Foray Into 3D Animation

What's better than a shiny SolidWorks render? I don't know, I don't think there's much out there that is.

What about a long string of renders? Maybe that would pique my interest. In fact, a bit of sweetly rendered frames as part of an animation sounds like it could be right up my alley. So, with RoboClub being my first 'client' I'll be attempting some of my first 3D animations using Autodesk's 3DS Max. It's a pretty different animal than SolidWorks but I hear it plays nice with all the models I've already created, and I'll be starting simple.

My first project will be to make a RoboClub YouTube splash animation involving Red Robot and our logo. That's what you're getting a taste of up top there.

A pair of gloves I could learn to sport:

Tony Stark, here I come.

Hovercraft

One of the many items on my to-do list: a hovercraft.

I had an idea that wasn't quite a hovercraft at all , but a hover-capable aerial vehicle. A long time ago I saw a video of a hunk o' metal floating in midair suspended by bursts from a downward facing rocket thruster. The thruster output a constant force I assume, but the rate at which it was fired controlled the rate of ascent/descent. Cool. Now, lets combine that with a quadrotor style platform, so you've now got a planar square arrangement of these thrusters. That's nice, but changing orientation would still be difficult with just those four coplanar deals. So, to add in the ability to strafe and rotate we just put on some horizontal firing thrusters and things are getting exciting. JPL, you listening?

School Year - OUT

Wow, look at that... I've matriculated into my second year of college. That was fast. Glad I have a job now.