Apologies...

I'm not really sure if anyone ever reads this blog, seeing as how it hasn't been updated in a year and a half and was never super popular in the first place, but on the off chance that someone does a Google search for "Disneyland 3D model" and clicks on the first result, I thought I'd explain just a bit.

This blog once hosted this little project of mine, but progress stalled as I reached the limits of the information available to me - and the limits of what my computer could handle in terms of complexity. Around the same time, I realized that Disney is an environment where I could see myself functioning professionally at some point, and I decided I rather not shoot myself in the foot by spilling Disney's secrets all over the Internet.

So yes. If anyone from Disney happens to be reading this, rest assured that I'm no longer in the business of promulgating every tidbit of backstagey knowledge I come across. :) I still think that understanding the way the parks are put together is a valid interest for fans and a crucial requirement (obviously) for actually designing and operating them, but I also understand that Disney attempts to keep backstage under wraps for a variety of very good reasons. I've also come to what I believe is a more realistic, well-rounded attitude toward backstage, mostly due to a number of (legal) real-world backstage experiences I've had in the last few years.

Still, for those who enjoy these sorts of things, have fun with projects of your own! It's rewarding to research a topic as thoroughly as you can and then create something with that knowledge. And if there's anyone who is sad to no longer be able to view updates on this project, focus that energy toward correcting the problem by working on your own projects. I started my model because I was inspired by other fans' models, but disappointed by certain things they weren't doing. I learned a whole new piece of software, collected information from every public source and fellow fan that I could, and created the model that I'd wanted others to make. You can do the same if you want. =)

Change of plans...

Well, so much for that. =P Right around the time I obtained my new Indy resources, I realized I was going to need to get to work on another 3D project, one that's not really Disneyland related. This is an original project, actually - the concept is one I'm developing with a team of 9 others, and one of my tasks is to put it all together into a sweet model that would instantly make anyone go, "Yeah...let's build that." So I've been working at it a lot for the last week or two, and it's paying off...things are looking pretty great, and I'm learning a lot, but there's definitely a lot left to do. Once we've presented this project at Imagineering (!!!) in March, I'll probably post some renders and perhaps even some flythroughs, just for the sake of showing some of my original work, rather than keeping it to myself as I often do.

HOWEVER, once this project has come to its thrilling conclusion, I do intend to get back to work on the Indy queue. :)

Renders coming...hopefully!

Hello hello hello! I'm so sorry it's been so long...I've still been taking somewhat of a break from this project, largely due to my computer having trouble working with such a complex file. In the mean time, I've mostly been working on music projects. (If anyone is interested in obtaining my homemade replica of the type of 8-staff sketch paper John Williams uses to write his film scores, just ask...) But I've recently procured some new resources that are providing a wealth of new information about the Indiana Jones queue, and specifically about its backstage areas, so I just can't help myself. Although I unfortunately can't share exactly what I've obtained, suffice it to say that although I did nothing illegal, I now have some cool information that I've yet to see anywhere online, and I look forward to sharing it with all of you via the model! :)

Thus far, I've fixed some of the berm areas and retaining adjacent to the queue, added a ventilator on the queue building roof, and built a small footbridge that leads from the roof to the nearby Jungle Cruise berm. I've also increased the height of the roof further north. Lots more details to add and correct...hopefully, I'll be posting some renders before too long. Expect updated textures, improved interfaces between backstage and onstage, and more details in areas that are very well hidden from the onstage world.

See you soon!

Side projects

I apologize for the lack of updates, folks! Work has been a little slow on the model, I'm afraid. I started running out of things I could do for Soarin', and I wasn't feeling like working on the main model, and then I was struck by a need to start painting in Photoshop again. So I've been doing a lot of 2D artwork of late, and not much 3D. (If you'd like, you can check out some of my recent paintings here.) I also recorded and posted some piano recordings to my YouTube channel yesterday. If you like Star Trek, Michael Giacchino, and/or piano renditions of film scores, you should check out these 5 Star Trek recordings, starting with the one simply entitled..."Star Trek." The others are longer, mind you.

But through all these side project, fear not - history tells us that I always come back to the Disneyland 3D model before too long. As you may have noticed in the CURRENT FOCUSES box, I've put some work into an interesting little side project, too. The Shipley-Lydecker house was a real mansion in Baltimore that was demolished sometime between 1957 and 1971, a photo of which was the primary inspiration for the exterior of the Haunted Mansion. I've matched the camera angle of that one good photo of the house and built a model of it, using aerial photos to make sure its scale is identical to that of the real model. This will allow me to do interesting comparisons between the house and the Haunted Mansion facade, as well as simply see the house from lots of different angles. I hope to do another post soon with lots of renders.

On a side note...I ordered myself a 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator the other day! I first tried out one of these little beauties in the "Holodeck" at Google's campus, and I instantly fell in love with how it enables you to navigate through 3D spaces in a fluid, dynamic, flexible way. It's compatible with all the 3D apps I currently use with any frequency (Blender, Google Earth, Bing Maps 3D, SketchUp, NASA World Wind), and I intend to make constant gleeful use of it. Only problem is that it probably won't arrive till the end of the week. =P It'll actually be a bit of a race to see which will arrive first - my SpaceNavigator, or the new Haunted Mansion soundtrack that I'd ordered over DelivEARS a few days earlier?

More Soarin'

Well, what the heck. I'm still working on Soarin'. My first order of business after the last post was adding the pairs of columns that support each theater. I then textured the screen with the blue lighting scheme Disney uses during loading and unloading. I had to reproduce that look, since there aren't any photos of the whole screen due to its insane size, and the light is poor in there anyway. So I collected reference photos and then put together this image in Photoshop from scratch:



Pretty close, n'est-ce pas? I UV-mapped this to the domed screens and set up their material so that lights in the model wouldn't affect it. (With this setup, you can also see the image from the back of the screen, which is how the screen actually is in real life, or so I'm told.) I also added the black walls that surround the screen, and rudimentary versions of the walls of part of the queue between the two screens. The floor of the loading areas received some preliminary texturing - a shiny, off-white concrete look - and I also built the lower floor next to and under the screens, which I believe is a shiny black. You can see all these changes in this render:



But that's not all, folks. See, I started getting this hankering to add a rather important part of the attraction: the ride vehicles themselves. Although the US patent office has some pretty interesting schematics of the hang gliders, they're not quite the same as the ones Disney built for the attractions, so I found appropriate photos and more or less traced over them in 3D. Now all the vehicles sit in place as they should. I did cheat a little, though...two of the rows in each theater are supposed to have nine seats instead of ten, but to keep things simpler, I just squeezed those same ten seats to be a little narrower. I'm lazy! =P

The other changes visible in this render are the safety railing along the front of the loading area and a large grid texture applied on top of the concrete-looking floor. Luckily, I was able to reuse a grid image I'd made for some other texture in the main model, so, in the words of a certain famous button, "that was easy!"



What won't be easy, however, is adding all the machinery above the vehicles that lifts them up toward the screen. No idea if I'll even make an attempt at that. However, I would like to set up a basic animation so that the vehicles will levitate up into their appropriate positions. More on that as things progress.

Inside Soarin' over California

Well, the main model has just gotten so clogged due to ironwork and large images and so forth that I've been taking a bit of a break from it. The good news is that I've done some digital painting instead, which has been fun, and now I've started the interior of Soarin' in a different file, just for kicks. This is especially helpful because I've been slowly developing an alternate concept for the exterior, queue, and loading area.

Now, I'm working from blurry blueprints of the WDW version, so if I start getting too detailed, there are bound to be mistakes, but the interiors of both versions' main show buildings are identical in size and shape, so everything I've got so far should be pretty spot-on. One thing I'm not too confident in, however, is the shape of the screen. The overall scale and curvature are correct, and I THINK the bottom half is totally spot-on, but I'm not positive about the way the edges bend forward at the top. If you've got photos, blueprints, personal observations, or anything else that might help me understand the shape of the screens more completely, your help would be greatly appreciated. =D





Notice how the two theaters are just mirror images of each other. The queue will run between them and then along their outer edges. You can already see the long, rectangular structures that I believe house the projectors.

One thing I've learned already is that the Anaheim version is half underground! I never really thought about the fact that you enter the building at ground level and then continually descend a lot of ramps until you enter the loading area. But seeing the blueprints made it obvious that nearly half the building's height is below ground level. (This is not the case in the Epcot version, however, which is located all aboveground.) In fact, when you first walk into the building, half of each screen is lower than the level where you are.

Anyway, I'm done with Pirates or anything. I just need some time to mull over how I'm gonna coerce my machine into handling the ever-increasing complexity of the model.

Technical difficulties

Well, I've got some good news, and I've got some bad news. The good news is that the ironwork on the front of the Pirates facade is basically finished - excluding the stuff on the curved stairways, that is. In fact, here's the proof!



The bad news is the reason why you're seeing Blender's non-rendered preview here instead of a fully rendered image. Uh...Blender is crashing when I try to render views of the facade, and it's the ironwork's fault. This is, as you can imagine, problematic. And I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it. Worst case scenario, I hide the ironwork and work on other stuff until I get better hardware someday. But I'd rather not have to hide all this hard work I've done...I had to correct numerous photos for perspective distortion, line them up in the model, and manually trace over them in Blender.

Sigh...we'll see what happens. I've certainly got plenty of other stuff I can work on.

The ironwork saga continues!

Sorry for yet another posting that's high on Blender technicalities and low on Disneyland renders, but I think I've decided what I'm going to do about the ironwork. It's a compromise, of course, but until I'm a wealthy man with a render farm in the back room, it'll probably have to do. I WILL make meshes that follow the actual shape of the ironwork, rather than UV-mapping PNG images onto them with alpha, but I'm not going to give them thickness. That'll reduce the number of polys (and thus the render time), but at least from a distance, the effect will be about the same. The major disadvantage is that if I get up close, it'll probably be apparent that the iron is thinner than finest tissue paper. This is not an issue with fully 3D meshes...or with UV-mapped planes, since I would simulate shading in the image texture. But this will hopefully be the best compromise. I cannot possibly express how nice it is to not have to light the balconies and verandas separately.

Now I just need to get up the gumption to start working on the hardcore second-floor ironwork! Gulp...if anyone's got some especially good photos of that area, I'd be much obliged, though I'll hopefully be just fine with what I've already got.

Ironwork test results =/

Well...I did my little test of render times for the two different ways of creating the ironwork. I must say, I'm disappointed with the results. To recap: I can create ironwork either by applying an image with transparent areas to a flat plane or by creating the actual geometry of the ironwork in 3D. Both ways are labor-intensive for me; I was just wondering which way would render faster. If this test is any indication, the first route is a lot faster. I did two renders of the same spot with the two different techniques. The UV-mapped image technique clocked in at 7:59...



...and the real 3D geometry technique clocked in at a whopping 22:23. =/



This is a disappointment because creating the actual geometry is a rather more elegant solution. For one thing, it lets me actually see the ironwork while I'm navigating through the model; it doesn't just magically appear at render time. Furthermore, it just plain looks better. And perhaps most importantly of all, real geometry allows my ambient occlusion lighting to bounce through the holes and allow us to see the shadowy areas of the balconies. If I create a flat plane with a transparent image texture, ambient occlusion treats it as an opaque wall, and the balcony turns black. Then I have to carefully light the balconies separately, which in turn increases the render time...something I did not do for this test.

I'm using that last factor as a huge excuse because...well, I don't want to UV-map these puppies anymore. I want real geometry. I did the UV-mapping for the HM ironwork, and the results were merely satisfactory after a buttload of tedious work. Render times were still high, and I didn't reap any of the benefits of doing true detailed meshes. So I'm gonna be adventurous and make all the POTC ironwork the more authentic way...and render times can walk the plank, for all I care! =D

By the way...sorry for the weird way the lamp is cut off in the first image. I forgot to activate ray transparency, which also would have boosted render times a little, I think. Another excuse to do real geometry! ;)

Lastly, to my less CGI-oriented readers, I apologize for these more technical posts. I'm sure some of you just want the Disneyland stuff, not the nitty-gritty details of how I do it, but I'll continue trying to deliver both in proper proportions. =)

The tribe has spoken!

Despite bitterly polarized opinions on the matter (wink wink), I've made my decision about what will be occupying the space above the entrance to Pirates. =D I consider the new creation in this small render somewhat of a down payment:



Thank you very much to everyone who contributed their surprisingly unanimous input! You made me feel a lot more confident as I made my decision, and I'm glad y'all apparently want the same choice I was leaning toward.

Actually, while we're on the topic of signs, I may as well explain how I go about making them. For some simple signs (an EXIT sign in the Indy queue comes to mind), all I really do is find a good photo of it and then slap that bit of the photo onto an object of the right size and shape. But for stuff like the entrance signs for the Dream Suite and Pirates, I prefer a somewhat more robust solution. The thing about photos is...they're accurate, but their resolution is limited. And in order for the image to appear sharp when it's rendered by Blender, it needs to have fairly high resolution. (Besides, you can get yucky stuff like noise and perspective distortion and objects in the way when you're dealing with photos.)

So my labor-intensive but oh-so-definitely-worth-it solution is to replicate the sign in Photoshop using appropriate fonts, vector techniques, and layer styles. I'm basically tracing over one or more perspective-corrected reference photos using the pen tool at first...then it's a matter of getting the colors and materials to look right. It takes a while - particularly tracing - but the result is a very sharp, clean image that can then be UV-mapped to the sign object in Blender. (Just doing a non-UV texture works too, since the sign object is typically flat and only one side of it shows, but that doesn't allow me to see the image previewed on the object as I navigate through the scene.)

As a couple of extra goodies to illustrate what I mean, here are my texture images for Pirates and the Dream Suite. In the case of these two signs, I've built the borders as separate, truly 3D objects that just take flat color materials; the UV-mapped sign object sits nestled within the frame, so you don't see that frame in the image. And notice how the corners don't show up on the final sign objects, since they have rounded shapes, so it doesn't matter what goes in the corners of the image. Also note how I have to simulate elements that would be truly three-dimensional in real life, such as raised lettering. I've also added a reflection to the Dream Suite image so that I don't have to increase render times by doing a truly reflective material. Finally, I want to point out that although the Dream Suite sign is way physically smaller than the Pirates sign, I've made the Dream Suite image significantly bigger so that the small Disneyland lettering is still sharp. If I wanted to get really fancy, I could put that in a smaller, higher-res image and let the rest of the image have a lower resolution, but I guess I'm just not that fancy.





Also, just so ya know, I've now added the curved steps on either side of the front balcony. No renders of them yet, since I haven't even added the sides or handrails or anything, but they're there, I promise! =D I've also added the two lamps on the balcony, and I hope to build some of the ironwork between the ground and the balcony. I'll also have to run some tests to see which renders more quickly - truly three-dimensional modeled ironwork, or UV-mapped PNG images with transparent areas and invisible lights behind them to simulate ambient light from outside the ironwork. So much to do! =P

To Suite or Not to Suite? PLEASE VOTE!

Hey y'all! The most important part of today's post is this: Please leave me a comment telling me whether I should build the Disney Gallery or build the Dream Suite, and why! More on that later. In the mean time, got two new renders for you.





The bulk of the work on the front facade is finished; the fancy ironwork is a challenge I'm avoiding for the time being, and the lamps aren't yet in place, but the rest is basically finished, at least if we're going off of the structure as it originally existed. The curvy exterior staircases were added when the Disney Gallery was built, and I'm probably going to add them to my model, but I haven't done so yet. You can see that I have added lots of doors and windows, as well as the attraction's main sign.

Anyway, now that the front facade is in a semi-complete state, I've changed gears slightly and I'm focusing mostly on the courtyard behind and above the entrance. This used to be publicly accessible as part of the Disney Gallery, but it's now quite a privilege to view, since it's part of the exclusive Dream Suite that most of us will never see. This is an interesting area to model because I don't have any elevation plans or anything - I just have to work closely from photos to make sure it all matches up with what I know from elevations of the front of the building. I've had to make continual tweaks to get it right, but I think I'm pretty close now. Just have to add lots more details!

Oh, so I had a funny moment the other day. You know, no offense, Disney, but your sites are generally pretty terrible, especially for someone like me who's looking for detailed information on this stuff. I pretty much gave up on finding anything useful there (besides ticketing information and the like) ages ago. So it came as quite a shock to me when I realized that there's a floor plan of the Dream Suite available on this page! =O It's right at the beginning, and just for a moment, but taking a screenshot of it was easy enough. Apparently, this blueprint is truly to scale, which is making it invaluable as I develop this area. (I have noticed a few slight inaccuracies, though, such as the lack of a certain bathtub.)

This brings me to my last and most important point, the one I already touched on: I need your input in deciding whether to model the Disney Gallery or the Dream Suite. The difference may seem trivial to some of you, but there are very concrete differences in the structure, both internally and externally, and I need to pick which one I'm going to do.

DISNEY GALLERY PROS

• fewer walls in some places
  
• I've already built the front door in its Disney Gallery form
  
• nice, elegant arches in one corner of the courtyard
  
• don't have to worry about the elevator!
  
• more sentimental for some fans
  

DREAM SUITE PROS

• I've already built a couple of elements that are specific to the Dream Suite
  
• the roof over the master bathroom looks much cooler, and I've already built it!
  
• would allow virtual tours of a not-very-accessible location in the park
  
• I have that plan of the Dream Suite, but none for the Disney Gallery
  
• online photos of the Dream Suite are a little more abundant
  
• the Dream Suite is current...I haven't departed from current reality in my model so far
  

So yeah, I'm pretty split on the issue. I'll probably just do the Dream Suite, since doing the Disney Gallery would require obliterating the new ventilator and traffic pads and so forth that I worked so hard on...and I have more reference material...and it's more current, which is kind of nice, since the rest of my model is, too, at least so far. Anyway, what do YOU think? Yes, you! The one reading this right now! Take a moment out of your day to let me know, and preferably back it up with some reasons.

Pirates progress and Winchester Mystery House

Sorry it's been a bit of a longer wait for this update - after my initial excitement about the Pirates model, progress has slowed a little, due in part to the increasing difficulty of the areas I'm working on. The front of the attraction's main entrance is relatively straightforward...its complexity makes it time-consuming, but I've got elevation for that part, and the structure is nicely aligned with north, south, east, and west. The adjacent areas are more challenging because I have no elevations; I basically have to work from photos, using aerial shots as a guide to make sure the horizontal distances and angles are correct. I mean, I've got 12 medium- to high-res shots of the entrance open in Photoshop right now just for reference, and I often bring up others as well. There's a lot of careful observation that goes into figuring this stuff out...a lot of careful comparisons between different resources to produce the most accurate big picture possible.

Anyway, enough chatter - here's today's one new render.



As you can see, this one's from a higher vantage point than the others. I wanted to show off some of the roof elements and the way the entrance is eventually going to connect up with the rest of the first show building. The area on the left apparently had its roofing replaced within the last two years, including a new ventilator, which I've added accordingly. Also visible is the control room for Fantasmic!, I believe - it's behind the five-sided structure with the reddish shutters on the right. It's hard to see, but there's now detailed ironwork on some of the front balconies...this was done with real geometry, and it's costing me rendering speed because of the sheer number of polygons. I swear, it's a good thing this model takes so long to create...by the time it's anywhere near finished, it'll be so complex that it'll require the kind of computing speed that won't be attainable for years!

In other news, I had a chance to help out on a Travel Channel shoot at the Winchester Mystery House a week ago. I hadn't been there since I was quite young, so it was absolutely fascinating to see it as an adult with interests in unorthodox twists on old architecture and themed entertainment. Really bizarre place...made me want to develop a 3D model of it! =P Unfortunately, I'm told there are no blueprints, since Sarah Winchester was really flying by the seat of her pants when it came to the design, and attempts at mapping out the whole house to scale have been largely futile. If any of you happen to find evidence to the contrary, I'd appreciate you letting me know! In the mean time, I suppose I'll just have to wait for technologies like Photosynth to get so incredible that they can handle the task of working out a photo-based model of the whole house!

More work on Pirates entrance

Well, I am just plowing forward with Pirates! Here's the texturing work I've been doing. The tile and brick textures are derived from photos I took in the park. There's also more and more detail appearing - as you can see, the walls in front now extend down to ground level. There's still a LOT to do, though. And I must confess, the whole thing is made somewhat more difficult and frustrating by the fact that my blueprint-ish source material is not wholly accurate. I constantly have to make adjustments to get it to more closely resemble the real thing. I think it's pretty dang close so far, though.

Pirates of the Caribbean entrance

That's right, folks, I've been working on the facade of Pirates! Now, Jeff Skinner is already doing a fantastic job of Pirates and NOS in general over at bendintheriver.net - I cannot recommend that site highly enough. For that reason, Pirates always seemed a little redundant to me, and I avoided doing things he'd already done. But I have an inexplicable urge to work on Pirates right now, so I'm taking advantage of it. I've got more resources on the area than ever before, so why not?

Here's the first render. As you can see, I'm working my way from the top down. Why? Not really sure. Just felt right. Unfortunately, the plan I'm working off of seems to be ever so slightly inaccurate, so I'm having to pay very close attention to telephoto shots I recently took from the Mark Twain. Those are providing me with the details that either aren't in the plan at all or just aren't quite right.



This second render shows the model as it exists as I'm posting this. I've added walls to the ends of the roof, new dormer windows, the railing around the widow's walk, and so forth. Naturally, there's still texturing to be done, but as far as modeling goes, the elements you see here are basically finished. Next I'll be working on the large, central dormer and the elements below it that connect the roof to the walls below. Wish me luck!

Indiana Jones queue progress

So, my inspiration seems to be back for the time being...we'll see how long it continues! =P In the mean time, here are two new renders. The first is the product of my curiosity - as I've been developing the various stairwells that connect the Indy queue/exit to Pirates and other areas, I've started wondering what those stairs would look like by themselves. Luckily, Blender makes it fairly easy to do this, so...well, here it is!



If you click the thumbnail for the larger version, you can then click Back to the Flickr photo page to see a version with "notes" that describe what's what, as usual.

The next render just showcases some of the work I've been doing on the Indy queue from kind of a fun perspective. If you climbed to the top of the queue entrance temple and magically cut down all the trees, what you'd see ought to look a lot like this.



New developments include holes in the roof and related theming, light fixtures on the catwalk in the background (hard to see), more camo netting on the side of Pirates, and modifications to the NOS-themed structure on the right that contains Indy's obelisk chamber. I've also worked a bit on the interior of the exit path, but you can't really see that in this render.

Stairs from Pirates to Indy queue

Hello, all! Finally got another new render to post. I was in the park on Tuesday, and I totally freaked out when I saw this area at the end of the Pirates queue. I'd actually built some of this area in my model already...I just didn't know what it was. I had blueprints of it, but they said they were for Indy, and I couldn't read what else they said. Turns out it's a stairwell inside Pirates that leads into and above the Indy queue, as well as up to the Pirates tower. I recognized it when I saw it in the park, so I've been modifying what I'd built so it fits into the appropriate spot in the Pirates show building and adding stuff from other blueprints. Not too shabby!

Finally, a new Indy render!

Hey all! For the first time this year, I have a new render for this blog! =D It's not a very big deal, actually, but it's better than nothing. Again, I'm so sorry I haven't been doing much lately, but perhaps this is a new beginning.

Anyway, due to some Indiana Jones construction photos turning up online (here and here), I've grown a bit in my understanding of the queue. This MiceChat thread deals a bit with my most important realization: the bat caves, spike room, and hall of descending blocks are not the only parts of the queue with earth above them! There's a short passage between the visible temple entrance and the obelisk chamber that's housed in a concrete, arch-shaped tunnel, very much like the one that contains the aforementioned underground parts of the queue. This had constituted a very small but significant gap in my knowledge about the queue, and once it came to my attention, it seemed too important to ignore. So here's what the area of the model NOW looks like. Still not complete, but it's more accurate than it was. Note the small flat roof between the temple and the berm in question. I believe this is now correct.

The doldrums...continued

I am so sorry, folks. I know it's been forever since I posted an update. This is the longest break I've ever taken from this incarnation of the project, and I'm not sure when it's going to end. I've been using the time mostly for music-related stuff, and I've been enjoying myself, certainly, but I still feel bad for not having anything to post here.

The good news is that I DID do a little bit of modeling a week ago or so. I made the outer walls, roof, and some traffic pads for the huge warehouse at the northwest corner of the resort. Not much else, though. And there's more bad news...my Flickr account has switched from "Pro" to the standard free account, which means my older stuff can no longer be viewed directly, nor can my collections. =( The good news is that any renders or photos I've linked to in this blog or elsewhere will still work. I checked. This makes sense, because Flickr doesn't delete photos when this happens—they just hide them until you decide to get a Pro account again. No sense in changing every single URL, so they just keep 'em the same. This means it's going to be more difficult for y'all to go through my stuff, but at least a lot of it is still there, in a way.

The doldrums

Hello all! I'm so sorry about the recent lack of updates. Progress slowed to a snail's pace and finally to a full stop during December...my laptop is just too slow. I'm back on my main computer now, though. I still haven't really gotten anything done on the model, although I did just transfer what little progress I made last month onto this computer. The exit of Splash Mountain is shaping up pretty well.

I'm kinda low on motivation for the project at the moment, I must admit. I've been absorbed in editing complete soundtracks for the Indiana Jones movies, but I'll be done with that before too long, and I'm sure I'll regain interest in the model too. =)

Slowness

Yeah, my computer is really slow. I don't know if I'm going to be able to get much done on the model until January, unfortunately. Sorry about this, but I hope to have more to show before too long.