DOOM 3: Project Mars City Mod

Worklogs should be fun!--In that spirit, here is a short video showing some airbrushing work

Servo Mechanism Cover: [3:41] winmedia wmv format

Here are a couple pics I took a few weeks ago during painting and final assembly:

The power block simply makes putting this complex mod together much easier. It gives me a break point in the power line so the case itself can be removed from the rocky base that holds the SATA CDROM and harddisk..



These dual 60mm fans help cool off the Fujitsu 15kRPM drive.


Here is the exhaust fan for the base unit.

I decided to do away with many of the mechanical switches and buttons on the mod and go for solid state with an IR remote control--because how cool is RC??-- I picked up a 12 Channel IR Relay Board (in kit form) and assembled it in about 2 hours. The nice thing about this board is that you can have an on/off configuration on the channels or momentary switching, or a combination of both. To test it out I hooked it up to the blast door module--works like a charm.








Here is the air intake vent for the HDD cooling fans. This scratchbuilt piece uses some styrene sheet, modder's mesh and two copper plumbing elbows. To get the subtle shading in the paint, first it was airbrushed, then hand detailed and finaly a soft shading with Doc Browns' weathering powders applied with a sable brush. This is pretty much how I painted the entire mod.

Whew!...alright it looks like its finally in the home stretch--Nothing more to build, just paint and assemble--easier said than done--although since the entire mod is built around modules, everything should fit right into place. Lots of wiring to do as well--but its 99% done overall. Here are some pics from last weeks build:

Etched pentagram window in its frame with LED lighting. Basically its 6 ultrabright red lamps wired in parallel:





Here is the roof module during painting. The cover caps off the roof nicely and includes 2x 120mm fan vents for the Black Ice pro radiator.





Here you can see that i curved the interior of the roof module to allow for airflow off the radiator:



The Antec case is really small for a mid-tower, so I built an extension for the rear of the case. This allows me to push the PC Power & Cooling 510 SLi PSU out the back about two inches, giving me preciuous room inside for wire managment and components. The round holes on the extension piece are for PSU fan exhaust, an 80mm fan and a hole for the water pump. This estension piece also conceals all the typical messy wires on the back of the PC :



There is even a hinged door for access to the I/O panel of the motherboard.



Once its all painted up and weathered, I'll take individual pics of all the components before assembly to show all the parts.

Revisiting that extension piece I made for the back of the case, here it is finish painted. I made a little plaque that has the Doom3 logo and the chainsaw that I made way back at the start of the project. There is also a spot for a lighted marquee (where you see the 4" white CCFL) at the top of this extension piece, and this will have a backlit transparency that has a bit of the project's history printed on it.