jamie3d – Page 10

August 2, 2012

Own Your Content

Brett Slatkin and Gina Trapani definitely have me convinced that for content creators, screen casters, bloggers, designers, even developers, your own domain name is where your content needs to live. With services like YouTube, Facebook, and even Google Plus, we are giving our thoughts away to other services; they do offer amazing value and convenience after all.

When the services die, so will our photos, posts, experiences and everything that goes with them. It’s important for all of us to get our own domain names, post our thoughts there, and back our data up.

July 31, 2012

The Razorback – Part 9: Robotic Arms Shape and Layout

In this (relatively) short video, we tackle the layout of the robotic arms. We experiment a bit with the scale of the arms and the reach. We start with a simple sketch of the arms as I see them in my head and then we move on to various considerations.

July 24, 2012

The Razorback – Part 8: Start of LIDAR and FLIR Instruments

The eyes of the Razorback are going to be comprised of a combination of LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging [basically a type of 3D scanning]) and FLIR (Forward looking infrared). This instrument array is pretty ad-hoc as the novel doesn’t talk too much about the look of them.

July 17, 2012

The Razorback – Part 7: Kickstand Pivot and Ram Brackets

This video is a bit longer than the others (sorry), but there’s some good modeling technique in there. We look at creating the brackets/cradles for the hydraulic rams of the Razorback. Before getting into that heavy modeling, we look at the approach I settled on for pivoting them into and out of position.

July 14, 2012

Polygonal Landscape Wallpaper

This Polygonal wallpaper, inspired by some of the Android 4.1 (Jellybean) wallpapers and is my first ever wallpaper (desktop) that I’ve published. There are sizes for various desktops and I’ve even re-rendered it for the iPad 1 and 2 (1024×1024), the iPad 3 (2048×2048), and the new Macbook Pro Retina (2880×1800). Because each size is rendered separately, the size you choose will be slightly Read More

July 14, 2012

Boolean Tips for Cinema 4D Modelers

In these two videos, I take a quick look at the way Boolean operations work in Cinema 4D. Specifically, I take a look at my usual approach and examine it a bit further. I’ve heard some 3D veterans and amateurs alike say things like, “Booleans always create messy geometry” or “Just don’t use Booleans… Ever!” I disagree however. As long as Read More

July 10, 2012

The Razorback – Part 6: Steering Servo Brackets and Kickstands

In this video we cover the modeling of the brackets that connect the steering servo gearboxes to the frame. While modeling the brackets, we get to use the Bridge tool to patch up geometry and focus on the benefits of using quads instead of triangles.

We also take a look at the kickstand placement taking issues such as ground clearance and style into account.

July 8, 2012

New WordPress Plugin: Fluid Video Embeds

Lately I’ve been “dog-fooding” a lot of the work I do; forcing myself to actually use all of the products and code that I write. This is nothing new, but as of late I’ve been taking it to heart. If I code something, it has to be worthy of me using it on my site, or my mom’s site, etc.

If you don’t feel like reading, check out the live demo page. Or read on and find out why I created this and what the big deal is.

WordPress has a great auto-magic way of handling video and photo embeds; oEmbed. It allows you to paste a YouTube URL or a Flickr photo page URL into your post and it handles the rest. It will embed the YouTube video automatically, it will embed the Flickr photo with an appropriately sized image linked to the original, and the list of “providers” is ample!

July 2, 2012

The Razorback – Part 5: Steering Mechanism Linkages

In this video we look more closely at the steering mechanism linkages. We start out by creating a few ball joints and linkages for the steering. We then work on the rigging of the linkages via some Xpresso and the Range Mapper node.

June 25, 2012

This feels like one of the most ambitious technological feats man has attempted!

This feels like one of the most ambitious technological feats man has attempted!
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=146903741 #blog #nasa #mars

Google+: View post on Google+

June 25, 2012

The Razorback – Part 4: Steering Mechanism

In this part of the Razorback series, we tackle the steering mechanism of the machine. I explore a bit of the setup necessary to make the steering work without a human involved and even get into some Xpresso.

You can see where I use a combination of the Target tag and the Xpresso Range Mapper node to get the desired effect of the servo steering system. Read on to see the video, and leave me a comment if you like what I’m doing with this project.

June 21, 2012

The Razorback – Part 3: Flywheel Housing and Sword Blades

The Flywheel

There’s not much talk in Daemon about the flywheel. We know that it’s a “Graphite-epoxy flywheel spinning at seventy thousand rpm in a vacuum. Floating on a bed of magnetism.” This detail is interesting as it would be easier to float the flywheel if it were horizontally mounted, and it would likely have better gyroscopic characteristics if it were hard mounted using bearings—again, I’m not an engineer.

Blades

The blades are currently simple proxy objects. If any of you think you know what kind of blade it should be, post a comment and let me know what it’s called. If you have specs and an idea of why the blade should be that particular type, let me know.

Read on for the video; this time it weighs in at around 20 minutes.