Scooterlord the new rear view render is stunning - even more things to ogle at!

As to the Pancam, you've modelled it superbly

Click to view attachment

it's how it is shown mounted on Mer's RH side which is not quite right; the wiring connection should be below the lens on the RH. The LH side is perfect.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

Keep the Christmas presents coming!!

[I should get out more!]

Woaw man, that's just

congratulations ! A lot of work paying off !

That's just AMAZING! Isn't this some vision! Are you using x-rays? Well done, minor detail but you were right, I though you meant about the lens being on the same side, I'll have this fixed. I am glad that you people spent quite some time studying my model and I guess you will be amazed by the amount of detail I made out of the reference found on the web...

Today I spent most of the day fixing 'bad surfaces' on the model, there were quite a few, had them all fixed though Currently I am doing test renders on the environment, it's very difficult to get a nice surface at the high resolutions I am aiming at, will post later to get some opinions..

edit: @Toma B... Yes, I saw the curiosity rover, but.. I don't think so! LOL. I don't have enough 'life' to model this as well... Unless NASA hires me to do so that is.. hehe

This for me started as a fun modeling challenge to myself and it ended up eating up most of my brain thinking about every single day. Now, as I have already said, it will become the most important asset in my portfolio in order to get a job. I want to change professions, working at a hospital just isn't enough for me, and I am certain that you can see I am being wasted in there. Hopefully someone will notice and care to help..

edit2: Here are the render of the environment. They are big res files (3400x1996). What do you guys think?

http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/4678/env2.jpg

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/5442/env3.jpg

Not bad, especially 1st one; hard to judge without a scale refer... in my opinion, in the 2nd image there is too much terrain glare!

Scooterlord, I stand in awe of your 3D abilities. I shall never open Blender again!

Well... you should! You should set this as your standard and get started! Everyone starts from nothing...

Good morning! New render with right-side view details:

http://img859.imageshack.us/img859/5401/merright.jpg


Sorry I didn't have enough time to fix the pancam thingie, but will do so, I keep that in mind.

For people into technical 3d stuff. This render, although is 5400x3173 (that is TWICE the size of the previous render), it only took half the time and this time consumed 5.5gb of ram. I had forgotten to turn export instances; for people that don't know (and care to know an instance is an object multiplied many times that is the same, like the photoboltaic mirrors, or the bolts, etc. It saved me a lot of time!

I didn't mention it so far, but the most difficult and time-consuming part of the rover was making the cables and the threads that hold them together. I was bored a million of times and just pushed myself to making them... finally, you can even see the knots on the underside of the wings if you pay attention. Only in this size of renders can they be clearly seen.

Expecting your comments, the next render might probably show up textured

Look absolutely beautiful. At some point, you will need to do a render with the camera moved a few inches to the left or right so someone here can create a 3D view.

I see the knots and lot of other amazing details, what a marvel! This vision recall me the high-res MER movie I saw in Paris years ago...
You say this rendering took half the time of previous one but... how much time, exactly? (well, I know this question should be coupled to "which kind of hardware/software?" but I know also the risk of going OT here, so pls don't be too technical on this side! ).
Good suggestion from Hendric about 3D view...

As soon as I am done, I can make a 3d view out of it. Damn it's just two renders..

This HUGE render took about 6 hours, I am using rhinoceros 3d beta 5 x64, maxwell render, and am on an Intel i7 960 @3.2Ghz (that is 4 core-8 hyperthreaded -considered like 8-core) with 6gb of ram dd3 triple channel (expecting 12gb soon). However, because I want the pc to be silent, I am using a program to limit the core usage to 75%, makes it run cool and silent However with materials it's another story, good thing I don't mind having the pc on and another good thing is that the renderer allows you to stop and resume the render whenever you want!

Currently I am at work but checking on a material render of just the RAT (includes displacement) and it has run 6 hours so far at about 1200x6??. Looks a bit hazy, but I was in a rush when I started the render, so I might not have focused the camera correctly. Looks absolutely S T U N N I N G If I finish this later on tonight I'll post the render.

Thanks for the info, S.Lord!
Cannot wait for material render of the RAT !

I'm posting different size versions of a new wallpaper, now focalizing on details of last two renderings:
Click to view attachment 1280x720 Click to view attachment 1680x960 Click to view attachment 1920x1080
I have also an higher resolution version (2365x1440) if someone is interested...

Hello again.. I guess this is what you've all been waiting for. This is just a sample of what you should expect of the quality of the final model.



..The program I am using is at its beta stage, so I have some trouble with the texture mapping. Previous version of the program seems to be working fine, but it's waaay slower, so I'll have to wait for the final version. So far, I've managed to do it properly but the textures on the rat are relatively easy.

The above render took 16 hours (!) to complete, that's way too slow, but I am using displacement for the cables that literally kills the performance to almost less than half. For the time being I wanted to show you a full quality render, although a bit grainy, but will have to find a workaround for the final renders. I can't imagine how much time it will need for the final thing to be render. I HOPE for a render/week (at 3400x2000px).

Comments expected and welcome as always

Well, definitely is what we've all been waiting for!
Result is above my expecations, with impressive realism of brushes and foreground cables. Steel parts seems too shiny and gold wires jacket in background isn't well defined like other parts... but these are minor issues. What worries me is the rendering time, considering this is only a small part; however, I see you're confident so I'm not really scared about!

Edit: only now I noticed the scratches on steel parts contacting the rocks... fantastic detail!!!

Hey,

Well, the shininess is something very difficult to realize. The picture below is an unedited screenshot from the documentary 'Roving mars' that shows the mer BRAND new and shot indoors. As you can see it can't get any shinier than this.



And this one:



I had a lot of trouble picking the materials, that's why I spend a whole day (which is too long for this), but if you notice carefully enough, the render above has 16 textures - with 6-7 different chrome shininess levels, etc. I am doing my best to reproduce the best results, provided the reference I have helps me.

Moreover the cables can't be more defined than they already are, I spend like 5 days sorting them out from the reference I have The camera angle doesnt help as well, the next render I am doing atm from the other side will give you a better opinion of what's going on.

..and glad you noticed the small things! That's the whole purpose of good texturing. If only I had a render farm and could let this reach its best sampling level. To reach 25 sampling (which is the best) it would need 150 hours more... but that's normal with this specific renderer. Awesome quality in expense of time..

edit: forgot to say, that the materials seem SO different depending on the lighting you'd be surprised, in outdoors lighting, it seems completely different. In most reference pictures for example the cables seem yellowish, but in some others redish.. I just have to pick what I think is the most accurate by experience with lighting..

edit2: here is a brand new render from the other side. This one took 5 hours to render, lower sampling level than the previous image (17 instead of 20):



I was so excited to start rendering that I forgot to texture the metal end of the cable :/

Hey scooterlord, absolutely stunning work! Very impressive!

I've never created a rendering on my own, so I've no idea how this works. I don't know if it's possible but, if you outsource some of the render calculations to other workstations, may be some of the users here are able to spend some of their CPU time for this project ;-).

I've got a VMware ESXi test machine with an AMD Phenom II x6 @ 4,2GHz and 16 GB RAM, which is currently not in use. If possible and needed, I would like to donate the calculation power of this machine for test renders.

I can't wait to see the final texturized version of this model! Keep up to good work!

Thanks! That would be awesome but not now. Now i test render all the time and huge amount of data has to be sent. Once I am finished we'll see

Wow! That is absolutely beautiful work!

I see "MER@home" project on the horizon!
Seriously, is a nice idea and I would like to offer my CPU time too (however, I suspect that my poor PC, a Phenom with only 3GB Ram, isn't useful...)

Good morning...

..and here is the moessbauer spectrometer:



..I hope you aren't getting bored with me posting! I will try to texture (and post) one item per day... This way the community will have detailed renders of each part

I literally giggle at the quality of these - it's breathtaking.

Thanks! Lets just hope that some company will giggle as well and give me a job! thanks again for the support people. I knew what the quality was going to be like when I first started, it was tiring, but the idea of what would come -comments and people's giggles- was what kept me going..

Really amazing indeed! Looking forward to the final result.

I love the touch of the 'SCLORD2011' text on the ribbon cable.
That's excellent!!

I have to admit that many of you are really observant!

Good morning everyone,

here is the apxs.. I must have started the render about 20 times, I always made silly errors and I had to wait until the render cleared... grrr.. I think now it's all done and as it should be:

This may sound odd, but I had grown quite fond of the untextured model - white and perfect. But these new renders look so gorgeous! It's like the mother of all clean rooms, pristine parts up close and we don't even have to wear bunny suits.

Thanks! Well, I know that you people didn't know what to expect, texturing needs a lot of work as well, if you had previously seen my site then you should have known what quality to expect. Let alone that during the 5 years in the making I learned a lot of stuff, especially modeling-wise, but also texturing and rendering techniques. Now that I am finalizing everything as I go on texturing I see so many errors and things I would have done differently if I had started now. I can see that my experience is +10 levels

I am glad I live up to your expectations and even exceed them!

Hello everyone and happy holidays! New render for your pleasure.. the micro-imager..



Next render will take a while, I will post when I am done with the whole idd.

Comments welcome as always!

Any comments I would make would only be obscene in a good way, and hardly productive (though redoubtedly complementary in intent).

Astonishing.

Thanks, I am flattered as always!

Did you ever get any help from someone at NASA, or is it all still what you've deduced from looking at official photos?

--Greg

I sent emails to any company I could find that took part in the rover (eg honeybee robotics, etc), but I only got reference not found online (at least I couldn't find it) just for the idd, everything else can be found online. I mainly used the jpl library, the documentaries (martian robots, roving mars, death of mars rover, etc), the sol photos, pdfs and manuals found online for various mechanisms (eg how the idd is held on the belly of the rover, the rocker-bogie extenders, etc), small cad references for various parts. It was really exhausting, as I have already said in many parts of this thread, it was hundreds of hours of staring-comparing-measuring and a few hours of modeling. It was really painful but the result is rewarding, I was obsessed with it. Most people would be happy with just scarce details but I wanted this project to be as accurate as it could.

In my opinion people should be more excited and awed by my perception, patience and ability to measure and compare rather than my modeling skills in this particular project.

Trust me, many people are.

Yes, this looks awesome and extremely detailed (and I thought the POV-Ray model of Cassini I did roughly 10 years ago was detailed - compared to this it isn't). Must be a *huge* amount of work.

I have both good and bad news today.. good news is that my new ram has arrived, now on 12gb It's not needed at this point but it will be needed soon...

Bad news is that I am having serious problems with current versions of software, the textures on my items keep failing every now and then and I can't pinpoint why this happens. Very frustrating along with the texture mapping problems. Can't go back to previous versions because I have a lot of work in this particular file version that can't be read in previous versions of the program. Better than not being able to handle the file at all I guess. :/ Anyway, new renders probably tomorrow..

Scooterlord,
Have you tried contacting the company? I know I'd drop everything I was working on to help out someone doing something this awesome.

Hey...

well, it's beta, problems are supposed to occur, and corruption is supposed to happen now and then. Luckily I have hundreds of backups so everything is well!

I know I promised you a new render a few days back.. it's coming soon, rendering at the background atm. I hope you'll like it! Patience until tomorrow...

I seriously doubt we won't like it

First of all, happy new year! Forgot to mention it earlier!

Well, people, here is the new render! Excuse the bug with the flag on the rat..




Comments always welcome!

Brilliant!

This is stunning! MER becomes alive...

Rally wonderful, SLord !

If I may just two notes:
- the whole picture seems to be a little bit grainy or fuzzy on my screen compare to previous sharp renderings
- the USA flag on RAT cable cover is out of scale - bigger then suppose to be -> only stripes are visible

Otherwise, as I said - marvelous job !
Thanks for your patience and skils, it is real joy to watch your outputs.


Edit: please ignore my second note, when I read your comments more carefully I realized you know it already - sorry

@pospa... The render is a bit grainy because it needed many more hours to clear up. A render is considered to be grainy clear after its sampling rate reaches 20. This render's rate is 17.5 after 20 hours of rendering. These are just test renders, when it is finalized I will let it render all the way.. Hopefully it will take less than a week for one render.

In this render besides the flag, a few more things went wrong, like the white caps of the turning motors, they were supposed to be reflective, now fixed. I also corrected a few other minor things. Rendering atm the other side of the base of the idd.. Coming soon...

Breathtaking.

Continued stunning work. I admire your patience and attention to detail.

Thank you for bringing us along for the ride! You honor well the Spirit of the MER project.


-- Pertinax

Just when you think it can't get better - another stunning render to drool over!!

Absolutely amazed at the detail to be seen. I especially like the view into the alpha/x-ray spectrometer (APXS) - so pleased you left the dust doors open!!

You went to Mars and swiped Oppys arm...You must have!!

That is just really amazing work Scooter. Amazing job

I always look forward to seeing your work.

Just incredible.

Good morning again, with a new render...

There a few artifacts again, the film of the moessbauer, a dark ring at the back of the base of the idd, a few non-reflective surfaces on the rat, the small film of the microimager... I know.. unfortunately I messed with the camera view and didn't save the file so I couldn't fix the errors for this particular render, they are fixed for future renders though...



I will probably start texturing the wheels-rocker bogie next, probably starting tomorrow. I'll let it render another angle in the meantime to post, a smaller render this time to have it ready today...

One look at it and bang went my "no swearing" New Year's resolution
Amazing.