What you been up to, Stopsecret?

Ok, ok, this blog seems somewhat neglected lately, as you may have noticed. It’s not that I’m giving up on it, but these days I’m into The Legend Team a lot. So just to let you know, if you want to read more from me, please visit http://thelegendteam.wordpress.com/

As for other things, may as well throw it out there: made this sculpt recently:

It seemed to come out pretty well (thanks for the reference, the-blueprints.com!) 😀 Well, I hope you all enjoy this turn of seasons, have a great memorial day, and hopefully I can come up with some more interesting stuff later 😉

-Stopsecret

Looming Planets (Rendering)

I would like to get more into space renderings, and may share my finished products here with y’all. Here’s one I recently made, Enjoy!:

(click to enlarge) Have any feedback for me? I’d love to hear it!

-Stopsecret Design

 

Birthday!

Yes! today is my birthday! Today I turn — years old! (yes, I’m trying to remain that anonymous :))You can now safely pin my age between 10 and 100 😛 So how does it feel to be this old? Ok, so what’s up with that question, does someone have to ask that every year?! lol I’d say it doesn’t feel much different that being what I was a day ago…  So, yes, it may be a little weird to be born on Valentine’s day… I think it was considered that I be named Valentino, phew, glad I escaped that one 😛 At any rate, It’s nice that people are celebrating my birthday around the U.S.A, with candy, and flowers, and cards, and shameless corporate consumerist money-making schemes making tons of money off the sale of such items 😛 ah, the world of marketing… but I digress… This year my birthday was somewhat blocked out by the day’s activity but I guess that’s what comes of being older. Anyway, hopefully I’ll have some more interesting reads for you later in the week, until then!

-Stopsecret Design

A break and…. diversification?

Hello readers!

So, the trial to Unity Pro is running down… and I’m going to try a little experiment. So as you all should know by now, I like 3d a lot 🙂 and I also do it a lot, probably more than you all know. And as you all probably also know, It’s easy to start a project, but not so easy to finish one, you may have 10 unfinished projects over the course of a week… So, in the near future, when Unity Pro gives out, I want to try this : take a break from all Blender + Unity projects and devote more time to other things, reading, exercising, blogging etc. Maybe I’ll even find time to clean my room 😉 And to see, just for a while, if my ‘break’ is more enjoyable or productive… Does this mean I’m giving up on my blog, or abandoning in 3d completely? Of course not… I just want to mix things up a bit 😉

If I constantly blog about all things 3d, my blog runs the risk of getting… hmm… boring 🙂 so I want to start diversifying my blog a bit, maybe add posts with photos (not rendered) or other things I would not normally post about. And, maybe, when I get done with my break, I’ll be even more inspired and crank out better Blender and Unity works of art! Plus, I don’t think it’s good to be spending so much time in ‘my cave’ (the place in the house my computer is located). At any rate, things ought to get interesting around here, so stay tuned! 😀

P.S: Changing my theme for now as well… hope you like it!

RHEM 3

Hi all! Here’s a post for the end of the week for you to read, trying to keep to my post a week 2012 thing… 🙂 Today, I will take a break from conventional talks about game development, Blender, etc. and do a game review!  So sit back, and enjoy!

RHEM 3 : The Secret Library

So let me say a few things first. If you come looking for blow your eyes out graphics, exciting cutscenes and an immersive plot, this game is NOT for you. If you are considered a smart person, like a good challenge, don’t mind pouring over a small screen for hours trying to find out how to open a certain door or move a cart, and wondering what some dude holding a hoop has to do with anything, than this is the game for you! The basic point is that you need to find a bunch of green crystals so that you can get the black crystal. The pros? well, It’s a nice long game, you probably won’t finish in a day, maybe not even a week… The puzzles are hard, the music is cool. The music is also sorta creepy, I think it’s a thing with first person puzzle games.The game is non-linear, meaning you don’t need to solve the puzzles in a certain order. This is one of those type of games where you may go: “Arrrrgh! How am I even supposed to get this? Who makes puzzles this hard!” one minute, and the next moment : “Oh. That was easy. Why didn’t I think of that…”. I will not go into detail about the puzzles for fear of spoiling it for you, but be sure you have some paper with you for taking notes. You’ll need ’em if you don’t want to spend all your time hopping around the island looking for that diagram or clue you seem to have forgotten. The cool thing about this game is it’s almost like you are matching wits with the game developer(s), since they are the ones who created the game… So, sound cool yet? What are the cons? I think the developer (Knut Mueller) needs to find Blender or something… The graphics, which I believe were rendered in Bryce, could use some work… If he comes out with a RHEM 5, the graphics should definitely get an upgrade. But, hey, I guess it goes back to graphics vs. gameplay, might as well have better gameplay instead of better graphics 🙂 Here are some screenshots for your consideration:

Also, If you want a link to the site: Click here

I hope you enjoyed this game review! Feel free to leave a comment!

-Stopsecret Design

New Rendering + Tutorial

Hello All!

So, today I not only have a rendering to show you, but a short tutorial to go along with it. So, yesterday I worked on a spaceship design and came up with a result I’m pretty pleased with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Click to enlarge)

So that is the main photo, showing two frigate sized (?) ships in space. The nebula was made from an image on my computer and mapped onto spheres in the rendering. Then I ran it through the compositor. At one point, a little something happened to the rendering 😛

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, I suppose it’s cool if you’re into pink nebulas 🙂

So one thing that happened in this process was that I got a really cool effect on the icospheres near the top, if you could see them up close, it looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You get  these hexagonal sides on the icosphere, producing a spacey-dome look. So how did I get there?

1. Add an ico sphere

 

 

 

2. On the left side of the screen, set subdivisions to 3

 

 

3. Under the modifiers stack, give it a ‘bevel’ and set the width to something that looks good, in my case 0.0780

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there you go! Apply smooth shading, and you have the completed object:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hope you enjoyed this post and will be able to put the ico sphere trick to good use! Thanks for reading!

-Stopsecret Design

Tech Troopers

Hello! I know it’s been quiet around here lately, I think I may need to do another one of those ‘what I’ve been working on’ posts 😛 Anyway, recently I have been working on a 3d character. I am very pleased with how he came out, he’s some sort of a trooper, I’m planning to use him in my games. He’s what I would classify as a medium-poly mesh, the reason he’s so smooth in the photo is because I added a SubSurf modifier. Please tell me what you think!

Tech Troopers (Click to enlarge)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Stopsecret Design

Undaunted Mk3

Here are some shots of a ship I made with Blender and Photoshop… The Undaunted Mk3, a multi purpose frigate. The textures for it are a little low res (they were made so I could have the ship in my game engine).

Note: the following ship’s details and history are entirely fictional and solely for your entertainment 🙂

It is vertically positioned ship, having the cockpit on top and lots of space below it, unlike conventional horizontally positioned ships. It has large intakes that convert radiation from nebulas into energy useable by the ship. The size of it’s engines mean it can go relatively fast. There is also room for Capital-Class Cannons to be mounted in turret-fashion. It’s lower decks can be customized. Running a military transport? Equip it with gravitational spinners and ship hangers (See the first shot).  Running a warship? Replace the lower deck with ammo stores and missile bays. Running an exploration ship? Replace the turrets with mining equipment, and install drone bays underneath. The list goes on. The ship also has four vertically running beams, these carry elevators and supply lines that exchange freight and fuel between the upper and lower parts. This ship is the third revision of it’s kind, so it has hit hit the market with some skepticism. The Mk-1 was diagonally oriented, although it may have looked cool, the Mk1’s pilots were known to wreck a few docking ports, because the unconventional shape caused docking problems, often ending up in a crash. A few years later, the engineers had another go at it, and the Mk2 was launched, A lot like the Mk3, the Mk2 was vertically oriented with the same lower space configuration, however, the three beams connecting the top and bottom were known to sever in battle, leaving the two parts stranded from one another. The Undaunted project was abandon, because the market was complaining about their high-price, low speed, and discomfort. Two years later the plans were re-discovered and revamped, this time improving on the ease of use in docking ports and the strength of the two sections. However, when put on the market, buyers were extremely wary of it, due to the reputations of the Mk1 and Mk2. After a few months in service, however, the Undaunted proved to be exceptional in all fields. The result was that it gained back it’s reputation, and is now a compliment to every fleet it is in.

-Stopsecret Design

A list of 10 things you may have done after long hours on the computer…

Hi there all! I’ve decided to compile a list of things that you may have done out of habit after playing the computer too long:

1. When doing your homework on paper, you keep thinking you need to hit ctrl-s to save it.

2. You look at everyday objects and try to figure out their topology

3. Your computer’s mouse becomes an extension of your arm

4. You figure you only need to brush half of your teeth, because you can apply a ‘mirror modifier’

5. You start ending your sentences by saying ‘end of line’

6. When you go to sleep, you look for your ‘standby’ button

7. Whenever you make a mistake, you have the urge to hit ctrl-z

8. When you enjoy a meal, something someone says, or a picture on the wall, you wonder where the ‘like’ button is.

9. You have the steering wheel in your car replaced with the arrow keys

10. When people are talking too loud, you walk over to your keyboard and hit the button that turns the volume down.

Hope you enjoyed, maybe you can even relate to a few 😀 (I think #4 actually happened to me :P)

-Stopsecret Design

Pictorial Tutorial 2: Sun Shafts

It’s always pretty to see 3d renders using sun shafts, however, there are probably a lot of 3d users out there that do not know how to use them. That is the topic of this post. This is also the second of my ‘pictorial tutorials’: tutorials contained inside of one image. Enjoy!

Also, here is my final render result (done in Blender Internal, I don’t know how to do this kind of thing in Cycles):

"Other side of the pavement"

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this short tutorial! Also, Feedback is appreciated if you would like to leave a comment below!

-Stopsecret Design