For those of you who have actually seen Rift running (I think there are like 10 of you out there) you may have noticed something about my space station. It sucks! If you head over to the screen shots section of this page you’ll notice that there is no picture of it. That’s good marketing. A while ago I decided that I should go through Rift and start fixing up the parts that suck the worst. The space station quickly rose to the top of that list. So I decided to learn a bit more about modeling, which is what that whole space gun was about. The other day I started up a new model for my station. I figured I’d make a really high polygon count thing like the gun, something that would look just awesome in this blog. Then I’d use my normal maps and what not to fit it into the game. Sounds good right? Nope! Thankfully before I got too nutty with the polygons I took a few of my starter shapes and ran them through a model viewer test app I wrote. Sure enough, the normal maps just weren’t cutting it. So I simplified everything. Then I simplified some more. Then I did it again, and in the end, something pretty cool came out. It’s still not perfect, and it lacks a paint job, but it’s worlds better then what I had.

For the record, let me show you the old space station:

Nice! You like those screen shots? Now you see why I’ve never put it on the web page. Here’s the new one:

Well it’s finally done. I have completed the big gun:

Let’s see, what’s the damage. That’s 6 sessions, ranging from 4 to 8 hours each, so let’s say 36 hours in total. I’ve had an eye strain headache for the past 3 days. I have trouble focusing on distant objects. I’ve let my contract work slip, so a bit less cash in my pocket. On the plus side I’ve learned an absolute TON about making 3D models. I also have a pretty cool model to call my own, though I can’t actually use it in rift, so that’s sort of a wash. All in all I’m looking forward to not making another model for a while now.

Today was all about the back of the gun.


I think I can finish it up in one day, which is good, because this is getting maddening. When I’m done I hope to not touch Blender again for a long time. I’ll have to find some less addictive hobby, like crack.

Coming along. The large floating ring is where the eventual mount will be built.

A tip for aspiring Blender modelers: it doesn’t ask you if you want to save your current work before it shuts down. I came one muscle twitch away from loosing the last 2 hours of work.