GRG's Miscellany

For my 3D games, I've been playing around with ideas around semi-procedural geometry, by which I mean geometry which is generated from a small amount of authored data.  For example, I could draw out the shape of an island in a dozen or so 3D points, and the actual terrain geometry could be generated from that. A big step along the way to that is splitting up a non-convex polygon into triangles.  The triangles mustn't overlap, nor must they cover any space which the polygon itself doesn't cover.  For example, this diagram . Today, I managed to get a python program* running which took a list of 2D points defining a polygon, split it into sub-triangles and displayed them in a tkinter canvas**. I am certain this has been solved by clever people in much better ways, but I still feel proud to have figured this one out (and I haven't managed to break it yet!). The basic algorithm is: Create a temporary copy of the polygon points list start with the three points fro...

I'm continuing to build scenery in 12" square blocks to allow for depth in the terrain, and I've finished two more blocks: a corner bunker and another straight trench. The Corner Bunker The idea for this block was an objective, defensive position or entry point at the corner of the battlefield. The bunker itself is just cereal card glued to the underlying corrugated-cardboard frame.  I used a scalpel to cut the groove for where the door closes.  The paint is a simple mix of cheap black and white acrylic paint. The road edges coming in are meant to be tracks worn by long-term vehicle use.  I built up areas with a mix of bird-grit , bird-sand , talc , PVA and water.  Then I used sand-talc-PVA-water to smooth it a bit more, then finally talc-PVA-water to try and make some sections look muddier. The colouring is a dark brown spray , followed by a lighter stone-coloured spray , then dry brushed with cheap brown acrylic , blending up with white. ...

An addition to my scavenger Rogue Trader army is this modded Eldar Viper Jetbike. You don't get many Games Workshop things on Freecycle, but a couple of battered jetbikes and some Dark Eldar popped up and I nabbed them. Then I had to make it fit my scavenger militia.  So I ventured into the world of Milliput for the first time. I first attempted the cockpit without a wire armature, but that was brittle and extremely frustrating, so I cut it all off and worked it again with florists wire.  I have since bought modelling wire because the Milliput really did not like sticking to the plastic coating on the florists wire. The pilot is the original Eldar one with globs of putty to make him look a little more Cadian-like. The stippled rust was inspired by this forum post , but I still need heaps of practice. As the clear perspex stands were missing, I decided to attempt to make the bike 'sit' on its own dust cloud.  I glued two pieces of bent florists wire...