Another broken sunday!

Never felt so bad  having my Sunday a major drag with pocket to burn later.  Ride in the middle of the jungle miles away from civilization and 'bam!' i got permanently broken drive terrains my mountain bike in the middle of no where. Let see...that was USD$210 shitty Shimano XTR parts gone down the pit this month, rear derailuer, frame drop-out hinges and chains going goodbye.  With almost storm coming in on windy evening i cut the chain short to fit the whole gear into single speed setup so i could continue pedal and a whizz my way miles to the pit stop and drove back home in agony.  Why agony because i expect to spend my budget for computer hardware for my 3D work...mmmmm NVIDIA..... Should have followed my instinct not to ride my MTB yesterday.  On the bright side though i still have my road bike to keep my legs alive this week....i really hate lycra tights.

Bike needs medic help

My Saturday was spoiled or you can say interrupted by a compulsory schedule: bike fix. Well i have to since the last race did terrible things to my bike which make me wonder having being in top ten placing worth winning against the destruction of my bike. Got me a box of spare parts and replacement on worn out parts recently. Well it took me almost 1 day to scrub frozen grease gunk and 5 hours of re-building the bike to normal function. At then end of the day got me greased all round my body and smells like rough neck oil rig crew. My bike have ressurrected!

Going into mini off-road with DIY models.

After extensive research, budget calculation and weighting the fun factor consideration parts durability and parts availability i decided to pick up some cheap base chassis from local toy store an Auldey mini bigfoot and dig out RM800 worth of professional R/C parts from my Kyosho MINI-Z MR01 mini servo, KYOSHO MR02 electronic micro PCB board, SP8M4 5x stacks custom FET, ATOMIC-RACING gear, PN-RACING ball bearings, HL controller, HPI AM radio crystal and TAMIYA ULTRA DASH hot motor into the mini monster chassis. Took me full 8 hours to work on the conversion. The results is amazingly high torque off-roader suitable from rough off-roading and rock climbing. Its huge clearance below the chasis and long stock and flexible suspension enables this mini off-roader to soften and harsh impact come from various direction and the encase gearing system assure that the inner gear parts would last longer than having to replace often like my 1/28 KYOSHO MINI-Z. Plus comparison to my NRX-18 1/18 touring it does need much space and can crawl and speed almost any terrains including long grasses. The fun factor is also huge with longer run times due to light and high torque type gear which is friendly to the motor and also the cheap chassis could hold 4x AA 2700mah GP batteries. This is my worth DIY (Do It Yourself) professional hobby class mini monster R/C models. I love it. I guess i dun have to worry about broken parts anymore. Happy!

Upgrades here and there.

Thankfully my part-time really takes care of my hooby budget on my radion control. Got few more 3d design project to go and hopefully partial of the funds goes for brushless motor and ESC upgrade for my 1/18 for up coming preparation for local race especially drift event and sprint. Yesterday i bought a new body shell a HONDA CIVIC Type-R for my NRX-18 1/18 and a replacement parts for the motor mount. I called it investment for my hobby later for resale value. The today received my mini-z parts from overseas supplier mainly on drive terrain parts and differential which worn out pretty fast, My days full of active life outside my home at least avoid me from brain dead which reminds me when was the ;ast time i watch television or movie. Man outdoors never knows what is home entertainment. I spent more time hanging out at night with other R/C enthusiast since i already moded my r/c models with lights which makes it fun to drive at night.

Break my Carbon fibre.

OUch! my mini-z "T-plate" that runs as suspension bridge breaks. what?! It suppose to handle much better and rigid than plastics....or was my mini-z horsepower that strong? looks like I have to cough another extra cash again. That's what you get have a rocket science mini radio control car whoop pass you like lighting.

PART 18: Door Acessories

Some internal work for audio system/speakers and door hinge. Very simple work. Just waiting to add texture to spice up the details soon.

"X3-SIXTY" gettting chop off to pieces.

Its getting pretty closer to release date, there so much things to debug on both 4x4evo1 and 4x4evo2 format. Just now i decided to break clumps of around 900 vert of polyworth of per-parts into half which is somewhere around 400 vert or 700vert per-parts/each to make sure there won't be any of those game engine error shown on the screen when i set the game reflection on. I suspected that the latest DX9 graphic code wouldn't render heavily on high poly meshes in clumps of over 1000 vert per object, was maybe probably due to old game engine in 4x4evo1 and 4x4evo2 which still rely on DX8 technology. That would heavily impact on how i should manage my poly count models on my next creation. Here are summary of task that i did from yesterday until now:

1. -Breaking any parts with over 800/900 vert >> into half to tolerabe 400-700vert
2. -Improve LOD models, reduction of poly to 70%. Reduce around 9 parts to only 3 LOD parts...just necessary enough for "distance display"
3. -Remove bogus vert/de-vertex in game (Quality control over reflective effect/during shading or surface chroming)

All above task should've completed by midnight tonite so i can have more time do another test drive for suspension and traction setting tomorrow....that'll be much easy. After that its PSP time! lol.