CGI Dark Glass Project

[cypherplex]

I'm surprised I've never posted anything here about this project, so here we go!

Several years ago, I came across a fun piece of Beast Wars history: a fan comic around the events of the canceled Beast Wars episode "Dark Glass".

The comic, at the time, impressed me a lot. Enough that I felt it was a shame the episode had not been produced.

So, I decided to do it myself. I knew nothing of 3D imagery back then so I figured it was a good thing to learn.

Along the way, the possibilities of such an endeavour were proven to me by the production of "Theft of the Golden Disk".

Flash forward to two year ago. I bumped into an artist on Deviant Art that was doing Mainframe accurate models of the characters. In fact, he had already done several and his reasons were so that he could make a fan comic of his own.

So, Wishmaster and I teamed up with the objective of producing Dark Glass as an animated project, and sharing everything built so that he could use it on his projects as well.

The script is based on the Genome Studios fan-comic, which was the best I could build on at the time. It's been revised several times over the years, accounting for fans revealing they had read the real script or gotten info from the author, Christy Marx (and always taken with a grain of salt, as I remain a skeptic on many of the Beast Wars' rumors).

A year ago, we decided that enough revisions had taken place, and having teamed up with SCP21 Productions, we finally ran auditions and cast the project.

Most of the lines are recorded, and work is progressing well enough that we expect to be done for Beast Wars' 20th Anniversary, in 2016. That sounds like it's far, far away, but since this is being done on free time, it's a pretty realistic esitmate.

Here is the current "Update" on the project, which includes a test render of the Maximal Base and a quick walkthrough of the rough set.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj9ju...ature=youtu.be

There's a lot of things you can see about this project on my DeviantArt
http://xsilverboltx.deviantart.com/

and Wishmasters'
http://wishmasterinrlyeh.deviantart.com/

We've also got a YouTube page for test vids:
http://www.youtube.com/user/DarkGlassProject

And there's a few more things over at my personal YouTube page, including the auditions results

http://www.youtube.com/user/Cypherplex55

I'll keep this place updated as progress continues!

[Bruticus82]

Wow, looks promising!

[Tekkamanraiden]

The texture mapping on the rocks could use a bump map but otherwise it looks great.

[cypherplex]

Yeah, all the rocks are temporary surfaces, I only put the quickie map on there to avoid comments about "Why are the rocks just plain grey, that doesn't look good".

You'd be amazed how many of these comments I get, despite the fact it's all listed as "work in progress" or "Test renders". The important update here is the Command Center, the previous update looked like this:

[Tekkamanraiden]

Yeah I'm sure not a lot of people have experience or knowledge of modeling in 3d. The initial render of the Command Centre looks good, what program are you using?

[cypherplex]

I'm using 3D Studio Max 2010, and Wishmaster is using Anim8or. It's an old program but apparently when you're used to it, you can do a lot of cool modeling. I prefer 3DSMax for the fact that it can do everything, you just need to know how.

[cypherplex]

Christmas brought a few presents in for the project. First and foremost, Dinobot's final animation model, from WishmasterInRlyeh




And David Kaye's authorization to publicly air this clip!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uEwILNLm_A

[Malwave]

sir, please stop making me have to change my underwear with every update. I'm running out.

[cypherplex]

*LOL* Creepy, but good to know. We're on the right track then

[Malwave]

Originally Posted by cypherplex

*LOL* Creepy, but good to know. We're on the right track then

I kid about the pants part of course, but the compliment's meaning remains true!