February Update For NFXstudios/Collective3d

Things have been pretty busy around here since my last post back in January, so I thought I would weigh in with an update of where things are and where they're going.

In January's update, I left off with the completion of the Blue Collar Bungalow and the Modern Home 2.  Since then, the Blue Collar Bungalow has been released over at Daz3d to very strong sales and a warm reception, equaling the 72 hour pace of the Farmhouse, which is currently my best selling product.

Over at Renderosity, I have also released a touched up version of the Enterprise engineering room from the original Star Trek and am looking to touch up and release the remaining sets I have, time permitting.  It was good to take a short break from the everyday stuff and have a little fun.  While it took a week or so to put this together last year, I only spent a couple hours on it this month, mostly polishing up the textures and doing a Poser conversion.  I think it came out pretty well.

Following the release of the Bungalow, I have continued on working with the Blue Collar Series, adding 5 low poly variations, a detailed interior/exterior 2 car garage, and 5 matching low poly garage variations.  The 5 variations of the Bungalow utilize only about 5% of the total polygons used in the full featured version, which makes them extremely lightweight.  The 5 garage variations use even fewer.  Even the full-detailed garage, with working roll-up doors and the same individually modeled bricks as the house, is surprisingly efficient in polygon use for a model of its complexity.

Currently the 5 variations have been cleared for release and will be sold as a single product and also as part of a bundle deal with the full featured Bungalow.  The garages are currently in QA.  The plan right now is to offer the full featured house as one product, the 5 variations as a second product, then a bundle of the two products together for 6 total houses; the full-featured garage with likewise be a product, and its 5 variations a product, with a garage bundle.  The house bundle and garage bundle will then be available in a super package that will include six unique houses and six unique, matching garages.  I think they're all going to look great together in one huge scene.

Still in the works, dependent on solving a few technical issues and making a few design decisions, are a set of property lots for the houses, similar to what's featured in the promo images above.  The lots would include all the concrete, grass, trees, fences, and other items such as fire hydrants, telephone poles, etc.

Also in development is a set of "garage stuff."  As advertised on its product page, the 2 Car Garage is able to fit various combinations of:

2 full size cars

1 full size car and 1 large pile of junk

2 large piles of junk

1 huge pile of junk

1 medium pile of junk in the rafters

The Garage Stuff pack will contain various appropriate piles of junk.  When deciding what kinds of things to include, I thought back to the horror of wading through my own garage and determined that garages are ultimately filled with things you put in there five years ago and completely forgot you owned.  The Garage Stuff pack will include tools, toolboxes, work benches, boxes, pallets, plastic storage tubs, used sports equipment, car parts, etc.  Just as garages are a repository of forgotten things, I've likewise discovered there are similarly forgotten models from years back taking up space on my hard drive, which serve no real purpose on their own.  Many of these, with a little touch up, will make their way into the Garage Stuff pack(s).

Still on the docket as well is Modern Home 2.  It is mostly complete, and I plan to return to development on it sometime on March, for release in April or May.

As you can see above, it's coming along, although I haven't done a whole lot of work on it recently, with the Blue Collar stuff taking up a lot of development time.  The Modern Home line isn't entirely dead, though, with some early development already done on numbers 3 and 4 and a couple other antique style homes that might fit the product line.

Additional entries in the Blue Collar line will include a neighborhood of Cape Cods which, similar to the Bungalow, will be offered as a fully featured interior-exterior "hero" prop and five exterior-only variations useful for filling out the block.  I did some very early work on the Cape Cod floorplan this afternoon.

And finally, I am also early in development on an add-on for the Bungalow and Garage that will replace the bricks with traditional siding, for additional variation.

The goal is to release between 25-30 products this year once all is said and done.  As of today I have released two new products in 2014 and have about four more either in QA or awaiting a release date.

As always, I'm very open to suggestions or feedback.  And that's all for now!

Enjoy!

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

It's been a while since I wrote a post here, and things have been extremely busy.  Lots of stuff to catch up on.

The Modern Home was released over at Renderosity at the end of November and became my fastest selling product, outpacing the Farmhouse by a large margin.  This was quite a pleasant surprise, as I'd been expecting sales around 75% to 80% of what they ended up being.  The launch was a pretty big success all around.

Right on the heels of that, I was contracted by Renderosity to provide a Grand Ballroom interior scene, which I wrapped up just before Christmas and will be released tomorrow morning.  I think it came out pretty well, and it's easily the largest scene I've built to date.  All told, the ballroom is over 11,000 square feet, with a 2200 square foot dance floor, a grand staircase, arches and pillars, and a fireplace.  The chandeliers were pretty fun to put together and built materials.  I had to build similar materials for Daz Studio and for Poser, which use different renderers.  I think everything came out well.  Hopefully sales will be strong tomorrow for the launch.  Head on over and pick one up!

In the meanwhile, during the months of November and December, I was also busy teaming up with Adam Finlayson, Lyle Tucker, and Aaron Jones in forming a new 3d production company we're calling Collective3d.  Collective3d's first major project is going to be the Blue Collar Neighborhood, based on the postwar auto manufacturing neighborhoods in and around the city of Detroit.  The Neighborhood is going to consist of dozens of brick ranches and bungalows with a full environment and lots of other goodies.  The first products are getting into testing now at Daz3d and should be seeing release sometime later this month or February.

In addition to the Bungalow, I am working on five low poly, exterior-only variations for fleshing out a complete neighborhood, as well as a matching 2 car garage.  But the fun doesn't stop there.  Hot on the heels of the success of the Modern Home, I am also in active development on Modern Home 2, which is going to become a series of antique style kit homes from the catalogs of companies such as Sears, Montgomery Ward, Aladdin, and others from the turn of the 20th Century.  And a little further down the line will  be a strip mall and a church for the Blue Collar Neighborhood, which are in the early design phases now.

It's going to be a busy 2014, and I will  be doing my best to keep up to date on the blog as things develop.  Stay tuned!

Updating the Modern Home

No new renders to show today because I'm at a point in the process where the house is a disassembled, disorganized mess that doesn't much resemble a house.  But I have finished 99% of the garage inside and out, 99% of the exterior of the house, and have moved inside to finish up the modeling and texturing there.

This involves a lot of things that can quickly get tedious, complicated, and confusing.

First I started out with the more straightforward aspects, researching some designs for antique Craftsman style interior doors, casings, baseboards, and crown moldings, then modeling those in separate Max files and applying UVW mapping to them.

After that, I go into the Modern Home file and begin dissecting it.  This initial dissection won't be nearly as involved or complete as the final cut-up (where each wall, floor, roof, and other elements will be completely isolated), but allows me to get inside the house easily while still having all the walls up.

Up first, once the dissection is complete, is to do the final modeling on the first floor.  Initially this is just blocked in as a solid shape that fills the proper amount of space, but has no detail.  Using that rough block as a guide, I build all the framing and floor joists.  I have to do this because the basement ceiling is unfinished and the exposed joists and beams need to be visible.  The second floor/first floor ceiling won't have to go through this treatment since none of the framing will be exposed.

Once the floor was rebuilt, I imported the door and trim pieces.  Quickly I realized that a few of my door openings are either too small or not placed in quite the right position to allow room for the super wide 5" door casings I chose.  A quick edit of the floor plan allows me to widen the stairwells and slide the doors over a little bit to make room.  This also necessitates widening the stairs.  The process only takes a couple minutes, but I'm left with a closet door that can't be moved or widened, but still doesn't have enough room on the sides for the 5 inch casing.  On the plate for tomorrow is researching ways around that.  Maybe I can use a narrower casing, or maybe I simply chop off the existing trim.

While I'm editing the stairwell I take an opportunity to add an archway between the living room and dining room, then it's on to duplicating, resizing, and placing all the doors and trim.  As it stands right now, I have all the interior doors on the first floor in place, with their casing, and about half of the baseboards.  Tomorrow I will finish installing those, as well as the crown moldings, and then begin trimming the windows.

Originally, I left the windows and the exterior doors trimmed the same way as the Farmhouse, but I will probably swap that trim out for the new pieces I designed today.

By the end of tomorrow I should be on to modeling the kitchen counters and cupboards, as well as the plumbing fixtures for the kitchen and bath.  I will also need to bring in light switches and receptacles from my prop library and distribute those around the house.  When the first floor is finished I will move to the second floor and do the same up there.

Overall, I am a little bit behind where I wanted to be at the start of this weekend, but I think things are going well and I'm very much on track for hitting my deadline.

If I am able to start importing individual pieces of the house into Daz and Poser tomorrow, I should have the first test renders of the interior, and will post those here.

Now, back to work!

Friday's Modern Home Update -- Better Late Than Never

This was the latest progress on the Modern Home as of Friday.  The last image I posted was a little bit out of date and didn't reflect things like the basement windows and the back porch being completed.

At this stage of development, anything you see on the Modern Home model that is white has not been textured yet.  Flat white is the base material I work with for in-progress renders, as it picks up ambient occlusion well.

Most of the trim on the house will actually be white, but will have a painted texture to it with some slight bump mapping.  In this shot I have added a tree from Daz3d and a truck from Renderosity (with my own materials overhaul), as well as the NFXstudios Farmhouse prop from Daz3d.

For comparison, I am posting the very first render of this project from when I originally boxed the model in some time last year, along with the most recent render done on Friday.  Hopefully that will show a little bit of an evolution.  The pitches on some of the roofs have changed, for instance, and placeholder geometry for the front porch has been updated, in addition to things like siding and windows and doors being added.

Enjoy!

Modern Home #1 Update

Just a quick update on the progress of Modern Home #1.  I'm pleased to report that the house has been sold and will be published at Renderosity sometime in the next couple months.

Work continues, with most of the exterior modeling now complete.  I have started some of the exterior texturing and will be moving inside to do the trimming and doors and textures on the interior next week.  I hope to have the project wrapped up by the 17th.

More updates as they become available.  Stay tuned!

NFXstudios Modern Home #1

Next project is underway.  I am doing this one for Daz3d while I'm in the process of working out details for a publishing deal with Renderosity.  I'm hoping to fully support both Daz Studio as well as Poser for this one.

The house will be fully furnished inside and out and I'm currently planning to also include the surrounding lot, with an interior/exterior garage.

More details as they happen.  Stay tuned!

Pole Barn

This is officially the next project that will be completed, as it's the closest one to completion right now out of the whole lot.

There isn't a whole lot of modeling left to do.  I am debating whether to do the interior or to leave it as an exterior-only prop (which was the original design intent).  Even modeling the full interior, I think this can be done today and probably ready for submission tomorrow.

The bulk of the remaining work is in cooking up a suitable environment for the promotional shots, likely with the Farmhouse in the background.

More on this later as it becomes available!