Custom Panosh Place-Style Vehicle Team Voltron

[dudleydrulert]

When I was a kid, I wondered why Panosh Place never made any Vehicle Team Voltron toys. Many other Voltron toy licensees did -- Matchbox, LJN and HG Toys.

About a year and a half ago, I decided to rectify that situation. I'm making my own custom, Panosh Place-style Vehicle Team Voltron. A lot of progress has been made with design sketches and concept models made from foam core and posterboard, but a lot of work remains.

Here's a long-running thread about the project on the Voltron.com forums.

Here are the some of the latest photos of the concept models:









This post in the aforementioned Voltron.com thread features older photos of the individual vehicles... as well as custom action figures of the 15 pilots! (I didn't make the action figures. They were made for me on commission.)

[xiombarg]

Awesome! That is a tremendous amount of work. I've been working on a robot for more than a year and I know what a process it is. Good luck with all this.

[bowhntr66]

That is awesome!! I love the size!!

[dudleydrulert]

Thanks! Believe it or not, the size of the robot is as small as I could make it, given that each of its 15 vehicles has to accommodate a 3-3/4"-scale action figure of its pilot.

I've begun to model the head vehicle (Unit #1, Air Team, piloted by Jeff) using Blender. I've used 3D modeling packages before, but this is my first project with Blender, so the learning curve just to use the software is a bit steep.

Here's what I've done so far...

[xiombarg]

I hear ya on the learning curve. All the advanced 3D programs are seriously intensive. I learned 3D using Maya, which has a beast of an interface system. I've used Blender quite a bit and it's an excellent program. I use periodically along with Sketchup.

[dudleydrulert]

I learned 3D modeling with 3D Studio R2 -- as in the DOS version. Later I purchased 3D Studio MAX 1.2, which I subsequently upgraded to 2 and then 2.5. That's was it... until I started using Blender this week.

Blender's user interface isn't very intuitive, but I'm beginning to get the hang of it.

[dudleydrulert]

Update:

[magengar]

Man, I've tried Blender and I almost wanted to place my head under
a moving truck... I don't have the patience to learn Blender.

I used DoGA CGA L3, in conjunction with Metasequoia version 2.4.0;
but I've never had anything printed out with these two programs.

Your VV is looking awesome!

zozo-mag

[dudleydrulert]

Update:

[xiombarg]

It's all about setting up your quick keys.

One good thing about pretty much all animation 3D programs is they all accomplish the same thing by using the same basic methods. The big difference being how the interface works, which you would think isn't that big of a deal, but 3D modelling has so many facets to it that the layout of the interface is a key issue. There is some odd placement of certain menus and functions in Blender, but most 3D programs have their oddities in how they label and organize things. Usually I've found that the older the program the more obscurely technical it is. The newer 3D programs like Softimage while still being complex aren't so heavy laden with weird menu structures, or menus buried in menus for what should be relatively common operations. Even industry standards like Autocad have lots of odd outdated ways of doing things, but part of this is because it's so old and they don't want to upset their long time bread and butter users.

All things considered, I don't think Blender is too bad, but you still need to watch a fair amount of tutorial videos before you really get the layout of where everything is, but that's usually the case with any 3D program if you really want to use it's advanced features. Even Sketchup, which is a relatively non-threatening 3D program for beginners requires a fair amount of training videos for using the plugins and advanced features before anything of a professional level can be achieved.

[dudleydrulert]

^ Yeah, the fundamentals are the same. My biggest gripe with Blender is the use of the right mouse button to select stuff. I know of no other application on any contemporary platform that uses the right mouse button to select anything.

Update -- I started to model Voltron's face. I'm more engineering-minded than art-minded, and Voltron has a fairly human-looking face, so modeling this is probably going to be the most difficult 3D modeling task of the entire effort.

[dudleydrulert]

I'm working on Voltron's face and its placement within the head vehicle. I can't make the head as human-like as the Matchbox toy's head, in part because I'm not an expert at modeling organic objects, but also because the extra depth required of a more human-like head would require the vehicle to be taller in order to continue to accommodate the 3-3/4" action figure of pilot Jeff. The top of Jeff's head, with helmet, is right under Voltron's chin! (Jeff sits facing forward in the vehicle, meaning that in Voltron mode, Jeff sits facing upward.)

[magengar]

What is the 3D file format of that head object?
Is it an .LWO, .3DS, or perhaps .OBJ format?

zozo-mag

[dudleydrulert]

The object, which isn't yet ready for 3D-printing, is part of a Blender file.

[magengar]

The reason I asked was because I 3D-modeled a lion Voltron
roughly about two summers ago.
I completed the 3D model and was about to assemble it as a
multi-jointed object for posing in pictures, but suddenly my hard-drive
crashed (BSOD).

The human face on my Voltron is almost similar in style to the one
you're modeling there.
If you'd like to try my Voltron's face I'll look and see if I still have
any surviving object files of the face, and send it to you as a file format
that is supported by Blender.
You could then import it to Blender and modify it as you like.


Here's the model I worked on before the crash...



zozo-mag

Nov 4, 2013 21:44:57 GMT -5 dudleydrulert said:

The object, which isn't yet ready for 3D-printing, is part of a Blender file.

[dudleydrulert]

Wow! Thanks for the offer!

I'll play around for a while longer with the face that I'm working on. If things don't seem to be panning out, then I'll likely take you up on your offer. Thanks again!

[magengar]

Arrrrrrrgh! I'm still looking for my Voltron head file!

zozo-mag

[dudleydrulert]

Sorry to hear that. If it means anything, your post reminded me that it's time to purchase another external hard drive, in order to prevent this sort of thing from happening with my current project. (Prior to our relocating earlier this year, I used a different computer and had a more strict "policy" of archiving files than I have now.)

[magengar]

I hear ya... nothing kicks the crotch harder than losing all that work
to a hard-drive crash, even if the data can be recovered it can also
end up corrupted.

Extra hard-drives: I could NEVER have enough Storage, especially
for 3D modeling.  I'm such a pack-rat for 3D models and textures.
I still have a few old IDE and SATA hard-drives packed with old files;
for me it's a matter of searching through folders trying to remember
exactly where I've stored specific 3D model files.

If you can stock up on some of those Terrabyte sized hard-drives,
as many as you can possibly afford, they should hold you steady
for a good while.
3D models and textures can hog up LOTS of disc space; video renders
of animated models can hog up even more space than expected. lol

Feel free to check out my Youtube channel to see some of
my 3D work and renders.
www.youtube.com/user/magengar


zozo-mag

Nov 7, 2013 21:08:58 GMT -5 dudleydrulert said:

Sorry to hear that. If it means anything, your post reminded me that it's time to purchase another external hard drive, in order to prevent this sort of thing from happening with my current project. (Prior to our relocating earlier this year, I used a different computer and had a more strict "policy" of archiving files than I have now.)

[dudleydrulert]

^ I checked out some of your videos. Cool stuff!

Back to working on Voltron's face... I'd like to wrap it up within the next week or two, so that I can focus on the rest of the vehicle.