So I had been with the mod about a month or two by now and adapting the ethos of working through doing. The mod in general had began to take some direction in terms of having a goal and working towards it. We were going to make a demo that would be a proof of concept. We were going to make the subway section from Midgar and have it crash. This allowed for exploration of the train segment and some initial exploration of the plates - the main city area. I decided that having completed the hurdle of getting content in-game that I needed to aim for something higher so I decided to take on the task of modelling a train engine.
I have posted pictures of the progression from early inception to near finished model. This was a long process as I was picking up alot of things and learning off-line while I was trying to complete this project. Work-flow is something that I still really need to work on. I don't know if I am just a perfectionist, slow worker, better work ethic or work-flow. I am still amazed at the rate some people are able to create things.
This train was based around image references from both games and fmv's references we could find. I think that it I made some good progress on it but when your working on a single project for a protracted period of time that you start to start at it, get no-where and eventually become frustrated. Its both important to take a step back from it and analyse the segments that need improvement. This gives both a sense of accomplishment and renews the drive, but this only works for so long.
Sometimes you have to switch it up and this is a good thing as in my case I went and did other projects which in turn allowed me to achieve a better end product in terms of what was required from the model. The knowledge gained from the later project applied to the model was mainly texturing and animation specific. These were due to me dipping in and out of other projects.
Although many of these projects remain for the most part incomplete due to reasons pertaining to the mod itself, my own workload increased dramatically, finishing up work placement and return to final year college has meant that alot of my fun time has been taken away from me for the time being. All of these projects will be getting the necessary attention in due time but for the moment I am too busy to take back up modelling but I hope to once I get things under control after recent events concerning this mod.
I recently upgraded to Blender 2.5, I was testing its rendering ability and recorded this video to see how well it would render while also streaming the video feeds and recording it. I was quite impressed with the end result.
