From now on I will be giving you an update into my modeling projects on a Thursday (atleast). So every thursday you can expect new renders or works. If anyone can think of a catchy title I can use every week I would be very greatful, I thought about ‘Project Thursday’, but don’t know.

Anyway, in the last week I haven’t got as much done as I would have been hoping for, however I have been playing around with a few textures, some which have worked, some which haven’t so it’s a bit up in the air at the moment, especially with all my other projects going on, however I still hope to get them all done, but it will be hard work, certainly tighter than any other project I have created.

My major addition is that I will be adding trees to my environment after all, it’s a debate I’d been having with myself as to whether it would work or not. It might sound dull to you guys, but it’s not always easy to add everything you want due to limitations, but I think the tree’s really do add a whole new dynamic to the project and the sacrifice of polygons is worth it. For the trees I will be using SpeedTree by IDV Inc which is an absolutely brilliant plugin for 3D StudioMax (or Maya etc..) and is a real dynamic tool for the gaming market, so much so that games have really taken to using it, these can be seen in “Project Gotham Racing 3″, “Saints Row”, “The Club” and “Gears of War”. Speed tree also allows real shadows from it’s leaves and normal maps applied to the trunk and leaves (though whether I will do this is another matter). You can see SpeedTree here.

I have modelled some more buildings but they are currently hidden until I find a better place to fit them in (not the best method I know..) On a side note, if anyone can get a picture of a building (preferably derelict/old shopping district in America in style) and would like me to model it, feel free to e-mail me it, for my e-mail address look in the ‘contact’ section in the upper right .

Karl.