Re 3DCG: I found a handy tutorial on YouTube for modelling aircraft and while serious modellers would frown at the techniques used it did allow me to actually complete a plane model for the first time to an almost acceptable level so currently I have some renewed interest in modelling and am working on a number of planes and perhaps even a short animation. I won’t post any images here cos they’re crap but any images I create will be posted to my flickr page if you are curious. Just don’t be expecting anything high quality.

That’s what I’ll be at though I will try to post more.

p.s. while searching for plane reference images I came across this site with some damn interesting aircraft. I can’t believe some of these actually flew.

Makehuman prealpha 0.8 demo
In short, MakeHuman is a application for making accurate 3D models of human (and in future fantasy) characters. It started off apparently as a plug-in for the excellent Blender but now they have made it a standalone application, which has me overjoyed because Blender totally crawls on my computer. It is quite similar in intent to Poser I guess (for those of you familiar with Poser).

“Its purpose is to provide a versatile, professional and extremely specialized application for parametrical modelling of three-dimensional humanoid characters. By specialized, we mean that MakeHuman’s sole purpose is to model and pose a 3D humanoid, complete with hair, accessories and high quality UV maps.”

MakeHuman at this stage is little more than a demo but is usable. You start with a base model of a human and using point and click you can modify all aspects of the model to create your own unique human[oid] which can be exported for use in other applications. It’s a very simple program to use, it literally is point and click (or point and drag in most cases) and dead handy for those of us too useless or lazy to learn how to create human 3D models from scratch.
You can modify all the basic aspects of the character such as age, weight, muscle mass and you can also focus on specific areas of the body such as hands, eye brows, nose, arse etc and tweak each of those. In future you will be able to customize a lot more such as ethnicity and also change facial expressions or add clothes. The program is currently quite basic and although you can download some extra “targets” from their website, it is full of bugs. Plus the only gender pre-installed at the moment is female so avoid clicking on that icon or your model will be prone to mood swings and will always be right even when she’s wrong. The “male target” available on their website is worth downloading as it functions fine even at this stage.

A few of the negatives include not been able to remove certain objects such as eyes or teeth (which are quite high poly and not always needed), the lack of a male gender, some targets cancel other targets, the ‘all or nothing aspect’ of the fat and muscle targets and a dozen other bugs. But bear in mind the program is little more than a demo and a lot more development work has yet to come.

The program is available for free download from their sourceforge page and in my own humble opinion is a must have for lazy bastard modellers.

Here are a number of screenshots I made earlier (links open new windows);

• Standard view of the program as it is when you install it.

• tweaking some eye settings.

• Adjusting the boobies … for the perverts out there.

• Your average male torso, model exported and subdivided in Anim8or.

• Some of the bugs I mentioned, a Caucasian with two different ethnicities (downloaded targets) applied, results in a face only a mother could love.

In conclusion: A good tool for aspiring and/or lazy modellers. One to definitely watch out for in future.

Google SketchUp is an easy-to-learn 3D modelling program. Using a few simple tools you can create 3D models of houses, sheds, decks, home additions, woodworking projects-even space ships. You can add details, textures and glass to your models, and design with dimensional accuracy.