Gosh... I can't believe it's 2009 already. The years have flown by, as have the unrealized ideas for various Star Fleet projects. It's been, what, eight years since I first started cobbling together my first 3d X-Bomber model and posted it on Andy's old forums? I've gone through college, found a career I enjoy, and got marred... what a ride.Reminiscing aside, the upcoming DVD release keeps reminding me of the little things I've wanted to do with Star Fleet that I keep putting off. One of those that I'm interested again in completing is an animation of Andy's 18-panel Demo Storyboard.So, over the past few weekends, I've been toiling with my 3D models again. I've experimented with making Star Fleet-like blue space backgrounds and some lumpy asteroids. I scoured my old videos for decent shots of the cargo fleet and recreated the cargo ship from scratch. I dropped a Mars texture into a sphere. And what do I get?Throw in my other models and I think that now I can make a decent pass at Andy's old storyboard.Last night I arranged an animation for the first few panels. It doesn't have any sound yet, but I think it's a fine start!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W8wdXsk1CY (YouTube seems to be screwing up the playback speed in the high quality and HD versions. So, just watch the regular version. Any YouTube experts here know why?)X-Bomber continues to be a work in progress. Once I finish the engine details and fix a few textures, I'll be able to copy it over and render the video again.Next up I need to figure out how I'll handle the weapons and explosions. "Beam" weapons like they had in the show are terribly difficult to create and manipulate in 3D. (At least, I don't know of an easy way to do them.) So, I'm thinking I may make the laser torpedoes actually be torpedoes like the glowing torpedoes of Star Trek and Star Wars lore. Any opinions or thoughts on that?