Here's the final render for my handheld system, which I've dubbed the Martendo.
To finish this one off, I tweaked a lot of the finer points of the geometry of the cartridges, added pins to the boards, and put some images on the screen and cartridge labels.
This was a satisfying little Blender project for me. It's always nice to be able to set aside some time and just make something for the fun of it.
A small update to the render I posted the other day, featuring a chunky little handheld game console.
I've worked on the back a bit, adding a battery compartment, an indentation for the console information, and some screw holes (which actually have screw heads in them).
I thought I was pretty much done with this, but after I rendered it out, I noticed that the cartridges just don't look finished. I think I also want to add some generic branding/labels to the carts and the back of the console too, and maybe a simple image on the screen. I might do that part (the screen) in Photoshop though, just to make things simpler. We'll see!
This is just a quick little render of a handheld video game console I made today. The proportions are probably all off, but I like how it looks. There's a volume wheel on the opposite side, and I even left a slot in the back for a cartridge.
Future additions will probably include a game cartridge in the back and a battery compartment cover.
I spent some time experimenting with my Blender addon and GameMaker's 3D the other night, and I realized that the models it was creating were not entirely how they should be. It seemed that if you used the option to flip the object's Y axis on export, which is often necessary because GameMaker and Blender's world axes are different, then the model's normals would be flipped.
This wasn't immediately obvious to me, since the correct orientation of GameMaker's built-in models has always been kind of ambiguous, in my opinion. After following the code in the manual to make some of the primitive shapes however, I compared the results to what my Blender addon was creating, and came to the conclusion that the output from my addon was not quite correct.
So after a lot of tinkering (Python and Blender API are not my strong suits) I believe I've finally got the addon updated to export models that are oriented correctly and which should always have correct normals. Additionally, I added a feature which a friend of mine had built into his own version of the addon, which will let you output the model script in an alternative way, to more easily allow you to add it to an existing model in your game.
You can download the updated version of my Blender addon at the original page, which I've changed to include the newly updated addon. That will always be the place to go for the most recent version.
Here's another update to my lighting test scene I've been playing around with in Blender.
I tore out the entire original scene, save for the trees, and re-worked the pieces so they'd fit together better. I might do more work like this in the future, so I can make "islands" of any shape, but for now I'm pretty happy with how things look.
I've included a bonus render first-person perspective, just for fun. Since I haven't filled the whole scene much yet, there isn't a ton to see, but it will (hopefully) get wilder as I continue to work on the scene!
Here's a small update to my lighting test scene in Blender.
I'm also using this post to test the social media publishing functions on my blog, so if you came here from Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, then I guess it worked!
I created this image as kind of a test to see if I could replicate the lighting and atmospheric look of some of the levels on Mario Kart 8 - which I don't own and have never played, but which I nevertheless find to be utterly beautiful. I think it's pretty close, but I'd probably have to make some really fantastical landscapes to see how it really compares. Perhaps a future update?
After reading through a post by a fellow Blender artist, I decided I'd try my hand at making some abstract landscapes in a similar style. I used similar texture images sourced from Bing's image search for cauliflower, cauliflower fractal, and pomegranates. These images weren't terribly difficult to make, but it was enjoyable and educational, nonetheless. I'll be making more of these in the future, I think. It's fun to see what sorts of alien landscapes images can create when you use them to generate particles and geometry displacement.
Maybe someone out there might like to use them for their desktop wallpaper!
A friend of mine wanted a background for his new phone, and after way too much time spent thinking about what I wanted to make for him, I had a revelation while working on a similar project for an Xbox One theme. This image was created in blender using a basic cube and a bunch of modifiers to add geometry, displace it, and make it explode.
After seeing some renders by Oscar Leif via BlenderNation, I decided I'd try my hand at some of the techniques on display there: environment lighting, some simple node materials, and using texture nodes to create a checkerboard effect. After playing around a bit, this is what I came up with - a lineup of rooks using different materials and then rendered with environment lighting from an HDR