Hello and welcome to the Dark Star Developments website, this is a portal that I use for sharing some personal artwork and open source projects. I can usually be found on Libera IRC #blender under the name "TheRookie".

Organic

Some Blender organic models, some sculpted and retopologised and some directly mesh modelled.

DJ Octopus

You don't get more organic than an octopus! The armature although simple is very flexible able to twist and turn, lengthen and shorten the tentacles and body without making the creature look distorted (but then that's just the nature of the amazing Octopus).

The creature was created in Blender 2.93 for printing onto a friends 12" vinyl disks and took several weeks of intermittent work. The decks were done in a day and the background is an assemblage of two projects composited with the mist pass.

After a much time in transit my friend received his vinyl copies of DJ Octopus and we were both very pleased with the results, the process appeared to retain the subtle colours and detail

It was very nice to see one of my 3D projects on a physical object.

Tablet Essential Tools

Some Hard Surface low polygon modelling in Blender 2.8 created principally with meshes and subdivision surface modifiers.

I put these models together for an informational video while fixing my sticking Wacom nib! (As a tip if you find your drawing strokes containing after lifting your stylus use a pair of pliers or your nib removal tool to gently pull out the nib and give it a good clean!)

Drachenrumpf

A recreation of an old spacecraft design originally created in Realsoft 3D and now recreated in Blender 2.81.

It is a mean blade like slab of metal skulking about the void.

Micro Mouse

A very old piece of artwork I created using the Realsoft 3D software but still one of my favourites. It is a model of a mechanical maze solving robotic mouse with forward facing cameras and detailed internal mechanisms. The grain in the image was a limitation of the lighting I used and the time I had to render, in the end I left the noise in place to avoid too much manual alteration or loss of detail.

It was created for the Miles Finley Real3D Image contest that I would often enter, contests are a great way to push and motivate yourself.

Spantastic

A spanner created originally for a speed modelling competition (I used to be much quicker in the old days!).

The first image is the original created in Realsoft 3D around 2005 and the second image is the recreation in Blender 2.8 2019. The old Realsoft Subdivision surfaces and Raytracer output was very good and even today has a great look to its reflections.

Friendship and War

One of my pastimes was playing 'the World of Warcraft', a game that I am still very fond of and follow on a regular basis. Inspired by other Machinima animations created by followers of the game I decided to use my experience in 3D and animation to add to the collection of fan-fiction.

Friendship and War is a reworking of an old story written in 1902 by Theodore Morse (American composer) and Edward Madden (lyricist), it was a created over a period of about a month and included a number of 3D modelled elements.

You can read about the creation of the animation from the following link.