I am receiving requests for building instructions of my engines on a regular basis. For almost all of them, I don’t have those available (one of the main reasons to start posting clips to youtube was to avoid having to make instructions). Since the simple V6 is my most popular engine so far, I decided to make a Blender animation of the build process a long (LONG) while ago, as a ‘thank you’ for all viewers and subscribers.
I can say without exaggerating that this is by far the most labour intensive clip I have ever posted. You may have noticed it has been more than a year since I last posted anything. It’s not that I have been working on this one full time in that year, but it feels as if I have spent more time on this than on all of the other content combined. I hope it was worth it 
Never mind, it’s been a lot of fun anyway.
For those who are interested in the nuts and bolts: I made this in Blender, started in version 2.66, but at 2.72b now. I created the original model and build order in MLCad, and ported it to Blender. Within Blender I used custom scripts to set up some of the animation, and to enhance the 3D meshes. At some point during the process I completely overhauled the meshes, so they are nothing like the original MLCAD meshes anymore (man, those things are messy!). Overhauling the meshes also helped in keeping the complexity of the scene down, allowing me to add some bevelling etc. to make it all look a bit nicer. It’s all rendered using Blender internal, and rendering the images takes a little over 20 days of render time at the lovely sheep-it render farm.
I know I did not really get the colours right. The bley is especially difficult. Believe me, I tried 
Anyway, this is the build clip. Hope you enjoy it!
PS This is the second version of this clip I have posted. User ‘Inityx’ suggested that some ambient occlusion would make it look more realistic, and he was right!
Music “Vanishing Horizon” by Jason Shaw
Available on the Free Music Archive freemusicarchive.org/
Under CC BY license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Post time: Jun-29-2018