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.

Mini-rant & Mickey's House

So, I've got to admit...I am REALLY not a fan of using slow computers. I get very impatient, and the problem is of course enormously exacerbated when I try to use Blender or Photoshop or what have you. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to deal with my exasperation for a few weeks, since I'm stuck with a vastly inferior computer until shortly after New Year's. I believe I'm working with half the RAM and processor speed I'm used to, as well as a cheap video card. And the model was already starting to seriously frustrate my main computer! Just navigating through Splash Mountain is proving difficult. But...oh well. Hopefully, I'll still manage to get a fair amount done. I snuck into the exit of Splash Mountain when I was in the park a few weeks ago, taking lots of reference photos of the layout of the area. Turns out my blueprints aren't as inaccurate in that spot as I thought, but they're not perfect, and the shots are helping me figure out where everything goes. Maybe if we're lucky I'll get to post some renders of the area before too long.

In the mean time, here's a render from a week ago showing more details on the show building for Mickey's House. I'm not making this stuff up! As I said, the trip backstage was very informative. =D This stuff can be seen in aerial photos like this one, of course, but the resolution is too low to make out many of the details, so...you're welcome. ;) And I've accomplished more since I made this render, but showing it off hasn't been feasible yet.

2 back of house renders and some bad news

Hi all! Don't panic at the title...the project's not being abandoned or anything. Actually, I may as well get that part out of the way first - apparently, the free "Pro" account I've been enjoying on Flickr will no longer be valid once February hits. Now, I'll probably decide to fork over the money for another year of having a Pro account, but just in case something weird happens, I wanted y'all to have a heads-up, since it will affect what you can see. If I don't upgrade, you'll notice the following changes:

• Only 3 sets will be visible
  
• Only the 200 most recent images will be visible on my photostream
  
• The "original" sizes won't be visible - only up to the "large" versions
  

Mind you, these won't be completely deleted from Flickr's servers or anything. They just won't be accessible until I upgrade. Anyway, just wanted to let you know. If there are any renders you particularly like, it wouldn't hurt to save 'em to your hard drives before February arrives, just in case. =P

But enough of that! I have two new renders for those of you who haven't checked my Flickr photostream in the last few days.

This is the southeast corner of the It's a Small World show building, where a large red riser for the sprinkler can be seen. For a long time, I basically just had a red, vertical pipe that curved at the top to meet the building, without any real detail, and this bugged me, because I could catch a glimpse of further detail briefly from the railroad and in aerial photos such as this one. But I had never seen or taken a photo that provided the visual detail I needed to get it right, and I didn't want to waste my time inventing details that weren't there. So I took two high-res photos of the pipe with my telephoto lens when I was on the railroad almost two weeks ago - you can see them here and here. Those were crucial to me mimicking all the valves and junctions and so forth, and I think I've done a pretty good job. If you see anything wrong, let me know!

Then there's this shot, which depicts one of the areas I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours in when I was there on that same day. The rehearsal hall is in the center, with music and dance studios inside. I added that riser, which has similar (but not identical) details to the one on IASW, so I basically made a copy of it and modified it appropriately. What you don't see yet is the swirly design engraved into the walls of that building, but I'm working on creating that texture, including a large hidden Mickey that wraps around the left (northwest) corner. In front of the rehearsal hall is a parking lot where buses often park and musical groups warm up; note the drain a quarter of the way from the left, which seemed to have fallen fireworks shells in it when I was there. Then there's the show building for Mickey's House off to the right, with new details such as a bricklike texture that I was unaware of until I saw the building in person. Anyway, since I gathered a considerable amount of information about these sorts of areas while I was there, don't be surprised if you see more updates here in the near future.

EDIT: Apparently, the links to the two MiceChat threads in the box to the right weren't working, so I've fixed those. Just so ya know. =)

I went backstage!

Hi all! No renders for ya today, unfortunately, but some recent developments have given me a wealth of new information to work with. You can read all about it here, but the long and short of it is that I got a chance to roadie for my old high school's band when they performed at Disneyland on Saturday. They did a great job, and I had the additional pleasure of getting to go backstage with them. =D I made a lot of useful observations about the rehearsal hall, the Mickey's house show building, several backstage warehouses, and the route from that area to the Plaza Gardens stage. Earlier in the day, I took some of the sorts of backstage-from-onstage shots I normally do, and I also explored the Haunted Mansion's "chicken exit", which is essentially a backstage area that guests aren't forbidden from entering. So yes, make sure you read the MiceChat trip report, and feel free to check out my new photos on Flickr as well! Hopefully I'll have some renders of all the new details to post in the near future.

New Live Search Maps photos

Hi all! Sorry, no new 3D work to show today, though I've certainly been working on the model. I just wanted to direct your attention to Live Search Maps. I would certainly hope most of you have already seen the site...I mean, it is the single greatest contributor of information to my project...but what you may not be aware of is the new batch of "Bird's Eye" oblique aerial photos that's showing up now. These seem to have been taken sometime in the middle of 2008, making them the most recent aerial photos of the park I've seen. I started this MiceChat thread about it, including some links to features that weren't visible in the previous batch.

So yes, this is definitely cause for excitement. I mean, you can even see some of the Indy queue building under all the trees! (Check out this shot and this one.) But...there's a dark side to this recent development.

The old photos are gone.

Sorta.

Before, there were numerous batches of Bird's Eye photos of the park available, taken in various years, with various levels of image quality, various resolutions, various camera positions, and various times of day. All of these worked together to provide a more complete view of the park than what would normally have been available. But you won't find many of these on the site anymore. While the current photos are absolutely awesome, it's still a real shame to have all those old ones missing.

If you, like me, would love to see the old photos return in addition to the current ones, please send feedback to Microsoft! Because...I'm pleased to say...the photos are not actually GONE gone. They still exist on Microsoft's servers, and you can still access them...if you have the URL for each photo. Luckily, I bookmarked some of the most helpful ones, mostly along the west side of the park, and I've found a few after the fact, too. So here are all the old links I have...if you have some, PLEASE share them! =D (The initial letter indicates which direction the camera is facing, of course, and I've indicated which shots are newer, though they're all older than what you currently see on the site.)

• W New Orleans Square - old but high-res
  
• W Critter Country - old but high-res
  
• N west half of the park - newer but lower-res
  
• N western backstage areas - newer but lower-res
  
• E west half of the park - newer but lower-res
  
• E from Splash to Innoventions - old but high-res
  
• E southwest quadrant - newer but lower-res
  
• E western backstage areas - old, but nice view of doors on HM show building
  
• E from Pirates to a very yucky Space Mountain - old, but high-res
  
• N Splash Mountain and ROA - old, but high-res
  
• S DCA and a little of DL's southwest quadrant - newer, and actually not too bad resolution-wise
  
• S part of west side - old and ugly!
  
• W old but amazingly high-res shot of Indy show building
  
• E whole park - newer, but very low-res and generally weird
  
• N western parts of both parks - newer, but low-res
  
• N Fantasyland, Toontown, and back of house - newer, but low-res
  
• S town square and DCA - newer, but low-res
  
• N Tomorrowland to back of house - old, but higher-res
  
• N Main Street to Toontown - newer, but low-res
  

Goodness, I hope all that time I spent typing those up wasn't a waste. =P You'll notice, of course, that all these old photos disappear if you try to navigate to adjacent photos, change directions, or zoom. And I tried to see if there was any pattern in the URLs, so I could perhaps generate URLs for other photos of the park...but no luck. The key is the &scene= parameter near the end...but if you just change one digit, you end up in the midwest or something. =(

So yeah...thank Microsoft for the new photos...but demand that the old ones come back, too! :D

Splash Mountain updates aplenty

Wow...it's been a while! I'm not sure exactly why I've taken so long to get a new post up, but those of you who also follow my progress on Flickr are aware that I've got no less than 11 renders there that I've yet to talk about here on the blog! =O I know, right? Because there are simply so many, I'm not going to talk in depth about each and every single one individually, though I'd be more than happy to answer specific questions.

My main focuses over the course of the last month have been, in approximately chronological order: adding basic structural elements like walls and so forth, developing details along the backside of the train tunnel between HM and Splash, modeling the queue building, adding elements located just south and north of the show building, and adding the steel I-beams that constitute part of the infrastructure of the front building. As always, go ahead and click on the thumbnails for full-sized versions, and once you've savored the hi-res yumminess, click Back to the Flickr photo page links so you can view versions with notes that point out interesting tidbits in the images.

This first render from a month ago shows the inside of the show building. Note how convoluted the track layout is—you end up unwittingly passing over and under other scenes quite a bit.


Here are some details on the backside of the train tunnel. If you've got photos or video of this area, I'd really love to see 'em! Same goes for any hidden area of the park, really. =P


These walls (ostensibly made of concrete) aren't visible in real life; the rockwork covers them up. But they're there!


I next started working like mad on the queue building, adding a lot of details that never made it into my first attempt, as you can see in the next four renders. I apologize for the stone texture...it's not my best work. The model itself, however, should be quite accurate thus far, thanks to fairly detailed blueprints and a collection of photo reference from my camera and many others'.





I actually wish I'd rendered this shot a bit later, so that you could see all the steel framework in here. But oh well. It still does a pretty good job of showing all the stuff that surrounds the big lift hill.


I wish I'd waited to do this one, too, since I added the trash compactor and other details around this area shortly after creating this shot. You can see the flume inside the show building, thanks to the magic of Photoshop. Remember that the whole wall on the left is covered by rockwork, even though most of it is behind a backstage gate.


Here's that steel taking shape. Almost all the positions of the vertical I-beams are provided by the blueprints, but their heights and the positioning of the horizontal beams are made possible by these absolutely fabulous construction photos. (You know what I'm gonna say, Mojave...come on... ;D) Also notice the presence of a berm next to the show building...as far as I can tell, it's there purely so trees can be planted outside the park and make Critter Country feel bigger.


Last but not least, this render was from today. I've used Photoshop again to add an appropriately ghostly Haunted Mansion show building (and its contents) into the mix.


Thanks for reading! Hope this was enlightening, and as always, please feel free to comment. =)