3DLearning Lightwave

evil_genius_180

It's been a long road... getting from there to here.

For those who don't know, I've been modeling in trueSpace for well over a decade, though I've done most of the real work in the past seven years. I won't bore you with the saga, but suffice to say I've had some good times, some not so good times and some downright awful times. But, enough about modeling in trueSpace, that's the past.

Again, not boring you with the saga, but, as most people who know 3D art know, trueSpace went bye-bye a few years ago. Obviously, I could keep using it, but the software has a lot of issues. So, over the past few years, I've been trying various free software packages, but I've not been really happy with any of them. Late last year, a friend e-mailed me and told me he was upgrading Lightwave and asked me if I wanted Lightwave 10 for free. Naturally, I said A“yes,A” as this is $1500 software and it's professional level software. So, I've had Lightwave for a few months now.

Of course, the problem with new software is that you have to learn how to use it, which means tutorials (especially for those of us who got didn't get a manual with our software. ) Now, there are tutorials and there are tutorials. Most are boring, but some are not. The best ones are where you make something you will actually use in renders and scenes. For a Trekkie, there's no better tutorial than one that teaches you to build the classic USS Enterprise.

My friend Gerard A“TaranisA” Duffy has written a tutorial showing just that. And, being the nice guy he is, he has released it for free. I actually started on this last weekend, though I didn't do anything more than get my blueprints ready. Then I took a week off until I actually started building this ship on Monday. So, here's 3 days of work from someone who has never modeled anything in Lightwave before (yes, the tutorial is that good.):



So, anyway, this is what I'll be working on from now on. Any of my open trueSpace projects will likely either not be finished or will eventually be restarted in Lightwave.

IRML

I think you'll get most excited about LW when you come to surface this - geometry is geometry in either app regardless of the tools you might use to build it, but nodal surfaces in LW are really different and will give you a chance to flex some cg muscle

I was really impressed by the stuff you and seanr could get out of truespace, so this should be even better

Doomsponge

What? evil_genius_180 is evolving!

This should be very intriguing. Given what you were producing in Truespace, the same amount of ability on a more capable program should be, well, terrifying.

Rekkert

Amazing work, particularly if it's your first model with the software! My first one with 3DS was awful!

Don't put all the praise on the tutorial though, you made amazing things with Truespace, I'm sure you'll continue the trend with LW. :thumb: (but it'll probably give you a headache or two along the way )

Starship

Doomsponge wrote: »

...This should be very intriguing. Given what you were producing in Truespace, the same amount of ability on a more capable program should be, well, terrifying.

Well said!

Brandenberg

Boy can I relate. Learning lightwave. It's endless. Good luck to ya.

evil_genius_180

Thanks guys. More to follow tomorrow, probably. I'm having back spasms right now, so the thought of sitting hunched over building stuff in 3D doesn't sound appealing right now, even with the muscle relaxer I'm on.

evil_genius_180

Despite being in some pain, (back spasms) I managed to get the lower sensor doohickey added. (technical term) It went pretty smoothly. The 3 little things around the perimeter caused a few issues, but I got them done. Then I found I had extra polygons on them, making them render all FUBAR. I figured out all on my own how to get rid of those, so I'm pretty pleased with myself.

Schimpfy

Nice, but you better finish Nautilus.

evil_genius_180

Nope, and I probably won't because that was a trueSpace project. I may eventually restart it in LW, I don't know. The other option would be to finish it in trueSpace and then convert it, but I hate converting.

Pearse

SFM can never have too many 1701s. Nice work so far. If the lower boob is anything to go by, the details should look rather splendid.

Rekkert

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

Nope, and I probably won't because that was a trueSpace project. I may eventually restart it in LW, I don't know. The other option would be to finish it in trueSpace and then convert it, but I hate converting.

So that means that you won't be converting all your fleet to LW?

evil_genius_180

Thanks Pearse.

Rekkert wrote: »

So that means that you won't be converting all your fleet to LW?

Odds aren't good. I have a list of ships I'd like to convert at some point. I have AccuTrans I can use for that. However, some stuff is just going to get rebuilt.


It's not really an update, but I thought I'd play around with some textures. (all part of the learning process) I grabbed some from one of my trueSpace Enterprise meshes, so the weathering streaks don't really match up from top to bottom, but that's not important right now. The ship is going to get new textures when I'm done building it. I just figured I'd see how easy it was to apply textures, it's really simple.

Billynom8

it looks like you are using the same blueprints i was using. the underside BP is flipped and so is your registry number. i did the exact same thing.

evil_genius_180

I'm using Alan Sinclair's blueprints, the registry is fine. The problem is, the texture is flipped. It's not made for this model, it's just something I threw on there to test applying textures. On the model for which I made the texture, the registry markings are properly oriented:

Ent00.jpg

When I do the registry markings on this ship, (which will be modeled) the registries will be correctly oriented.

fluxfire

Nice work evil! Always glad to see more ppl using LW

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

If you need some tuts for LW i have a very large collection.

evil_genius_180

Thanks a lot. More tutorials are always good. I don't know what I'm going to do after I finish this build, I'll have to find another tutorial to spark my interest. I may try that volumetric clouds one that IRML posted, that looks spiffy.

IRML

if you still have the emails you can grab the bussard surface I did for steve's project

evil_genius_180

I don't remember if I still have those or not, I'm going to have to look. I was already thinking, if I didn't, I could just drop you a line when it comes time to do the textures. However, I first have to model the things. The next part of the project is the engineering hull, which looks like it involves a lot of steps (as is to be expected.)

evil_genius_180

I ran into a bit of a snag on my build earlier. Ger uses Charles Casimiro's plans in his tutorial, I was using Alan Sinclair's plans, which I've been using for years. However, Sinclair's plans have a few issues, most notably where some things don't match up from one view to another. In trueSpace, I had ways of dealing with this, "just pick a view and go with it." However, the tutorial requires all views to match, and something was not matching that should, so I realized my engineering hull was going to look wrong if I continued with the tutorial using those plans. So, I started over. I got out Casimiro's plans and modified them and then started rebuilding everything with the plans. So, here I am, where I was this time yesterday:



Hopefully, tomorrow will bring forth actual progress.

Rekkert

Looking good as ever.
In my opinion, Casimiro's plans are much better than those of Sinclair, I've used them a lot for references on TOS ships.

evil_genius_180

Thanks. I like both sets. Though, I'm currently more of a fan of Casimiro's because of the fact that the views match better. I also like that he has sheets for the pilot versions of the ship and his extra sheet highlighting some of those hard to make out details and other goodies is very nice. I've been using that for years, even when I used Sinclair's blueprints to model the ship.

Pagrin

Welcome to LW. I think you'll have a blast with it as you become more comfortable with the controls.

Tralfaz

Great work so far Chris. Looking forward to seeing more.

Al

evil_genius_180

Thanks.

uniderth

Nice work. I remember your old NCC-1701 tutorial. You had to split the saucer into two parts to texture it properly.

evil_genius_180

Thanks. Though, that was scifieric who did the tutorial, I just followed it. Yeah, trueSpace is a pain in the butt like that. I like the Lightwave way of uv mapping texturing a lot better. The UV mapping is done the same way it is in Blender.

evil_genius_180

OK, people who know me aren't really going to be surprised by this. I'm not happy with the upper saucer curve in my Casimiro-built saucer section. I frequently watch TOS episodes before bed to wind down and this doesn't look like what's on screen. (the original episodes, not the “remastered” ones)



The transition from the curve to the smooth surface is much less severe. So, I needed to fix that. I also like my B-C deck teardrop shape I originally made using Sinclair's plans better. That was easy to fix, I just made a new one off of Sinclair's plans and moved it slightly to line up with the Casimiro plans.




The saucer was a bit more interesting. Obviously, I could just make one off of Sinclair's plans and put it on the shp. However, Sinclair's plans not only don't line up with Casimiro's plans (big surprise there) but the saucer is also smaller than on the Casimiro plans. So, it won't work. Of course, the good thing about being an artist is that you don't have to take what they give you. I took the upper curve from Sinclair's plans and blended it into Casimiro's plans. The result was a bit messy, so I took that into Inkscape and redrew it to make a nice, clean spline line.



The result is a nice, smooth curve and a saucer I can be happy with.





I know, some of you are probably wondering why I'm going to all this trouble on a ship I'm building for a tutorial. Well, simply put, it took me years and several tries to get a very close (about 99%) TOS Connie in trueSpace. I don't want to spend that time on the ship in LW, I want to get it done in one shot. I have several years' worth of ships to rebuild or convert in LW and probably a few new things to do, so no redoing ships that I've already done in LW until that's all done.

The Engineering hull is forthcoming. I've just about ran out of excuses to not start work on it, though don't expect a speedy update. There are a lot of steps, it's likely to take a few days, and I'm not going to stop to render everything as I go.

Tralfaz

The upper hull is looking much better now. Keep up the good work.

Al

evil_genius_180

Thanks a lot.

Doomsponge

Well, it's already better than mine was, heh.Never could work out how to do the deck 2/3 bulge.