Hi, folks,

I thought this would be kinda neat, to showcase the improvements I've made over the couple of years I've been working with iClone, and the short time I've worked with Blender and 3DEXChange.

My YouTube series of Battlestar Galactica is still in heavy pre-production. But with the tools I have now, I am making improvements to just about everything in my production....ships, props, and clothing.

So, here's a photo history of my experience with iClone and Blender

So here's the way my virtual actors USED to look for my Galactica YouTube series project:





And here's the principal cast in improved uniforms, and with improved accessories.

From left to right:
Lt. Shaen (new pilot, Starbuck's protegee), Captain Starbuck, Lt. Athena, Col. Apollo, Captain Sheba, and Captain Boomer.

And the bad guys:






"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

And my ships:
Viper
My first attempt in iClone--

My first Cylon Raider attempt in iClone--

My improved Colonial Viper and Cylon Raider ported in from Blender--





"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

And my capital ships--
The Galactica
iClone build, first attempt, largely just thrown together shapes, and the texturing was hand-drawn in Photoshop...not very well either...looked very cartoony:

iClone build, second attempt, again built from general shapes. The nose section is actually an elongated and retextured cockpit from the Starship Construction Pack for iClone. All the details on this ship are photo textures, and thus that's why some details appear so blurry at certain angles:

Improved Galactica, fabricated in Blender, and assembled in iClone:
This is my real deal. All greebles for detailing. My most realistic looking battlestar yet. And it was the first model I ever built with an advanced modeling app. iClone is NOT a modeling app, but Blender is very powerful for a free modeling application. I'm very proud of this build. Many of my friends who also do this stuff have said: "You tackled THAT for your first model?! WOW!" It took me five days to build (which also amazed them), and most models I build now only take about two days at most.


The Cylon Basestar
Again, done with general shapes in iClone, and the textures were hand drawn in Photoshop.

Same deal with my second build in iClone, having used photographed textures:

And my Blender build...the second model I ever fabricated in Blender, then assembling in iClone. Took me only two days. As with the Blender Galactica, I'm very proud of this model.





"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

Also, here's some other ships and vehicles I've fabricated in Blender and assembled in iClone:

The Colonial Shuttle and the Colonial Landram--
These are done to scale with the virtual actors, so the models are big. I fabricated them by components in Blender, and then assembled in iClone, then made a few scales of each model to suit my shooting needs.

Inside the Landram...Starbuck and Boomer in their first iClone costumes:


A view from inside the Landram, looking out the main windshield:


The Landram:


The Shuttle and the Landram:





"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

Here's another test shot....Colonial Warriors on Desert Planet. This time, as you'll notice, they're sporting blaster rifles. (All I did was elongate the barrel detail and enlarge slightly the back detail of the Colonial Blaster Pistol, and add a scope and bullpup mag slot). The rifles are designed to have removable bullpup styled magazines, and the electronic scope on the rifle will have a surface on the eyepiece side which can display video of the target.
This could be a shot from an upcoming episode, but for now, I just thought it was the ideal place to show off an exploratory team sporting heavier firepower. :)






"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

Wow, huge strides. That kind of polish really makes a difference when watching people's shows.

This makes me want to download blender and dive in.

- Keith

Thank you, gnasche, :)

I'll tell you this, after I saw the introductory interface video for Blender by one Karan Shah over at cgtuts.com, I was able to do my battlestar in five days. And thanks to one simple piece of advice from the good folks here at the Reallusion forums, most of my fabrication problems were solved. Now, most of my models are done in two days or less. (Depending on how much time per day I can get behind my kb/m :) )

You watch that video by karan shah, and you'll be making some cool stuff in no time. :)

The video is in .flv (Flash) format, but you can download it here.
http://blip.tv/file/get/Cgtuts-AnOverviewOfTheBlenderInterface433.flv


If you don't have a video player on your PC that can play back .flv format, might I recommend VLC media player. Or, if you have any kind of video conversion software for downloading from YouTube, you can find any number of tuts there, download the video if you have a download add-on for your web browser, and convert it to a more convenient format if you have conversion add-ons in the browser.

If I download tuts for conversion in Mozilla Firefox, I use Download Helper which will download the video, and I have its conversion add-on. If you set it up right, you can download the videos in .mp4 format instead of .flv. The actual conversion add-on (which you do have to pay to register if you wish to get rid of the small watermark in the corner) will convert to many different formats including .mpg, .wmv, and others.





"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

And now, here's another quickie test video (with sound effects) testing out the swivel turret and laser effects on a moving landram. It's Starbuck and Athena. Oh, noes....they are being attacked by Cylons.
This video will also demonstrate that the shadows do not work so perfectly. I hope this is something iClone can rectify in a future update/version. :)




"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112