Those days when it all began

Hi to all,

Being a long time Lightwave user, I’ve been playing around with Blender more seriously in the last 6 months. So I decided to do a small personnal project from scratch to see how I could handle it. I had so much fun doing it and I found that the learning curve of Blender was very smooth and I felt comfortable in no time. The model is not perfect, still missing the front keyboard fonts.

I’m planning to redo (still from scratch) the project in LW for comparison.

All pictures are stock Cycle render @ 500 samples. No post except for the last one which was processed into Virtual Darkroom (in LW) for vintage look. Note that in the last render, I used the stunning Planks plugin from Michel J. Anders.

Cheers




@Musart

nice work there, boy this brings back some memories, started of with a VIC 20 which was the little brother before I got this one.

Shaun

Thanks for the comments.

Yep I had the Vic-20 too. The V20 and C64 had the same model but different colors. I wish I could find a Hirez Vic-20 Logo, I would render it with his brother.

Beautiful rendition of an awesome peice of technology :slight_smile: 5*

These are wonderful and definitely nostalgic. Though I didn’t get to see an actual object like that in my childhood. :wink:

Thank you. Though it’s a simple object, i’m proud to got it done in Blender.

Well done. Very nice. And for all you Vic-20 users, welcome to the club.

Extremely well done. I still have my C-64 in storage. I thought about getting rid of it, but I just can’t part with it. :>

Great work bringing back great memories!

Anyone from Montreal interested in owning real Commodore 64’s? I have at least two with cassette tape reader/writer and disk drive. I also have Atari and Amiga computers. I was a big fan when I was young and have kept them for years and years but I’m likely not going to use them ever again so I want to give them away; I wouldn’t want to bring them to my local electronic recycling facility.

anyone have one of these, i got it a while after i outgrew my vic 20. this stuff brings back such good memories, cannot believe now that i got rid of the stuff, would love to boot up my old vic or spectravideo


shaun

@Speed7… Wow cool the Spectra. I can’t remember this one!

@Giorgo: Gêné de les apporter chez FutureShop pour recycler? :wink:

Nice. I had one in the 80’s. I love Commodore since then :slight_smile:
Perhaps in the next steps you would add other items like joysticks, monitor, tape drive? Would be a nice desktop background :slight_smile:

Nice, but I’ve seen it done so much better. I’m a massive C64 fan, in fact I made one myself exactly 10 years ago and to me it doesn’t look quite right. I have seen a few Commodore models from other artists that are photorealistic, here’s one (non-Blender alert):

Imgur

@Danny

Thank for the link. That’s T. Koch. I saw all of his work on the LW gallery a few weeks ago.

What area exactly I need to work to improve it? (apart the front Keyboard fonts)

Thanks Ntnsftr, That’s in the plan

Yep I had the C-64 … then an Amiga 500 then an Amiga 4000 with a Video Toaster and Lightwave…
boy … those were the days… (which I had all that money I spent on all that stuff back… I could more than pay off my student loan):eek::o;)

I had Vic-20, C64, A1000, A3000 and then…hum…a PC

Memories is coming back, I learned to program BASIC on one of those, nowadays I do not remember how to do it. But I also remember that one could do pixelated images but if you put the wrong values the screen became completely black. It was in the 80’s and it was then that my interest in computers awakened.

Hi Musart, I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m being an ass but I just love C64s and own three of four. I’m bound to be super-critical because learned how to use Blender by making one (BI render from 2005):


Mine is NOT perfect (far from it) and if I did it again, it would be from scratch and I would model it very differently. I’ll point out a few things you could do to improve your model.

Each row of keys is angled slightly differently to create a natural curve, e.g. remove the 1, Q, A and Z keys from a real C64 and lie them on a flat surface, then look at them from the side!

Commodore badge should be embossed. The typeface is similar to Microgramma Bold Extended, if you want to do it the easy way :wink:

Lettering beside the power LED should be in upper case.

Space bar looks a little squashed for some reason.

The plastic case had a crackle finish, subtle but very noticeable. Sorry if you already added a normal map, but it doesn’t show on the renders.

Cheers!

wow, memories… i still have mine, now your project inspires me to get it started again and play a round of frantic freddy …lol. … i like the render with the wooden floor a lot. makes a good mood :slight_smile: