Blog - VITRIOL 3D

Hover Patrol Car

21/8/2021

The Hover Patrol Car (HPC) from Hyperventila is a versatile vehicle that needs to get around the major cities of the central planets, quickly, be it on the ground or in the air.

I recently revisited this design from way back in 2019 and made a short animation, mainly to improve my knowledge of how Blender works. That's what I'm sharing here today. Oh, and I wrote another development blog on how things are going with the game, check it out!

Tymen

Black Hole

29/5/2021

The result of a few days of experimenting with black holes. Following various tutorials and coming up with a somewhat unique looking black hole. All done in Blender with some post-work in GIMP.

On top of that there's also a new ship in Hyperventila with a bunch new planets being added as well.

L.E.V Yorktown

6/5/2021

This is the L.E.V Yorktown, another ship design for a client like the previous blog. This one took a little longer though, about two weeks for both the exterior and interior. She is a fairly detailed ship with detailed hull, fully modeled bridge as well as about 42 individual smaller cabins behind those windows.

Parallax

31/3/2021

Another unique design for a client. The Parallax mothership, a ship controlled by an AI that has been on the run for many years. The ship is home to over 100.000 passengers and is more than two kilometers long.

I also had to design the AI's control room. A rugged dark space that is home to the AI itself. Each computer core surrouding the control area.

Revisiting Older Designs & Making New Ones

22/3/2021

Hi there folks! Besides Hyperventila launching on Steam, I've been doing more and more design commissions for people (gotta pay the bills somehow) and I'd like to just highlight some of my most recent work. Who knows maybe you'll like what you see and commission a design of your own.

M an t h a Q u a d c o p t e r

This project already rather stands out on its own by being a little more unusual than what I am usually asked to design. A client from Singapore contacted me to design their one-man quadcopter that they may even put into production one day.

It had to be light but also enclosed and not higher than two meters. The design was to be used for promotional shots and to pitch to investors.

The job continued with additional requirements for animation and adding a character + helmet. This took a bit longer but was a fun challenge nonetheless. Here you can see the two finished animations:

Additional animations are planned for this job but seeing as that I was charging less than a tenth of what I should have been charging on Fiverr, I'll have to drive the price up for the next one.

M a r s C o i n

One of my first commisions ever back in 2014, when this cryptocurrency was just starting out, I was asked to design the official coin for MARS. While perhaps not my best logo design ever they kept it all these years and even recently asked me to design an animated icon for their Discord community.

What better way to celebrate the launch of their Discord community than with a rocket launch.

F r o m T h e V 3 D A r c h i v e s

Now, besides creating new works of art, I've been looking back on my older designs and some of them really deserved a better render.

I also wanted to compile a video highlighting my best work in the field of spacecraft and prop design, so I embarked on the arduous quest of importing these old trueSpace models into Blender, setting them up with new materials and giving them a new render.

Which brings me to the next project...

B r i c k L a u n c h e r

Thanks to the animations above, I'd like to think, I got another job on Fiverr to design a prop for a clients game. A brick launcher. Simply a gun that fired bricks.

Well how does one go about making that? I figured you can't fire a brick with explosives or it will shatter to it had to be a catapult, a very futuristic catapult.

So I made it a rail-gun. Propelled by magnets, a metal basket fires the brick from the launcher. It had to have at least four or five bricks in a magazine of some type so there is also a reload mechanic.

This was a fun one and the client was very happy with the result.

T h e F u t u r e

Next up, a yet unnamed tower defense game for another client featuring these little ROBITs (pictured to the right)

There is also another custom ship design for Hyperventila coming up as a reward for my IndieGoGo supporters. I am currently streaming the design process on my Twitch channel whenever I have the time.

...and I'm also setting up shop on Shapeways! I will be selling some of my designs as 3D prints on there.

But all that will be in another future blog post.

Until next time, have a nice day!

Updates covering the last few months.

3/12/2020

It's been a while since the last blog post. Been super busy with Hyperventila, it's quite a project and while I need to release soon I still decided to add multiplayer, mainly since it seems more doable in the short time frame I have leading up to release.

One element of the new multiplayer mode is the mini-games people will have to complete in order to survive and win the game. One such game requires a space rat and a trap, that I built today.

Hyperventila is progressing at an alarming pace. Here are some screenshots and renders from the last few months:

More updates will follow soon!

In other news I also made a quick render for the latest U3DA modeling challenge "Impossible Object":

The Let Them Talk Phone for people who don't want to talk to anyone.

I also revisited my old NH90 Helicopter model and imported it into Blender for am updated render:

Hyperventila has gone live on IndieGoGo!

4/7/2020

We're currently running an IndieGogo campaign for the game. Check it out if it sounds like something you may be interested in!
Hyperventila is a narrative-driven open world RPG set in the Hyperventila galaxy. A world of disreputable space bars, rogue traders and totalitarian space empires.
Fans of the classic 70s and 80s era of science fiction films would find themselves right at home in this universe. Jump in your spacecraft and immerse yourself among the stars.

Hyperventila will become playable on Steam and other online retailers, January 2021.

Santa's Secret Moon Base & More

16/12/2019

What is this about secret moon bases now? It's another challenge entry for this year's U3DA Holiday challenge. Other entries from previous years include a Dragon Santa and scary Skeleton Santa.

Made in trueSpace and BlenderForArtists. It seems that the logo I mashed together for the challenge is the highlight of the image from what I've heard from people who viewed the image.
I think the biggest inspiration for this project was oddly enough the movie Iron Sky, which was about Nazis on the moon. I feel like you can sort of see that in this original test render that I did:

Moon Base Test Render

All this work in Blender has mainly been for Hyperventila though, starting with a beauty render of the GCP Patrol Car and with the last render being the Inter-Corp "Tracker":

Hyperventila has seen many updates in the last months, most of which can be found on the Hyperventila Discord.

Now off to Christmas in Italy. Until next time!

Jewelry for Ilaria

26/7/2019

I recently made something for my girlfriends birthday:

I sent it to be 3D printed in silver on Shapeways.com.

It has arrived in the post!

I'm sure she'll be very happy. It's her birthday today!

Secret Super MIG - The Red Mist

14/7/2019

For this months United 3D Artists forum modeling challenge, I present China's secret weapon: The Red Mist jet aircraft.

It's a silly concept of course but that's what you get when I get to come up with the theme for a modeling contest.

It was a fun model to work on but maybe, with working on Hyperventila and all that maybe I should have gone a bit more easy on work this weekend.

This week has mainly been getting the Shipyard in Hyperventila to work. I finished the interior model last week.

The other big pain in the butt was the video production aspect being producing the latest two Hyperventila Showcases. Windows no longer comes with its own video editor so I had to download one from the internet, I ended up using Shotcut which while OK for my needs (it renders fast and the quality is quite good as far as I can tell).

Here you can see the shipyard in action:

I still want to produce better video content, and to be honest, coming from doing my old YouTube let's plays, I thought it would be a lot easier but I don't think I've quite gotten used to the limitations I currently have to deal with.
My old powerhouse of a computer is out of reach and I don't even have an external monitor to extend my small 13" laptop display. On top of that both my gaming mice are dying with both of them being almost unable to left-click any more (thank you trueSpace for wearing out my left-clicks).

It's not all bad though. This little HP Spectre x360 that I'm now doing all my work on is still really powerful for a PC of its size. I still suspect it has some cooling issues that it had from the start but at least it keeps my legs warm.

That's it for this blog.

As always, have a nice day!