Acoustic Guitar Refurbish - Part 4 Final

After all the time and pictures, the guitar is bust and isn't playable.

I was able to get the neck attached and into a good shape.  Some wood glue and pressure was all I needed for it to span well.  I brought it down to the local music store to get some strings and tell them about my project.

On Saturday, the store had a promotion where with the purchase of a set of strings, a free setup was performed on the guitar.  On the first string, once it got up to tension the key snapped off.  Another key started to crack and spun uselessly.

So for a good few weeks, I found an old guitar which may have been able to be worked into something usable, but ultimately, not.  It was fun working to get the straight shape back in the guitar, and I learned a bit about the make up of a guitar.

I was suggested to make a percussive instrument out of it.  That would be neat, and it would be another use for it, but for now it's just clutter and junk.

Thanks for following along with me!  As usual, comments are welcome.  :)

More with Unity; Animation in Blender

I've been looking at tutorials and more Unity content on the web, and that brought me back around to Blender.  I've tried this tool in the past, and while it looks amazing, I've never really gotten into it.  Going backing to browsing Unity material, I found a neat tutorial demonstrating the character model creation, skinning, and animating process.  It was pretty fun!  Took me several days to work it through, but I ended up with something I'm giddily proud of!  I should note that the author was pretty quick to answer some questions of mine, as well.  I was surprised at how recently this tutorial series was put out as compared to when I was looking for it.

UV map and textured character model.

The model was made in Blender, and then a map of the geometry was created.  I used GIMP to 'colour' in the map the way I wanted the skin to look, and then loaded that image back into Blender to apply to my model.

There are other steps including making and rigging a skeletal system which aren't shown, but I have included two images of the final piece, as well as a download link for the 'game' demonstrating the animation!

On the ground about to jump.

In the air having a blast!

As like the previous Unity post, if you download and run the program, use alt+F4 to quit!  Or use the x if running in Windowed mode.

    jumpyguy.zip ( 8mb )

Acoustic Guitar Refurbish - Part 3

Yesterday, Monday, I took the clamp off the guitar after sitting for a couple days.  I heard lots of small crackling as the wood released from the tension of the clamp.  It didn't splinter, but I probably should have soaked it before letting up the pressure.

After cleaning it up, I set to wetting the neck for another six hours, and then put it back to straightening it down on the desk.

Not much happened to report on this post.  I did notice that after the soaking, I could lift the body up and meet the heel of the neck where it had separated from.

What a friend of mine had suggested is I could drill a pilot hole through the heel into the support of the body and a wood screw should keep it together.  I'll definitely do this once I make sure the warp in the neck has straightened up some, so maybe by next weekend I'll try it out!  Looks like I have some direction to take this in that will speed up the process!

As usual, any ideas or suggestions appreciated!