3DJJEnterprise based on Tobias Richter's work

x2ego

Greetings:

This will be my first thread in this forum dedicated to modeling the 09 Enterprise. Please bear with me as I am new to 3DS Max and I only have a limited amount of time a day to work on her. References will be gladly accepted and appreciated. Tobias has already given me the hi-res rotoscopes of his model, but I could use a lot more reference for the close up details. Well, I'll post a screencap of my start - not a render, because I still haven't figured out how to make a nice render in Max. Again, the aka for this thread reads: Noob modeling central.

Update: Changed pic to reflect current state of project

Chris2005

Looking good so far.

evil_genius_180

Yeah, it looks good so far. Nice start.

count23

Pretty good start, just remember to check references other then Tobias' too. his is a good starting place, but never make a derivative of a derivative, you always lose detail in the copy.

Buckaroohawk

If you have the Blu-Ray discs of the movie, there's a great special feature that shows off the ILM model in spectacular detail. You can move around the model and zoom in for some nice close-ups. If your desktop or laptop can play the discs, you can get some very impressive screencaps from this feature to aid in detailing your own model. Hope this helps. Best of luck!

x2ego

Funny you should mention Blue-Ray. For the last week or two my wife and I were checking out the BR players. Just another reason to get one now;)

x2ego

Small update...

evil_genius_180

That's looking really good so far.

Rekkert

Looking great so far!

x2ego

Thank you for the encouragement guys. Since I am learning much of this (MAX) as I go, it can be a bit frustrating and slow. Here is my attempt at the Phaser cannons. I used booleans (cleaned them up a bit after cutting), but realized I could have just left the plane intact under the Phaser orbs. I might still do it again just to cut down on the polys.

evil_genius_180

Yeah, learning software as you go can be fun. However, the more you do, the more you learn.

Nice work on the phasers.

Chris2005

Excellent progress.

x2ego

Fleshing out the top saucer/bridge details. I tend to dwell a bit on the details and get sidetracked by learning how to do certain things.

Chris2005

x2ego wrote: »

Fleshing out the top saucer/bridge details. I tend to dwell a bit on the details and get sidetracked by learning how to do certain things.

I trust the solid light teal blue color is temporary... other than that, looking superb.

evil_genius_180

x2ego wrote: »

I tend to dwell a bit on the details and get sidetracked by learning how to do certain things.

Join the club (we have jackets. )

That's looking really good do far.

x2ego

I am so envious of guys that can churn out detailed models in nothing flat. It takes me forever to show some progress. Had to do this part of the impulse engine a few times till I got it to where it is now.

Chris: Yes the blue glow is just playing around

x2ego

Starting on the body. Did a quick attempt at blocking it in, but decided to do a spline cage. I don't know if that's the right way to go, but there it is. I'll post a pic as soon as I have anything of substance to show.

x2ego

Well, the spline cage was a disaster. When I was creating it, it looked really promising. Once the cage was roughed out, I put a surface modifier on it. It was still looking good. But, when I converted the resulting editable patch into an editable poly, it turned into a mesh with thousands of polys. Trying to edit that was just not in the cards.

Starting over on the body with box geometry. Stay tuned.

Pics below: 1 - skinned spline cage
2 - converted into editable poly with way too many polys

x2ego

Here's what I've got after starting over and beginning with a box. I'm happy with the progress so far.

tobiasrichter

YouA’re on the right track. ItA’s a very tricky shape - it takes a few tries to get it right.
Stay with the box geometry for as long as you can. I only converted it to polys before I cut out the windows.

Here are some grabs of my final boxes for the secondary hull. Hope that helps...

nightfever

I made a spline cage too, but did not use it for patching. I just made it to get a 3 dimensional view of the body lines. With that it was much easier to get the vertices and polys to their right positions. But I had to start this a couple of times, though.
You're doing a great job, keep it up.

x2ego

Greetings Tobias:

It's an honor to have you grace my shipyard.

Your wire frames are beautiful and will be studied in great detail, thank you for posting them. I can use all the help I can get.

One thing I noticed right away is the fact that you have the splines following the hulls contours in a nice flowing fashion. I may have been too rigid in my approach by trying to keep most splines perpendicular. It makes more sense to follow natural lines. Thank you for that perspective.

Here is the latest hull render...

The neck is not yet attached to the body...

Hey Fever:

Kinda like making your own rotoscopes, eh? I hope your avatar isn't a pic of that guy looking at my ship? It can't be all that bad:D

evil_genius_180

That's looking great so far. Like Tobias said, it's a tricky shape, very complex. Nice work.

x2ego

Attached neck and nacelle struts to main body. This is all still rough and will be tweaked quite a bit, I'm sure.

evil_genius_180

Rough or not, it's looking really nice so far. :thumb:

x2ego

Thanks Big E:)

x2ego

Been tweaking the hull, and it seems like a never ending process. Maybe I'm getting a bit tired, but sometimes the rotos get slightly out of whack with the model. I correct it, but it happens again. Maybe Gremlins in the box...

Starship

YouA’re doing a fine job!

x2ego

Thank you, much appreciated.

I just finished a major portion of the rear hangar section of the ship but am unhappy with the domed doors. I got them smooth, all right, but had to do it with too many polys. I'm going to try the domed doors again using less geometry. The tricky part is the up side down V shaped cut in the main doors. My first try consisted of a sphere, sectioning it to fit the shape of the doors, boolean cut and then clean up. Like I said - too many polys. Stay tuned for a pic later on tonight of my second attempt.

nightfever

How many polys do you have on your doors? Mine has about 12k and looks rather good. Each side is cut in three parts.

x2ego

Well, my internet was down since last night, but I've been busy. Got the doors down from a ridiculous count to 3,614. That's without putting in the vertical slots yet. Even with them in, I should stay below 5,000 - I hope. No turbosmooth, just letting them be for now. Below is the wireframe and test render.