Darda Cars

Back when I was a kid I absolutely loved Darda cars — the kind of toy cars that wind up by pulling back. There are plastic tracks that you can build and the cars would go around those quite fast. Awesome stuff really.

I remember building the craziest setups with jumps and the lot. So much fun for a crazy kid! I also used to modify the cars by shaving off weight and painting them. Another funny way of playing with them was to race them in the bath tub — some quite amazing stunts were achieved that way.

A while back, for nostalgic reasons, I bought a couple of cars via eBay. Just to have as a little retro decorative piece. So I’ve had them sitting for a while just looking cool, but the other day I got the idea that I’d make a 3D model and some renderings out of one. Fast forward a few hours and here’s the result. I’m pretty pleased with the outcome. The whole thing is probably 95% accurate with only the internal mechanism missing.

3D Bokeh

Bokeh is the word for the blurry areas in a photo with a short depth of field. Here is another rendering I made where I wanted to see how it turned out with really short depth of field (or a lot of bokeh).

Click the long thumbnail for a preview. If you happen to want a bigger size, click here: 1440 x 900px
On the big size you can actually see the “Simple Bike Co.” text on the bearing seal.

Letter blocks

Again I was playing around with some 3D images and came up with these two variations of the same theme. Simple blocks with letters on them. Played around with rendering different materials and angles and these are the two I’m the most satisfied with. I’ll probably add more of this kind of content as time passes.

Since I made these in the 1440 x 900px size they can be used as a desktop background (if that’s your resolution), so they’re available for download on the downloads page.

3D Mania [updated]

Past few days I’ve been playing around with doing some photorealistic renderings of stuff I’ve got CAD drawings for. This one turned out really nice although I got the focus a bit off. Was really cranking it with the bokeh (the blurry out-of-focus areas) with short depth of field.

Only six more hours to render a new one… haha!

Adding another one…
This time I’ve been trying to play around with transparent materials. Not really as realistic, but it’s still close and way better than any other renderings I’ve done before.

3D bike finished!

A while back I posted the 3D bike I’ve been working on. I finally found some time to get the seat and chain on there.  So now it’s pretty much finished with a brakeless setup. I went a little crazy with the colors when rendering and it’s not super fresh. Might try to render it in a program more suited for photorealistic stuff later.

All in all I’m really happy with how it turned out.  Hope you like it.

More 3D bike

Updated my 3D bike project with cranks and pedals.
The cranks are just a quick sketch of Odyssey Wombolts (that I currently run) and the pedals might or might not be in the works as an Eject product.

[Edit: Updated the 3D bike again. Now with new rims and spokes and nipples. “Laced” up!]

Virtual bike

Here’s a little thing I’ve been playing around with lately. Over the years I have made many drawings of different parts and I just figured it could be a cool thing to put it all together into a complete bike. The frame, fork, bars, stem and front hub are already available as products. The rims, tyres and barends are just mock-ups and the rear hub plus grips are in the planning stages.

When I’m finished with this one all the parts will be 100% the same as the production parts, just that they’re in computerized form. Pretty cool, or geeky. You decide.

Patrik’s 3D skull

A while back I posted about my friend Patrik who had a gnarly crash and got a few fractures in his face. He’s now had surgery and is recovering very well. They had to put 9 metal plates in his skull to patch it all up and hold it all together.

Apparently what happened when he crashed was the he hooked his peg on an upright when attempting an icepick grind on a rail. He had pulled it once before and got it on film, but he wasn’t happy with the how it turned out, so he went for it again and hooked the peg on the very last upright. I’ve been told that he went straight to his face and had no speed forward at all. No hands to stop his fall either. He had scratches on the top of his hands!

Here’s the 3D image of his skull with all the plates marked out. Looks gnarly!