WoodMarvels Blog

This is the second in a series at WoodMarvels.com – the first will be released in a few weeks regarding the Sydney, Australia area. I saw this building, which I knew nothing about while doing some research and knew the instant I saw it that a laser cut version had to be made available! It took some time, lots of patience but the end result is a pretty accurate representation of the architectural masterpiece, the Sydney ANZAC War Monument. This [...]

WoodMarvels.com has now released an update to it’s original CH-47 Chinook Helicopter 3D assembly animation. The resolutions was bumped up to 720p and that one scene in the mountains is what took a week to render last time around (which had skipping frames) took only 3 days this time around due to a few tweeks. The model, files and kit have all remained the same, a brand new model is rendering right now which I hope to release by the [...]

Since moving to HD production, the rendering times for the animations you see for WoodMarvels.com products has gone up dramatically. What use to take maybe a day or two, now take upwards of a week to simply render. This doesn’t include any modeling or sound/music/post-production… just rendering a 3D animation scene. I had an animation scene (9 seconds worth) finish just a few hours ago, it took 5 days (24 hours a day, for 5 days straight) to render and [...]

It took a long while but the WoodMarvels.com Zulu Main Battle Tank 720p render finished-up a few hours ago and after some post production work, now available to view online! The model itself hasn’t changed, only the video has been updated. I haven’t released a DXF version of this model due to the crazy number of pieces – imagine using a chisel to cut all the corners out of this model… it would be an incredible amount of work! I [...]

Vectorealism is a laser cutting hub that I have access through our partnership with Ponoko to cut my designs, in Milan, Italy. So far, I can get my stuff cut in New Zealand, Germany, United States and thanks to a few friends with laser cutters, quite a few other places which I will announce at a later date. With the launch of their new website in both Italian and English, they used one of our designs on our homepage. The [...]

Formulor is a laser cutting hub I have access to in Berlin, Germany through my partnership with Ponoko, which is the main company that I use to cut my physical laser cut kits. WoodMarvels.com was approached a few weeks back by Formulor, who really enjoyed the designs they saw, wanting to use some of them for promotional online banner advertising of their company. After we sorted out a few details, I sent them extremely high resolution renders and their graphics [...]

Now that my initial huge rendering queue that had my laptop hot enough to fry an egg at all hours of the day or night, I’m letting you guys know that the Stereo Bank and Porsche have been updated with new file types and a much improved HD 720p version. The models haven’t changed, only these aspects about them have. Problems with original videos These two animations both had major issues that I wanted to fix. The Porsche had a [...]

One of my goals for WoodMarvels.com this year was to form partnerships with some well known manufacturers. In this case, it’s ShopBot Tools, a CNC router manufacturer based in the United States with the result being this amazing looking 1911 Ford Model T Torpedo Runabout which I designed but they distributed at the very recent 2010 Detroit Maker Faire (I’ll post press clippings as they are sent to me). In this case, it was being held at the Henry Ford [...]

As part of my mission to get things consistent across WoodMarvels.com, I’ve updated and released files for the following models: Abacus, Straddle Carrier and Organizing rack. These are ancient models, the Abacus was the 12th I ever designed actually… hence the use of round wooden dowels. As the files making these models up predated the dinosaurs, it wasn’t any fun bringing them all to date but at least it’s over with. The models themselves haven’t changed, only the animations and [...]

One minor issue that has kept me scratching my head since I started WoodMarvels.com is people buying kits and files but not getting the assembly guide along with it. Some of these models, I completely understand, an assembly guide for the Pterodactyl isn’t necessary I think for most adults as the process is very easy and the 3D animation shows the process as well. I had an order for my Mars Rover Opportunity (animation below) a little while back, the [...]