: boredom forces productivity!

  After I talked to James and we decided how to proceed, I realized it was incredibly late and I still wasn’t tired. I put my mp3 player on, and started colouring a model I made the other day. That’s it up top. I felt he was appropriate for this post since I truly had a feeling like I can conquer anything I want to after all of yesterday’s positive feedback. He needs a name still and I have to render him, but until I have the time to dedicate to that here’s an animated png with lots of things I should have hidden (seams that wouldn’t show up in Indigo).

  I might attempt to render him using a new engine I discovered the other day called IRender nXt, which I can get a 30 day trial of. I stumbled upon it while looking for a material stripping Ruby Script in one of the online Ruby libraries. It looks good, and a tutorial I saw showed an amazing result using default materials in Sketchup without assigning any material properties. That could be a big time saver, and I believe it’s cheaper than Indigo (if I decide to purchase one or the other).

  My brother just called, so I’m off to work on making an animated something for his teacher. If possible, I’ll post it here later.

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Cobra Chronicles

Continuously chronicling the Cobra

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Cobra Chroniclesis a place for me to write about me, say what I want to, and keep track of things I might forget..

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