This is the first test-render for a new animation that focuses on a Tiger II tank. The end is not in sight yet because there's a lot more that still needs to be done. But I was personally rather pleased with the results of the render, so here's a sneak peek of what is to come.

This is one of those scenes that is never really completely finished to my own liking. I keep seeing things that can be improved, especially after having letting it rest for a while. Over the last couple of months, I've been adding and editing components to the scene many times. Up to a point that I had to become more careful with this because my workstation was letting me know that it was starting to have problems loading the scene and working on it became laggy. Now that's not fun at all to work with, so I had to stop adding things, and instead focus on optimizing all the things already there.

This is a replica of the old train station that we used to have in Valkenswaard, which is the town where I live in. It was demolished in 1962, so finding reference material was not easy. After having searched in every corner of the internet unsuccessfully, I eventually went to a meeting of a local model railroad club. I knew beforehand that they had built a miniature model of the station at some point. I was actually using pictures they had posted online of their model as my main reference material. Luckily, they were very helpful and provided me with the building's design drawings or blueprints. With these drawings, I was able to easily conjure up this scene in Blender.

It was also known to the Allies as the buzz bomb or doodlebug, and in Germany as Kirschkern (cherry stone) or Maikäfer (maybug). The V1 was the first of the Vergeltungswaffen deployed for the terror bombing of London. It was developed at Peenemünde Army Research Center in 1939 by the Luftwaffe at the beginning of the Second World War, and during initial development was known by the codename "Cherry Stone". Because of its limited range, the thousands of V-1 missiles launched into England were fired from launch facilities along the French (Pas-de-Calais) and Dutch coasts.

Here's another project that is based on a real building in Valkenswaard, the town where I live. This time it's about the Venbergse Molen, where molen translates to mill. This water mill has a rich history, and I wrote a separate blog post about that. Check it out here: https://visiestudio.nl/blog/venbergse-molen-valkenswaard/
I built most of the scene from scratch, going by reference images I found online, and google street view as well. I visited this place a couple of times, since I know somebody who lives there, and that also helped, I guess. Several models in the scene have been grabbed from Sketchfab to make my life a bit easier.