Reply To: Collab 2020: Modeling Heavy Equipment (Backhoe)

[Shawn Blanch]

The things I have learned from rust by growing up on a farm are:

1. Rust happens. Mainly when paint wears.

2. It’s a chemical reaction and causes material to break down. So, the metal is actually withering away after the reaction. Which is why we apply paint to certain metals to slow this process down on finished parts. Paint is our feeble attempt to keep rust from happening lol.

3. Once you slam that loader bucket or digger arm into the ground, the paint comes off naturally because rocks are harder than paint. Paint exposes bare metal and it rusts fairly quick in the rain.

4. Even though rust happens. Funny enough the rust comes off the same way the paint comes off and the metal looks quite shiny again!

5. The most important point I want to make: If the digger arm just got done doing some work and the loader bucket never got used, you could totally have a scenario where one is rusty and the other is “shiny”.

So back to my response. Yes you could continually tweak things BUT it is still believable in my opinion with how it looks now lol. And you already have a major hurtle to overcome doing the animation renders. I say just keep going my man. You’re gut got you this far and we’re all just riding in this DOG’s loader bucket merrily down the road from here. I am totally ready to sit back, eat some of Omar’s Doritos and enjoy this ride!

I really wish there was one more live stream to show some of how this stuff came together or maybe just a livestream where we invite the whole community to come and watch the end result. (I know I would show up haha).

Last words for the day: When this is done. I know everyone is thinking it. I’m gonna say it: This DOG deserves some screen time. And I couldn’t think of a better place to show it off than at blender conference if they accept the submission. (maybe we could submit our personal real life portrait picts to the project as well, showing off the team members in all their human-y glory haha).