esinohio

The Huey swoops in to pick up a wayward Jeb. Having fun with @Redshift OTF 's Huey Bell UH-1 replica. Back from an extended vacation, woot! Hope to have a few renders done soon.

This is just great! Wondering just long it will be for the first Kerbal flinging video to appear using this device.

Having fun with @Foxster 's XWG Fast SSTO found here.

Kerbal is now UV unwrapped well enough to get fun things like body art added or whatever combination of colors you want to paint on him. Below is the Kerbal tribute to Ziggy Stardust wearing his nice blue suit. Minor size tweaks brought his head to almost the exact size of his body. It's very very close now I think. Still working on a set of custom bone shapes and colors that make sense. Link to the Mk2 version with the slight tweaks/UV unwrapping can be found here and in the original post.

Neck has been made a bit longer. Will upload it here tonight along with a few other modifications that should make moving him a lot easier. My current custom bone shapes are not very intuitive. That 'stache is killin me! lol Love it.

Just playing around with @Azimech 's Curious Chakora v1 (v2 out now). Turbine powered with a variable pitch prop!! ... a variable pitch prop! Keeping your prop pitch set depending on airspeed feels like a full on sim. All we need now is a fuel mixture system, cylinder head temps, and maybe some old school ADF radios for navigation. In case you were living under a rock like me and missed this one go by in the craft exchange, find it here.

Rigged Kerbal in Blender ver 1 Link: Rigged Kerbal mk 2 This project began in an effort to make a posable Kerbal that could be used in future renders. While certainly no expert with this stuff I think he came out very well. The model is completely articulated and can assume many basic facial poses by simply moving the control bones. Current render times are reasonable for animation even when using the real hair on the model. Hair can be combed differently, grown, removed, curled, kinked, and of course recolored. If you turn on the option and bake the hair it will come alive and move with your character and respond to the environment. Moving forward I will be tweaking and updating the model with things like: 1. Adjustments to proportions!! ( Since I was doing this entirely by eye, and honestly my eyes suck, his proportions are a bit off here and there. ) 2. Finer facial control with more expressions. If I get REALLY bored I might take a stab at adding the shape keys for the basic phonemes used for lip syncing in Blender. Seeing him actually talk would be awesome. 3. UV mapped body and painted texture map so new facial colors, tattoos, scars, etc can be added to the body. 4. Accessories. I plan to add at least a few versions of the Kerbal such as the scientist and workman. If I thought doing the body was hard that infernal spacesuit is gonna kill me! Modeling it is proving to be a challenge since I'm not planning on faking detail with texture maps. All the hoses, buttons, and dials need to be modeled so needless to say I'm neck deep in reference materials and tutorials. 5. Basic animations. He's currently got stored in the NLA a dance and singing routine, salute, and a BAD walk cycle. 6. And last but certainly not least I need to make the female version of this model. Another grand project in itself since her proportions were so well done. Special thanks to @Gaiiden for all his continued help!!! Keeping this in my thread for now but I'm not sure if it needs its own. Maybe if there is actual interest I'll start a new thread just for the model.

Much to learn, you still have.

The force is strong with this one.....

And yet more fun with Blender's animation tools. I never thought making something come alive in Blender would be this fun! Music thrown in so he wasn't standing and dancing with no audio. With some reworking of the mouth animation I suppose you could loosely lip sync this. .... sorry for the Rick roll. Jeb roll?

Little known fact, Jeb is a superhero on the side.

Still working on the face bones but as is he can express himself fairly well. Using two cheek bones, a chin bone, and the brows you can get him into a few expressions.

Much further along with the rig now. Actually I completely pitched the basic rig pictured a few posts ago with a completely new rig made from the ground up. Far far happier with this one so far. The facial bones are something like an art form and about all I have managed to get is a few decent facial expressions. With a few more bones in lip area I think he will be able to do most mouth movements. The rig now has controllers for the hands,feet, knees, elbows, and eyes. It makes it a million times easier to pose the model now. Still narrowing down the mouth area. Those bones are hard.

And yet further refinement on the rig. Still fine tuning the face but its getting close!

I had forgotten all about that Kerbalizer. I tried the same thing for a video I did a long time ago. I just snagged a few seconds of the Kerbals head as it looked around a bit and then composited it into my video. Knowing that I'm sure you can probably get some great shots of them at various angles. Once I finally finish up the model I'd be more than happy to post it if you want. Fairly close to done actually, his rig just needs some fine tuning and it will be ready for easy posing.

I can't animate to save my life but had some fun testing the Kerbal rig by baking some sounds to f-curves. An approximation of toe tapping.

Closing in on that body shape I'm after. Threw another quick partial IK rig in to see how well things were working and I couldn't be happier. He bends, squats, jumps, etc. Fun!

Thanks for the feedback everyone! It has helped a ton! I got to thinking how I made the original model and decided I wanted to model my own base mesh instead of using the skin modifier. While the skin modifier let me make a form I liked quickly, it just didn't seem to make the geometry I was happy with. So I scraped that model and started a new base mesh. Once I get the proportions correct I'll get the face installed again. Only then will I get the rig installed/clothes started. Got so far ahead of myself having fun making things that simple mesh mistakes became nearly impossible to fix. With much cleaner geometry this time it will be far easier to do the face and get a rig installed. What do you think?

Yeah, they are bit more oblong I think right? And I think they added some subtle shading around the eyes to simulate a bit of an indentation. I've been having so much fun making stuff for the Kerbal I almost forgot about the actual Kerbal! Making the clothes has turned out to be a ton of fun. I may or may not have made a Batman outfit for a Kerbal..... If I thought modeling stuff was hard, drawing anything is a million times worse! Not my usual comfort zone for sure. Anyway, had some fun with a new drawing tablet and tried to recreate a picture I saw using selfish_meme's F-4.

And yet more work on the very early work in progress Kerbal. Have to say I've learned a ton in the past week. Mostly how not to do things

More fun with making clothes. This is a very early work in progress of a space suit and making it is proving to be challenging! Need to figure out a decent way of adding seams in the fabric and something resembling a zipper.

Gentleman, START YOUR ENGINES!!!! A series of paint schemes I did for Jon144's Team Phoenix race team followed by a simple pit scene with the Jeff Gordon inspired paint.

Coming soon to a PC near YOU!! You know, because everybody knows Kerbalnauts make the best action stars.

First try at a lab coat for the Kerbal and I think it came out fairly well.

Ok more Kerbal fun. Managed to get the Kerbal completely rigged. Finally figured out how to add bones in for the mouth area and with some more work I should be able to get his mouth into most any shape. He can't do Blue Steel but it's getting close. He still needs feet and toes so I'll have to add those in here before I get too much further. Think I have a handle on how to tackle the clothes now as well. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought to attach the clothes to a rigged mesh. Still need to experiment with making different garments like lab coats and space suits but I think it is moving along well.