3DStarbase 182 - A Journey of Enlightenment

Jenny

There may be two or three of you on this forum who were aware of me before I posted this thread. I may have commented on one of your WIP threads, and you may have thought, "wow, what an insightful, well reasoned comment!" Or you may have thought, "Yeah? What are her 3D credentials? I don't see any of her WIP threads!"

And, of course, you'd've been right, no matter which of those thoughts you had.

I used to model in POV-Ray, but gave it up when I went to nursing school. While I was in nursing school, I bought a copy of LightWave 8, because hey, killer educational pricing! I dinked around with it a couple of times, but never got beyond the first tutorial in Inside Lightwave 8.

Recently, I was thinking about starbases. I saw an idea I kind of liked, which I later discovered to be Steven Davis' Starbase 201. I thought I'd try doing a variant of it. It looked pretty simple... just two Ournal type starbase graving yards flipped over and stuck together, with an exterior docking ring.

So, after about three days of delving through Lightwave documentation, trying to figure it all out, this is what I have to offer:

Jenny

Pretty pathetic.

You wouldn't believe the calculations I did, to make that little football. And it ended up coming out not at all like I intended. But it's my first rendered image of an object I created, so... uh... there it is. Hopefully, I'll get better. And then, someday when I'm as good as Vektor, someone will look back and be amazed that I've come so far in so short a period.

[Deleted User]

It sounds like you are doing more than is neccesary. here is a Sketchup model done in about 2 minutes. just a shape extruded to a radius and painted. It is only because I found the simple way of doing things that I am able to do them quickly and have them turn out the way I want them to.
Beleive me it takes time to learn efficiency and is very easy to over-complicate.

At least you're not afraid to try.

Jenny

Spent about half an hour this morning, and got this:



Now, on the good side, I only spent about half an hour, and got something much closer to the shape I was envisioning. On the minus side, however, on the hab ring you can see the segmentation, instead of it being a smooth curve.

When I did the first version, I did a face per meter of the perimeter and ten segments high, so there were a boatload of polys. And with all those polys, taper didn't work the way I was expecting it to, creating a curve instead of a straight line.

So this morning's version had only 36 faces with one segment each. Taper did more what I would expect, but it also apparently pulled the top down towards the origin, shortening the overall height of each segment. Plus, as noted, segments are visible.

I suspect there will be a third version, probably made with points and lathe, as that will give me control over the exact places where the shape changes, and keep the height I intended.

Jenny

Yes, I know, I'm the only one who's really concerned with the blow-by-blow construction of this, but I'm feeling enthusiastic, so don't rain on my parade, dude.

So, I used the lathe tool, and got this:


Which is correct to the math, but differs from what I have in my sketchbook. Why? Because in my sketchbook, I only laid out one side, so I didn't see the whole profile. And the whole profile... well, it's Dorky MacDorkysdottir. In an effort to produce a station that didn't look like the Spawn of Dorky, I went back to the drawing board. After a couple more shapes (which I will spare you images of) I came up with this:



It at least has possibilities. I'm not quite happy with it, though. To review, I'm trying to replicate the basic look and feel of Steven Davis' Starbase 201, shown here:



(Mesh, as mentioned, by Steven Davis. I don't know who did this scene / render, as they didn't put credits on the image, or the person I got it from cut them off).

Now, there are some complicating factors. I've applied to run a cooperative writing project set within this starbase, so I'd like my images to be useful for the game's web page. That means that I have to conform to the organization's size on the thing. I had originally estimated that the core station of Davis' version was about two-thirds of the total diameter, and the ring about ten percent. Unfortunately, those dimensions end up looking... cramped. I'm concerned about stepping the station down to half the total diameter, as that substantially reduces the available size of the graving yard, but I may try it, anyway, and see how it looks.

But probably not until tomorrow.

Starship

Welcome on board! For a first mesh, youA’re doing well. Pratice leads to perfection Go ahead with your dream.
Take a look at www.foundation3d.com too. YouA’ll find a lot of friends that uses Lightwave.

Jenny

I went downstairs to help my grandmother with something, and had a thought. I don't know what the dimensions the gaming organization has given are based on. So when I came back upstairs, I dug out my Starbase 79 deck plans. (This is one of those things that was circulated back in the heady days after The Motion Picture but before The Next Generation, when it seemed every con dealer had cool things to buy. It has no publication information on it, which tells me someone either didn't care about credit, or didn't want to get sued for copyright violation!) It shows what was eventually called the Ournal class stardock.

Some careful measurement showed that the ratio of radius to height for the source material was almost 3:1! That's much squatter than I was modeling! This revelation has caused me to seriously reevaluate the gaming numbers... I'm going to build what I think looks right, and if it doesn't agree with the numbers, well... that's Star Trek, isn't it? (How big is the "Klingon" Bird of Prey?)

So, I'm probably going to dink around with the shape tomorrow some, but just for grins, here's the shape I ended the production night with, that shows the 3:1 aspect ratio I mentioned.

NightShadow

It's a start. Space stations are, believe it or not, sometimes MORE difficult than starships. Why? It's all in the details. Windows upon windows, lights, beacons, plating, docking aperatures... it LOOKS easy, but it ain't. Have fun, learn lots and good luck!

Jenny

I'll be spending most of the day helping my grandmother, so I won't be doing a lot of updating on this. (Yes; you may be relieved, now). But I was thinking last night about the size of the station in relationship to the size of ships. I want Starfleet's largest ships to fit inside the graving yard, as well as being able to dock in the "harbor," the area outside the core of the station but inside the habitat ring.

So I did some research, and found that the longest of the canon ships seen on-screen is the Sovereign class, but the widest and deepest is the Galaxy class. So I made a notional ship, rounding up the figures for length, beam, and draft to the next fifty meters, then made a box of that size and put it in the scene with my initial hull shape and hab ring shape.



As you can see, this notional largest starship at the time of station construction would easily fit in the graving yard and the harbor. So that's good. I'm not quite sure this is the final shape, though... I'm going to have to think about that today while I'm out with the grandmother.

Oh, and thanks to those of you who have commented. I know there's not really a lot to comment on just yet, but I do appreciate the encouragement!

LockeFP

If I might make a suggestion on sizing: stop trying to do the math involved, and utilize shapes that feel right to your eye. Oftentimes, when I was modeling aircraft for MS Flight Sim, I would get obsessed with getting the aircraft sized to the right fraction of the inch. Then one day I was flying around with a favorite aircraft of mine and parked it next to one of the stock aircraft. The size seemed off for the two sitting next to each other. Not immediately noticeable, but strange anyway. So I had an idea. I created a box whose dimensions I knew precisely and put it into the sim. Then I went around and "measured" all of the aircraft I could find. And lo and behold! most of them were off by an inch here, a 1/2 inch there. And it didn't matter. Because in the end, it's all about what looks correct. Just a matter of opinion, really.

I would also remind you that not long after the Sovereign was created, the Excalibur project was begun. While this isn't strictly canon, it does appear in an awful lot of current fanTrek. So you may want to consider the size implications on that one, as well. Currently, I think the Excalibur measures in at L:1224.9, W:533.0, H:176.97, which is considerable larger than what you have for your box. Just something to think about. By the way, those are my measurements, not something I got off the web, before anyone starts in on me. Of course, if there are some official measures, use those.

Jenny

Thanks for the advice. I'm not actually worried about the nearest couple of centimeters; we're talking a disparity of over a kilometer between what my eye tells me and the gaming organization's figures. I think pretty much anyone would agree that's a significant discrepancy!

Jenny

Backing off from the station while it percolates, I turned my attention to the rest of the solar system. For ease in navigation, Starbase 182 was built in orbit of a gas giant named Atlacamani, taken from the Aztec goddess of oceanic storms.

I built this planet in about an hour by following the tutorial at Chrusion for a photo-realistic Earth. I'm thinking I'll make a "hero" version, with more layers of clouds, and render it once, then use that as a background image in my station renders. The orbital period of the station around the planet is long, and the station is tidelocked to the planet, so I just have to keep track of where the light is coming from. 8)



If anyone has tips for building better gas giants, let me know?

LockeFP

Well, I didn't read the tutorial you posted (I use Max) but if that uses textures, as I'm assuming it does, I would recommend some blur or blending around the edges of the bands. They look too drawn in at this point. More like a snakeskin ball than a planet, really.

Jenny

Well, lacking useful suggestions on how to build a better gas giant, I struck out on my own. I've spent the last couple of days working at my day job, but had this in the back of my mind.

Essentially, it's four different layers of atmosphere with cloud maps... just cloud maps of Earth that I downloaded, but still, four different layers of different colors. The maps turned out more similar than I thought they were, so this is probably the penultimate version... I'm going to go back when I have time and rotate the transparency maps a little, so that there's more separation between the cloud layers. But here you go... a better Atlacamani!

LockeFP

Hmm . . . could you possibly post a hi-rez or close-up image of that? Looks to be multitudes better, but I can't make out a whole lot of detail on it.

As for help, I assume you've tried the tutorials section at the top of the forum, right? There isn't much there specifically about Lightwave, but some of the tutorials might be helpful.

Also try TurboSquid or the CGHub, both of which have very talented contributors. I know TurboSquid is disliked by many people, but I find it useful for finding things that I have needed in the past.

Jenny

Well, I got up this morning and made the changes to the transparency maps on the gas giant I'd been thinking of. That produced what will be the final version of it unless something dramatic happens and I have an inspiration to do something better. (Click on any image to get a larger version).



So, armed with this new image to use as a backdrop, I went and played around with the station in modeler some more, coming up with what will probably be the final shape for the core of the station and the habitat ring. I also modeled the docking arms that connect the graving yard and the habitat ring. Oh, and I did some number crunching. With a four-meter deck height, that habitat ring provides ~880 square kilometers... slightly bigger than the land area of all five burroughs of New York City.



Which shows that you should not put both your starbase and the gas giant center stage. Which leads to the final shared render of the day:



Blue-shifted version of Jupiter in the background, because I happened to already have it on my hard drive. I won't be using it regularly in composite images, because the giant red spot is too recognizable, even in a color-shifted image like this.

NightShadow

The pictures posted are coming up only as thumbnails- I can hardly see anything worthwhile about them.

Jenny

If you click on the thumbnail, are you not getting the larger version?

NightShadow

Nope. Just the thumbnail in an external browser window. I'll concede that the problem MIGHT be on my end, but troubleshooting computers and software issues is what I do for the US Army, so I highly doubt it.

Jenny

Rats. I was feeling clever about it... it works on both of my computers, the Mac and the PC. 8(

Anyway, there's not a lot of detail to be seen, at the moment. As I go on working on the project, I'll post larger images. Thanks for letting me know that the big ones aren't showing up.

NightShadow

Y'know, there's nothing wrong with posting them directly here at SFM- each user has about 32 MB of space that they're allocated just for that purpose and if you're good about keeping your images small in terms of bytes, 32 MB should be plenty.

LockeFP

Just so you know: Knightshadow, the problem is actually on your end. It's either the browser you're using (IE hates linked images) or the settings you have for the browser you're using. When I click the image, I get two new tabs opening up. The first has the thumbnail image, and the second redirects to Picasa where the actual image is located.

That being said, I tend to use ImageShack for my posts. It has a "direct link" feature which allows you to copy a direct link to the image that you can post in the thread by using IMG tags. That way, you don't have the tedious waiting for the redirects.

All of that aside: you're doing good here. However, I would suggest some SMOOTHING GROUPS. Your station is starting out nice, but you're really just losing some quality because the sections are still too visible.

NightShadow

I hope y'all excuse me while I go find an axe and introduce it to my computer. Yeah, my IE settings got jacked up while I was away in Afghanistan- yet another one of those subtle things that your wife and children don't mention when you come home on Leave...

Jenny

No worries, and thank you for your service.

Jenny

I think I may cry.

The external hard drive that has served me faithfully and well for the last five or six years has apparently died. It takes with it my Lightwave projects, my POV-Ray source codes, years worth of writing (professional and recreational) and all of my music library.

Yes, yes, I know... I should have had those things backed up. But I didn't. And yes, I know, there are data recovery services, and they're expensive.

The only bright side of this is that it lets me put down this project and start again with something a bit less ambitious as I learn Lightwave.

Still. Woe. Oh, woe.

Dannage

Curses of modern technology! Sorry to hear the work to date was lost, but don't let it deter you, reinstall, start again and make it even better!

And buy a couple of small USB memory sticks, and store some of your images or meshes on that once in a while. They're dead cheap.