As if I didn't have enough project ideas or things to do, I had the crazy idea of pulling up Blender 2.49 (not the oldest I ever used, but it has been a LONG time since I used it regularly) Just to see if I could model the Press Start project. Part of the reason why is how we keep trying to tell people that while tools have changed a lot over the years, a lot of the concepts have not. So I wanted to see just how true this was.
For the most part, I've been able to follow more or less the same steps taken in the PRESS START course, with a few big exceptions so far. The first being that 2.49 didn't have proper Ngons... it used what it calls Fgons -- which is more or less the same thing as the ngons, but still has the edge connections underlying it. Because of this, the modifiers didn't quite work as it does in later Blender versions, so I did bakek the bevels into the geometry.
While Blender 2.49 did have nodes for making materials, they weren't as fully developed as they became when Cycles came out with 2.63. I am trying to use them... I spent hours trying to figure out the materials system... It's SOO much better these days :D
The other big thing of note was the "background images" for references could be sized and translated, but not scaled. I'd started to try it in 2.63 after I couldn't figure out how to do it in 2.49, but after I figured it out in 2.63, I was able to figure out 2.49's system and since I had the values, was able to copy them over. but I'm not really able to do each view separately (you can in 2.63), so I'm having to do as much as I can from one angle before going to the other.
I'll keep working on this but wanted to share what I've gotten so far.
After figuring out how the fgon system worked, I went back and redid some of the work and filled in more of the parts. This would be approx where you'd be at for the cartridge slot stage.
It is interesting to go back and try to use an older tool :D
While I did use 2.3x and 2.4x, I really didn't know much about what I was doing back then. I remember after multires came out trying to do something, but I had no idea how to use it. It wasn't until Cycles came out with 2.63 that I really started trying to learn how to do things.
I had done a clock radio and some furniture before, so I at least know how to do the modeling. It's the materials are so much different that I really didn't know how to do :D
Got the backside done today. Knife tool didn't play nicely with the fGons, so I pretty much rebuilt the faces by hand. the more subtle bevels to soften the hard edges I'm either going to have to do manually or just not worry about them because of the way the fgons work, but this has definitely been an interesting project :D
Redid the speakers on the front more or less how Jonathan did them in the tutorial.
I haven't saved out a render, but played around with doing it in 2.63 (the first version that had Cycles) and almost up to the same point, and except for the auto smoothing (which wasn't until later), it's been just about exactly like the tutorial. (And much faster than the 2.49 version :D ) Although the one difference is that I had to make my ngons in smaller chunks or it couldn't solve it.
