Slider Puzzle Part 4 and the Big Project

Well, it's slightly to my surprise that I hadn't actually posted the 4th part of my tutorial series on my blog:

It's been a few weeks since this video was released, the content of which has all but slipped from my mind, but I presume from the helpful title that it contains the actual animation of the pieces. After re-watching the intro I'm also informed that it contains some optimizations to make the code run a little more efficiently. So that's nice.

Blender Nation were also kind enough to feature the tutorial series in this post, which was a good boost to the views. Not that views are all that count, but ultimately it's made to be watched.

Onto other things.

In a few blog posts I've mentioned the project I've been working on but have been somewhat reluctant to reveal what it actually is. I think the time is upon us (or just me if no one is reading) to reveal that my current Big Project is simply called 'Futuristic Car 2'. I'm sure the title will change but it refers back to the video I completed in the 3rd year of my computer graphics university course:

The premise was fairly simple, a futuristic car that has the ability to hover. At the time I was fairly pleased with the outcome, but, as can often happen with large projects, particularly when working on several at the same time, some compromises were made to the original idea without realising as the project progressed.

The car is made out of lots of small panels, a design change that was made after seeing 'suitcase suit' from Iron Man 2 but I didn't quite have time to animate a lot of the smaller panels and instead the transformation is a bit chunky. It was only a few months later, back in 2011, that I imagined the next version, a sleeker, sportier car more in keeping with my original design and yet keeping the idea of many smaller shifting panels.

Work on the project is slow and difficult, much of the time is spent on efficiency and workflow. Without careful management the many objects in the scene can become overwhelming. I'll cover my workflow in future posts. Hopefully.
 
If I remember.
 
Which I might.
 
Maybe.
 

Ray.