HARDCORE MODELING!: 80's Cartoon: Macross Valkyrie

#9

I’m working in Autodesk Maya 2008. My system is a MacBook 17" (first gen.) with 2Gig’s of RAM.

Copyrights belong to Harmony Gold USA and Tatsunoko… i guess

#10

Got the better part of the fuselage done today. It needs a bit more detailing but i’ll add that later on. I’ll leave it at this for now and continue on to the main air-intakes and arms.


Building the fuselage consisted of extruding edges and getting them to line up with the ortho’s. I only have a top, bottom and sideview, but no front. So it took a bit of educated guesswork.

#11

Looks like you got a great start, looking forward to seeing your progress.

#12

Hi, first post here.

I’ve done a VF-1S and have many reference images, you got a good start, as long as you don’t want make it transformable.

The nose cone and frontal fuselage is more triangular:

And here is a CAD drawing showing the interior, landing gear, etc (It’s a VF-1A variant, but the only difference is the head/laser turret):

And here you can find the instruction sheets and decals for the plastic models:

http://www.macrossworld.com/macross/models/hasegawa/hasegawa.htm

And here you can see detailed pictures of the finished plastic models, very helpful:

http://www.macrossworld.com/macross/magazines/_magazines_hobbyjapan2001-2003.htm

Browse that site, there is a lot more info in there.

#13

Wow, thanks Woz. These are amazing. I already had a pretty good side, bottom and top, but these will be very helpfull indeed.

I intend to make hins thing transformable, but for this competition i’m just going for a cool pose in Gerwalk mode.

I’m curious as to how your Valkyrie turned out.

#14

Hi, for you model to be transformable, you’ll have to make the nosecone, cockpit, front fuselage and rear fuselage separate objects.

Here’s a render of my old VF-1S model, it’s made on Truespace, and at the time of this render I didn’t had enough machine for a better quality render.

#15

Wow Woz,
That’s one slick looking Valkyrie… I hope I can get mine to look as good as that :applause:
And thanks again for the ortho’s. Especially that transparent sideview was helpfull.

Here’s some more updates. I’ve been working on the legs/engines. I got wrapped up in the details i put the paneling and landing-lights on the top in stead of the bottom… I fixed it already though with a little cutting, pasting and re-aligning.

I’ve also started cutting up the fuselage to get the thing fully transformable…

#16

Another WIP-shot. I’ve been looking at some movies on youTube where guys show how to transform the Valkyrie and I’ve got a pretty good grasp on how the whole thing really works… I just hope I’m done modeling by next week… time flies…

#17

And here’s what i’ve got so far…

#18

Lookin’ good!

Hope you have time too, you did a very good model so far!

#19

looks great …
hope to see it transform too …

#20

I adore Macross Valkyries, modelled one myself many years ago (still in my avatar too) - if there’s one thing I remember it’s that it took alot longer than I thought it would to complete, especially the texturing. It’s kinda like having to make 2 models instead of one where as I thought i would only have to make one model to get two forms. :argh:

I have several VF-1 toys and kits, they all transform slightly differently but the basic principle is the same as far as the layout of parts. The key differences are the leg swingbar and the heatshield (often a separate piece). I would advise looking at the Yamato 1/48 as it probably has the best solutions. I can scan some reference images of how the designer envisioned the VF-1 to transform if you like… it uses a swinging mechanism unlike any of the toys or kits have tho.

It’s looking good so far. :beer:

#21

Sweet progress here!

I cant help but think what a great idea it was for those guys to turn the way-cool Tomcat design into a futuristic spacefighter/transformer.

Anyways, I hope you’ll have enough time to finish and am keeping my fingers crossed.

Cheers!

#22

Nice progress there!

I see you’re going for the toy look. Good decision, that way it will look good in both fighter and battroid mode.

#23

Dispite (or rather because of) the long easter-weekend I didn’t find any time to make any real progress on my model. However I did some more work yesterday-night and early this morning… I have to put some more detail on the booster-thingy that folds out of the fuselage’s back and I still have the arms to do… :hmm:

However, as a fighter it’s starting to look pretty complete.

and here’s the wireframe:


#24

I also did a quick and dirty Gerwalk-pose (without the arms, that is). No rigging involved yet, just a bit of parenting and rotating stuff :stuck_out_tongue:

#25

Great progress, it’s a shame you wheren’t able to make it to the deadline. I hope you will finish it, can’t wait to see the final model!

#26

Here’s a rendering of the Valkyrie in fighter-mode. The backdrop, flares and afterburners were added in Photoshop. Background Artwork by Robert Hurt. NASA/JPL/Caltech.

#27

Well, it’s far from complete but this will be my last post before friday. The arms are quite done yet. and the hands are really just placeholders. I know some of you were wondering, but i’m definately gonna continue working on this model to have it completely modelled, textured and rigged to transform into all 3 modes and have walkcycles on both battroid and gerwalk. I’ll also put in a landing gear for the fighter mode.

But for now: Here’s the gerwalk

#28

Hello,

I admire your work and wondring how many polys does it have?