2012 Audi A5 - last updates and Render!

So, just another string of pictures!  There were 6 more updates since my last post, but they were mostly centered around tweaking and texturing.

WIP 18 - Still experimenting with materials

WIP 19 - Tweaking the model slightly

WIP 20 - More model tweaks, this time on the headlights, adding
detail on the lights themselves.

WIP 21 - More tweaking of materials.  Everything is starting to come together :)

WIP 22 - Textured calipers.

WIP 23 - The scene's coming together!

And now the final render!

The final shot was rendered on my Intel i5-2320 at 1250 samples.  Took 3 hours to churn out this 1080p image.  I'm still working on a few other shots, so I'll put those up once they're all ready and whatnot.

I think I can now say with certainty that this is my most complex project ever.  The vertex count is above 3 million at render time... anyway, now on to other projects!  I'll have a special post over the weekend about new developments, so stay tuned!

2012 Audi A5 Coupe - Update #2! (lots of pics!)

**A wild meme-face has appeared!**

(Lvl. 9001 Wy-yuno)

MeshWeaver, Y U NO POST MOAR UPDATES?!

Well, to put it simply...I was being lazy - posting on a blog is a bit more time-consuming than uploading on DeviantART, you know?

Anyway, last time I ended with WIP snapshot #04, which was a turntable render of the bodywork at it's then-current level of progress.  But...since then there have been thirteen new updates.  I'm that lazy, yes.

Geekness à la GTX560 Ti (long post!)

What's a GTX560 Ti, you may ask?  Put simply, it's awesomeness condensed into the shape of computer hardware.  Put complexly (because I can't resist talking about the details), it is the second generation of the nVidia GeForce 460 - the 400 series was replaced with the 500, so the GTX460 (apparently a very popular GPU) became the GTX560.  However, to bridge the performance gap between the 560 and the 570 (which was relatively considerable) nVidia came up with another "in-between" version, the GTX560 Ti.

Why am I talking about this particular GPU?  Well, waaaaaaay back in December 2011, I bought my current desktop PC, a Gateway DX4860 with an Intel i5-2320 processor @3.0Ghz, 6GB of 1333Mhz RAM, a DVD drive, about a dozen USB ports (you can never have too many USB ports) and finally a nVidia GeForce GT520.  Not the best card out there, truth be told - I looked it up on an benchmarking website and it was third from the bottom.

However, it was millions of times better than the GPU I have in my good-ol' laptop - an Intel 965 Express Chipset, which sometimes struggled to run even Age of Mythology - not exactly the most graphics-intensive game out there.  (I don't even know why Intel makes GPUs O_o)

Coming to a 3D handheld-console near you

So I just opened up Google Chrome and was checking the good ol' BlenderNation news feed on Blender.org, when I saw this:

http://www.blendernation.com/2012/04/27/nintendo-set-to-release-big-buck-bunny-on-3ds/trackback/

...just to explain just how epicly awesome this is to me, consider this following sentence.   My discovery of The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time and other Nintendo games has very probably led to me doing what I'm doing now - being a total Blenderhead.  And now my one great passion/interest being (in a way) ported to a Nintendo system is something I was not expecting at all.  I seriously grew up with an NES and N64, and Nintendo's games remain my all-time favourites.
Not to mention it's coming to the 3DS, which is an amazing piece of tech - even though I can't say I've used it that much, I've completed Ocarina of Time 3D and the amount of detail and the quality of the graphics, not to mention the amazing 3D effect (galloping across Hyrule Field or fighting the King of Evil, Ganondorf, was even more epic than in the original, which was over 9000% pure epicness) was simply stunning.

...I'm really, really happy right now :D

All the geeky, geeky things...

So, I haz moar updatez for youz :D

First off, the Audi A5 Coupe.  To be perfectly honest, I haven't worked on it since I rendered that last WIP update, the model turntable.  I've been much busier with setting up Linux Mint (more on that later) and a bunch of other things like Minecraft, Star Wars Battlefront II, and Gran Turismo 5 :P  I'm planning on getting back to it this week, so keep an eye out (...gross) for those updates :D

So...From Freedom came Elegance, and from Linux Mint 12 came headaches and over six re-installations.  To be fair though, I love the interface and how the menus and so on work in Mint 12, and oddly enough it feels a bit more professional than Windows 7.  Maybe it's the absence of a few graphical flourishes Win7 uses, or maybe it's just that I'm expecting a Linux distro (aka distribution package/version) to be more professional since it's what they use over at the Blender Foundation in Amsterdam.  Who knows?
Anyway, about those multiple installations... they're all due to FAILs on my part.  Half of those fails were due to my crappy disk-partition management - deleting partitions that had the GRUB loader (what asks you which OS you want to use when you start up your computer) and therefore, I got GRUB errors that I couldn't fix by any method except re-installing everything.  So yesterday I finally got all my disk-partitions setup properly and Linux Mint 12 installed, updates installed and Nvidia GeForce GT520 drivers also installed - which means I also have my two screens setup awesomely.  I'll post a picture of my setup sometime :)
I'm still in the process of installing my essential programs, but hopefully I'll soon be regularly switching between Mint 12 and Win7 to do all my work :D

Yumm, minty chrome...

Two gaming-related updates too!  Yesterday I finally got my hands on...