After completing a fire hydrant in 3ds Max yesterday (following a tutorial), I decided it’s about time to stop having my hand held and see what I can make on my own, just looking at reference images.

I’m interested in making models that eventually could go together to make a grunge street scene. I thought I could start with a garbage bin. I looked in Google images to see if there was something interesting to model. I found this bin photo below:

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I came across this very interesting website with photos of decaying things from yesteryear, such as old steam trains, machines and buildings. I highly recommend that you take the time to check it out: [Link]

LittleB calls this character Jeanie, it is modeled from Igor.

For a full HD size image, click here. After the image opens, click on it to make sure it is full size. Firefox first loads it so that it fits the window, but click the image to make it full size.

The texture on the background is not big enough for this full HD demo, so it looks stretched, but that is easily fixed by using a larger version of the image.

I did an animation. It took about 10 minutes to put together, once I made the character, but it took a whopping 40 hours for my computer to render the just 24 second clip. If Jeanie spoke, I would have to render another copy with a white mouth, making it 80 hours for a 24 second clip. That is just for a a small 600 x 336 pixel clip. Blu-ray 1080p is 1920 x 1080. The 1920 x 1080 still I posted above (full HD) took 18 minutes to render. So let’s see, I’d get about 3 movie frames an hour at 1080P, so it would take about 8 hours to render 1 second of video. This 24 second clip would take 192 hours or 27.4 days to render at full high definition. If Jeanie spoke, it’d be double that. If only I had a render farm…. Well, I do, but it is only 2 computers big making it only twice as fast. Half of 27 days is still pretty unacceptable.

Video: (I have a high quality version which is really sharp, but since it’s over 250mb in size it’s best I post this blurry low resolution 4mb thing)

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I made a 3d milkshake cup today and decided to upload it to TurboSquid. turbosquid.com is a website that 3d artists use to sell their 3d models. People who need to buy models to use in video games they are making, or any other 3d projects such as movies and commercials, can buy these models. The 3d artists take a small cut of the sales, while turboSquid takes most of the money (unless you are an artist who has made a huge amount of sales). I would never give turboSquid most of my earnings after I did all the work. I am therefore selling my milkshake cup for FREE!

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Unwrap UVW is a way of getting photo realistic renders of objects in 3ds Max, and other 3d applications.

It was my first time trying the Unwrap UVW modifier yesterday, I chose a very simple shape to unwrap – a box. The box was made using the dimensions of my Sandisk compact flash card. 3ds Max then mapped the faces of my “box” to make a template that looks like lots of rectangles, one for each face of my box. I could then open this template in Photoshop, and anything I put in those rectangle faces, would show up on my final image as a “skin”.

I photographed my compact flash card from all sides. I then, in Photoshop, pasted the photos where they were supposed to go on the template. I imported the template back into max, and 3ds Max applied this “skin” I made for my compact flash card to the box. Since 3ds Max made the template for the skin, it knew how to apply it, so instantly my compact flash card looked like it does in real life. Well, except that the photos are a little grainy because of low light, and I couldn’t be bothered looking for the batteries for my good flash.

Here it is, I hope you can see what I was talking about:

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For starters, if you have an Australian accent, “glögg” is pronounced as “glerg”. If you have some other accent, don’t pronounced the “r” in “glerg”.

I have managed to make glögg that tastes the SAME as the glögg I drank in Gamla Stan, Stockholm!

This is the recipe people! I found many recipes for Swedish glögg on the internet and they were all different. If you are confused about which recipe is a good one, try this recipe, it gives you the same flavour of the glögg that I drank in Gamla Stan, Stockholm! LittleB has declared that the flavour is the same, and she has a nose for these things. There is a non-alcoholic glögg I enjoyed very much in Ronneby, which tastes something close to this too.

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I was looking forward to Copenhagen as it was the only place I hadn’t been to, out of the places we were going to visit during our trip. The city is beautiful in many places, but the amount of graffiti there is disgraceful. I suppose every city has graffiti, but the thing about the graffiti in Copenhagen is that it is almost everywhere you look. Normally you see it in some alley, or out of the way area where people aren’t going to easily spot you doing the graffiti, but there is a lot of graffiti in very public areas. It’s inconceivable to think that there weren’t a lot of people witnessing this graffiti being done in such open areas.

See this: [Link]

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Our trip to Copenhagen by train was the only thing we couldn’t book from Australia. We tried, but couldn’t. That almost prevented us from going to Ronneby at one stage, which would have been a huge shame, since we had our best time in Ronneby, and once we were in Ronneby, buying tickets couldn’t have been easier. Especially since Brinck bought them, with LittleB’s money, it was really simple.

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Day 1 at Ronneby started when my friend “Brinck” (not his real name ) picked us up from the airport with his Son, Erik. Brinck took us to Ronneby Brunn, the top resort hotel in Ronneby, which also was about the only accommodation available at this time of year. The room was small, and basic. We had no iron or ironing board and no bath (there was supposed to be a bath). The soap in the shower was in a wall mounted soap dispenser which LittleB wouldn’t touch. It looked like hand wash for public toilets, not soap to put on the body. LittleB was angry because the room was not what she expected, yet we were supposedly paying more per night than our room in Stockholm at the 5 star hotel. We found out when we checked out that we were given a cheap room instead of what LittleB booked. We got a basic room, and in the end paid a cheap price. Whilst a lot of people might be happy to do that, LittleB wants to enjoy her holiday in comfort, and that’s fair enough. The room we got made her feel disappointed.

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In an hour, LittleB and I will be checking out of our hotel and going to the airport and won’t be home for another day and a half. I didn’t get time to post my Ronneby post, even though it is almost finished. I’ll have to add it when I am back in Sydney, along with the Copenhagen and London posts. London will be a quick post, I have hardly any photos or videos. LittleB and I both find London to be a pretty uninspiring place. I have to get packing, I’ll write again when I am back in Oz!