Monday, December 3, 2012
The season hits... (again)
We're there again. Each year I end up baffled that the year's end is approaching and there are still so many unfinished projects...
That last year flew by fast. The 42nd. This strangely reminds me of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I guess I've reached the answer, without knowing the question too. Took me less than 7,5 Million years though.
Well either time's speeding up - which I will furiously deny at any cost - or I'm growing old - which I will also furiously deny...
Hmmm... Perhaps focus and time management will do? That's so old-school. But becoming a necessity too.
What's the excuse for this year - or so far every year - then?
There's the family, friends, the job, the house and garden and there's the projects. The hobby. There's no point thinking about aging. I am modelling sci-fi stuff after all. I keep doing RPG stuff. Writing fiction. Modding computer games. Playing with the kids on the living room carpet and building sand castles for them on Sweden's or Germany's beautiful Baltic beaches...
So the point is: you can't grow much older or even old with young children rummaging through the house. May there be times when time's running out, there's always a time to cherish and to refocus on what's really important in one's life. The holyday season is probably one number one such time.
So for all of you, who happen to read these lines: I wish you a very happy (traditional or deviant) holiday season or "Adventszeit" as we say around here.
Cheers, the RiftRoamer
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
It's the most wonderful... Jingle Bells
It's almost the season again. A time of peace, tranquility and love.
Friendly seasonal greetings of the employer accompany sales and perfomance optimization recommendations for the last week of the year. Vacation and the wish to join the family over the season drift out of focus to embrace the market's requirements and pressure of the wonderful Christmas time.
And thus - adopting the tought and mood - we intentionally take side with those bowing to the market's dictate providing excellent service with tooth gnawing friedlyness and a strong attitude to fulfill our needs for longer shopping times and cheap offers for at least one perfectly happy week a year [...] Kr$!%/=rrch%§ (/=$&§ “?::: kh &^”§%)?(hie rc”!^)(=)k
Please keep in mind to finish any of those most important projects until Dec. 21st or 23rd, because on one of these days the "current" mayan long-term calendar will ultimately end, depending on whether one accepts the classic or most current correllation to our calendar.
There are people supposing the date to be a doomsday prophecy, other suppose a new genesis.
However, it's a fact that mayan prophecies actually do not start nor end with the current mayan long term calendar. Does this lure us into safety?
Well, better to be prepared. Anybody who has to finish something, actually fulfilling New Years resolutions or breaking away for a new start. This is the year of all years!
In that sense we wish you all a merry and calm Holyday Season and a healthful and happy New Year 2012
Your ChromeBlack Studios Team
Friendly seasonal greetings of the employer accompany sales and perfomance optimization recommendations for the last week of the year. Vacation and the wish to join the family over the season drift out of focus to embrace the market's requirements and pressure of the wonderful Christmas time.
And thus - adopting the tought and mood - we intentionally take side with those bowing to the market's dictate providing excellent service with tooth gnawing friedlyness and a strong attitude to fulfill our needs for longer shopping times and cheap offers for at least one perfectly happy week a year [...] Kr$!%/=rrch%§ (/=$&§ “?::: kh &^”§%)?(hie rc”!^)(=)k
Please keep in mind to finish any of those most important projects until Dec. 21st or 23rd, because on one of these days the "current" mayan long-term calendar will ultimately end, depending on whether one accepts the classic or most current correllation to our calendar.
There are people supposing the date to be a doomsday prophecy, other suppose a new genesis.
However, it's a fact that mayan prophecies actually do not start nor end with the current mayan long term calendar. Does this lure us into safety?
Well, better to be prepared. Anybody who has to finish something, actually fulfilling New Years resolutions or breaking away for a new start. This is the year of all years!
In that sense we wish you all a merry and calm Holyday Season and a healthful and happy New Year 2012
Your ChromeBlack Studios Team
Thursday, November 10, 2011
About RiftRoamers...
The term RiftRoamers describes the people generally dwelling and roaming the darker side of society in this dystopian furture vision.
The Rift describes as well the gap between the ever present dualism of good vs evil, black vs white, rich vs poor, light vs darkness and particularily the nuances in between these two extremes, as well as the rupture or rift between normal space and hyperspace the starships in RiftRoamers create to travel faster than light, only protected be an energy field filling this gap.
R.I.F.T is also a known abbreviation for Rapid Interstellar Flight Technology
Roamers of course are those actually going walkabout in the shadows of the future wolrd.
The Rift describes as well the gap between the ever present dualism of good vs evil, black vs white, rich vs poor, light vs darkness and particularily the nuances in between these two extremes, as well as the rupture or rift between normal space and hyperspace the starships in RiftRoamers create to travel faster than light, only protected be an energy field filling this gap.
R.I.F.T is also a known abbreviation for Rapid Interstellar Flight Technology
Roamers of course are those actually going walkabout in the shadows of the future wolrd.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Hydaara CGI Set [WIP]
For quite some time here at ChromeBlack Studios we were looking for a way to effectively create a short movie about selected story snippets from RiftRoamers.net - on a (zero) budget.
In this case the story is the previously unpublished Hydaara plot which follows the main character McCabe trough the perils of this mostly unexplored world on the far rim of the USC.
The following rendering shows a Hangar at Hydaara's main settlement just before dusk.
The sky background image is a photograph by Nessa. The 6-wheel Mohawk ATV is a vehicle inspired by the computer game Halo. The big CargoCrawler in the Background is modeled by me and inspired by a similar - and much more detailed - vehicle called Ash Crawler by rottweiler.
That Hangar is a - modified - model purchased on renderosity. I added a command tower and restaurant interior. The red Hunchback ATV inside the hangar and the mecha model were modeled by me.Figures are retextured models shipped with Cinema 4D.
So - long speech less sense - here comes the pic.
The image was rendered and modeled in Cinema 4D CE+ at a resolution of 2000px by 1125px.
In this case the story is the previously unpublished Hydaara plot which follows the main character McCabe trough the perils of this mostly unexplored world on the far rim of the USC.
The following rendering shows a Hangar at Hydaara's main settlement just before dusk.
The sky background image is a photograph by Nessa. The 6-wheel Mohawk ATV is a vehicle inspired by the computer game Halo. The big CargoCrawler in the Background is modeled by me and inspired by a similar - and much more detailed - vehicle called Ash Crawler by rottweiler.
That Hangar is a - modified - model purchased on renderosity. I added a command tower and restaurant interior. The red Hunchback ATV inside the hangar and the mecha model were modeled by me.Figures are retextured models shipped with Cinema 4D.
So - long speech less sense - here comes the pic.
The image was rendered and modeled in Cinema 4D CE+ at a resolution of 2000px by 1125px.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Krieger RoadRunner and Variants
The Krieger RoadRunner's Design is actually not mine but that of Tim Cameron (refer to:Tim Cameron Design) who entered the Design into a Peugeot Concept Car Contest.
The original Pictures can be found here: 3DCar-Gallery.com.
Mr. Cameron was asked for permission to use the Design in October 2004 with a kind permission granted.
Since the Project is intended only to produce a vihicle to crowd those city streets of my version of our future it is a low polygon and low quality design. The following group shot of the various vehicles later derived from the design can be found in the rendering below.
As not really clearly visible there are actually two basic models. The yello car in the front and the smaller police vehicle are very close to the original concept car. The later variants (orange car in the front row) have a split body that required a roof beam to allow for mid segments and various front and rear section variants.
All other vehicles positioned in the rear arc are of that later design with differnd mid or rear sections added. Except for the two "Holden Ute" inspired vehicles all feature Tims split wheel motorcycle style rear wheels.
As visible the polygon quality is very low which is due to the small amount of work put into the modeling for crowding background city scenes.
In this slightly touched up model of the Krieger UteRunner, the seams separating front, mid and rear section of the body have been sealed to achive a condinuing body.
I have just "rediscovered" the models on my hard drive and plan to improve the mesh quality in the future. Perhaps a bit of texturing will follow up closely.
The Wheels were obtained from TurboSquid.
The original Pictures can be found here: 3DCar-Gallery.com.
Mr. Cameron was asked for permission to use the Design in October 2004 with a kind permission granted.
Since the Project is intended only to produce a vihicle to crowd those city streets of my version of our future it is a low polygon and low quality design. The following group shot of the various vehicles later derived from the design can be found in the rendering below.
As not really clearly visible there are actually two basic models. The yello car in the front and the smaller police vehicle are very close to the original concept car. The later variants (orange car in the front row) have a split body that required a roof beam to allow for mid segments and various front and rear section variants.
All other vehicles positioned in the rear arc are of that later design with differnd mid or rear sections added. Except for the two "Holden Ute" inspired vehicles all feature Tims split wheel motorcycle style rear wheels.
As visible the polygon quality is very low which is due to the small amount of work put into the modeling for crowding background city scenes.
In this slightly touched up model of the Krieger UteRunner, the seams separating front, mid and rear section of the body have been sealed to achive a condinuing body.
I have just "rediscovered" the models on my hard drive and plan to improve the mesh quality in the future. Perhaps a bit of texturing will follow up closely.
The Wheels were obtained from TurboSquid.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Planet Visualisation
To spice up the presentation of strange worlds within RiftRoamers I tried to produce some images to render these in a favourable way.
Well for Earth or Mars that didn'T prove too much of a problem since the terrain datasets are available without charge on the web. There are also some textures helping in this process, though for a green or blue Mars a bit of extra work is necessary.
The following two images show Earth as it might look like from Space in a thousand years from now.
And here is MArs - currently the Capital of the USC - as seen from space around 3030 AD.
More Challenging are worlds where there are no elevation datasets available. Why this could be a problem? Well because there are now two options to be considered. Is my actual goal to have a single illustration of a planet (which could be drawn as some kind of matte painting)? Or is it to have a 3D model to use as I please for future images too? The latters seems more appropriate for me.
Here is an image of Altara, the fifth planet orbiting Altair, which is one of the cultural and economical centres of the USC. As visible the texture is considerably less detailed than the ones derived from actual data and I reused Earth' cloud layer texture here. In addition to that mos of the coastlines haven'T been worked on and still show the old linedrawing shows through:
Well thats it for today. Please leave a comment I you are inclined to and like to share your ideas.
Well for Earth or Mars that didn'T prove too much of a problem since the terrain datasets are available without charge on the web. There are also some textures helping in this process, though for a green or blue Mars a bit of extra work is necessary.
The following two images show Earth as it might look like from Space in a thousand years from now.
And here is MArs - currently the Capital of the USC - as seen from space around 3030 AD.
More Challenging are worlds where there are no elevation datasets available. Why this could be a problem? Well because there are now two options to be considered. Is my actual goal to have a single illustration of a planet (which could be drawn as some kind of matte painting)? Or is it to have a 3D model to use as I please for future images too? The latters seems more appropriate for me.
Here is an image of Altara, the fifth planet orbiting Altair, which is one of the cultural and economical centres of the USC. As visible the texture is considerably less detailed than the ones derived from actual data and I reused Earth' cloud layer texture here. In addition to that mos of the coastlines haven'T been worked on and still show the old linedrawing shows through:
Well thats it for today. Please leave a comment I you are inclined to and like to share your ideas.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Dystopia 3030AD
A showcase for CG-Art related to RiftRoamers RPG
The 3D art produced for this non commercial classic role playing game is not considered to be high quality. It is more or less a "just the right amount of detail to look convincing" way of modelling employed here.
One example of the CG made for RiftRoamers RPG is the following model of a space fighter.
The Jenner Aeronatuics TASF-400 "Manticore" is a 3 Pilot heavy fighter designed to protect in-system freight convoys and to protect customs vessels in less secure parts of the USC. The rear facing third crewmember operates a turret mounted on the rear of the craft.
As visible the model is not very detailed - making use of Cinema 4D's HyperNURBS feature - and not fully textured as well. In low light conditions and even more so in low res animations it is already convincingly usable. Thats meant by pointing out my way of modeling above.
The 3D art produced for this non commercial classic role playing game is not considered to be high quality. It is more or less a "just the right amount of detail to look convincing" way of modelling employed here.
One example of the CG made for RiftRoamers RPG is the following model of a space fighter.
As visible the model is not very detailed - making use of Cinema 4D's HyperNURBS feature - and not fully textured as well. In low light conditions and even more so in low res animations it is already convincingly usable. Thats meant by pointing out my way of modeling above.
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