ZANTHERA

Welcome, I hope you'll enjoy my 3D modelling and print restorations.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@BlueTruckTTTE My findings also pointed to this. A large poster of Thomas in series 4 condition made it so I could have a good comparison to the series 3 model.

It does seem that even though they cast all of his parts, the original parts were put back on him, and the scrap models used casts.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@mainland_studio @tyardstudios Was it a sale post, or someone posting them in a group?

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@Dburch01 @NWTom25 This poster. I have a copy of it from a lot a friend bought and sent to me and am scanning it.

It's a Thomas Club poster from 1995, which have rarely come up for sale over the years. Due to the fact this is a very large poster, it's quite tricky to scan, so it's taking a while.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@Dburch01 @NWTom25

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@seedofmight Ah right I get you now. I'd say it's more to do with the print quality than the artwork itself being a bad scan. That print is really bad with the misalignment of all the layers.

The new one looks much nicer, that definitely seems to be from a newer scan of the original artwork.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@seedofmight I'm confused, your wording seems to imply that these are scans of the same book, but done with scanners of differing quality.

The first one just has a lower amount of dots per inch and has the CMYK layers misaligned due to less precise printing. The scan itself is quite good.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@dexbloxone @LEGO_2K_HUB That's odd, I'd have thought such a basic piece would be available.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@SleeperAgent01 @LewRaccoon No worries, the next part is figuring out where they came from in the first place, which has been a bloomin' pain so far lol.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@SleeperAgent01 @LewRaccoon You've not got the angle quite right here, it does match up to be the same as the rest of the eight spoke wheels, here it is levelled to that spoke.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@SleeperAgent01 @LewRaccoon The eight spokes of these wheels are a lot easier to see in the series 3 ruler photos. The tyre thickness and the slight flare the spokes have as they join the tyre matches.

As for Tender Engines, there are the other two drive wheels used as scrap decoration, totalling all six.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@senn_twt /I did try to get a copy of the manual when I first saw Ahoy's video, but unfortunately, I had just missed one when I looked.

I'm keeping an eye out for one as I'm also personally interested to see how much there is to get out of the print quality. I enjoy scanning rare prints.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@senn_twt This is great work, I feel yours is more accurate to the original.

A higher quality scan could produce a better base to work from if the colours are corrected to make it less foggy and to remove tints. That should also make it so the pixels in the gradients are more individual./

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@SamThe_Salmon @SignmanstrrEy I was the same, I kept using 2.79 until about mid to late 2020 when I forced myself to get used to the modern version. It took some time, but now I'm really used to it and using the 2.7x keys helped too.

I'd like to learn the new keys, but it's again quite tricky to get used to.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@SamThe_Salmon @SignmanstrrEy Is this sort of lighting not possible at all in modern versions of Blender? I've seen this a few times now where 2.79 has been used to get the Blender Render option.

It does look nice and accurate to '90s lighting. Is it just very difficult to get this look right with Cycles?

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@DukeMidSodor I've shown you before that these are only grey because of the paper they are printed on, these are far off of what the original photos would look like.

There are a few good image editors that are free that can make these look a lot better, it isn't just Photoshop that can do it.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@InTimsWorld I wonder if this is the build this screenshot comes from which was featured in a Banjo-Kazooie article back in April 2007.

This seems likely to be later than the build shown in the Rare Replay video in 2015. Edson is quite a bit different and the environment looks more refined.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@DukeMidSodor I do 1200 DPI at 48-bit colour as that is the sweet spot for descreening them and for colour editing.

24-bit ends up with harsh transitions between shades and colours if heavy editing is needed.

For descreening, I use a plug-in for Photoshop rather than the built in descreen.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@thethomasfan @EdwardKing02 @TomyThomasProd1 The black piece is used to join two front halves and act as the main connection to the chassis, which would have made two back halves available for Gordon and James' bogies.

Some complete bogies are seen as scrap decoration in series 4, but those are from Oliver's BR 78 donor.

[ZANTHERA @ZANTHERA]

@thethomasfan @EdwardKing02 @TomyThomasProd1 Here are some pictures I took in late 2021 when I first noticed this, I was looking at one of the promo photos from ‘A Better View for Gordon’ and noticed it.

The others are showing how the part was positioned on him and how it sits when assembled the original way on the BR 78.