The Commodore 64 3D model it's now almost ready for final renders, the keyboard is done and so is the power badge and LED.

Small update on the Commodore 64 3D model, I've been completing the mainboard (some components still missing), and trying to improve the materials and shaders.


Also started texturing the keys, right now the characters are too big and bold, also the graphic chars on the front of the keys needs to be lower.

Back in August, I bought a SD2IEC drive kit.

The SD2IEC is a SD card reader for 8-bit Commodore computers, sucessor of the MMC2IEC, it connects to the computer via it's serial IEC connector.
This allow Commodore users to have a huge software collection on a single SD card, either as individual files or as .D64 disk images.
The only drawback of this device is that it cannot emulate the CPU present on real Commodore Drives, making it incompatible with most diskturbos.
I bought this kit from Retrocomputacion.com user MarcosJL, who issued a limited edition run of SD2IEC boards.

This is the board assembled:


Then I made a box for it with MDF:

Just a little update on the Commodore 64 3D model, this is the mainboard as I left it just before starting with the CGTalk challenge:

The latest issue of C&A fan Polish magazine features two articles written by me.

The first, "The cracking scene in Argentina" briefly describes theapparition of the first Argentinean 'Crackers', but only the ones thatreleased C-64 software.
The second, "Drean: Commodore in PAL-N land" explores the history of Drean parternship with Commodore in the mid to late 1980s.


You can download C&A Fan #4here (pdf, Polish), or read the articles online here and here (spanish)

And here's the main reason of the blog hiatus: CGSociety's Hardcore Modelling Challenge #21 "Queen of the Rocketmen"



From the challenge description:


Despite being fairly new to Maya, I decided to enter the challenge since it's a theme I really like.

And so I started working on a model collection for the challenge and entitled my entry "The Pirate airfleet".

The finished collection includes 4 models, an Airship Carrier, a 3m tall Robot Trooper, a giant Transport Seaplane and a Combat Autogyro.

I't been a great learning experience both modelling my entry, and watch the evolution of the other participants entries.

See all the final renders after the jump...

More...

Oh well... hi there! It's been a long time since my last entry, I would like to take this opportunity to make some announcements and sort out the reasons of the lack of updates lately.

One of the reasons was the ads inserted by my webhosting provider until a few days ago, it was only a test on the profitability of the sites they host and they have announced it with plenty of anticipation. But the ads broke the page layout and that pissed me off.

Another reason is the increasing difficulty to find a demo to feature on the only semi-constant column on my blog, the Sunday Demo Show.
I have been thinking of discontinue the column entirelly, or transform it into a general retro-Scene related column, featuring not only demos but graphics and music too. Haven't decided yet which path to follow.

About the 3D projects I was posting about, the 3D Commodore 64 is canned at the moment. I've enter the current Hardcore Modeller Challenge on CGTalk, you can follow my progress here.

The announcement I talked about is the 'new' URL address for this site:

Still Ready by Resource & The Dreams for the C-64, 2nd Place C64 Demo compo LCP 2009

More progress on the Commodore 64 3D model, mainly the different port connectors and some electronic components:

More updates for the Commodore 64 3D model, keyboard done:



Some bits and pieces from the interior: