the latest image looks good but does not seem to have enough greebles. i am not sure if it is "correct" but it certainly looks nice.
Yes, well i'm just going for the hull shape, then i'm gonna be pasting greebles all over it. I've been prepping the panel shapes with splines and they're ready to conform to the hull when I get the shape right, but I don't want to redo a bunch of work.
Hmmm not many replies about the body shape, oh well! I got the crazy greebly big on the neck done, I wonder what it's supposed to be. Looks like some big turret...or radiator. It's cool looking though.
Been working on odds and ends, and trying to rejoin the main hull together. I've reworked the shape a bit but I'm still not sure if it's correct or not, it's a surprisingly hard piece to recreate. What do you guys think? Needs more work?
It's getting there, it's definitely a tough shape to get that's for sure. It's one of the hardest things I've ever made.
Gonna have lots of free time at night next week so I'm hoping to crank out most of the modeling on the rest of this beast. Definitely one of the hardest things I've modeled in my career! I'm gonna post a screenshot of the bounding box when I'm done...you know there are a lot of parts when you can tell the silhouette of a model by the bounding boxes...:p
REALLY nice work japetus! Someone said that thing on the top of the neck was some kind of grappler hook apparatus. I have no idea. The back is really looking amazing! Sort of fun to hear you say it is the hardest thing you have ever modeled. There is so much detail on that ship...
Worked on the crazy greebles near the intakes on the hull. Took a while to do, thankfully the other side is pretty similar with not too many changes. Mid way through the cat decided I wasn't paying enough attention to her and stood on my battery backup shutoff button and my comp went down. Thankfully I had 5 minute autobacks enabled! Didn't lose too much work but she definitely got the time-out for a bit.
Very cool! Which 3d program are you using? Have you made your own greebles library or do you make everything as you go along. Any techniques?
I'm using 3ds Max and I make my greebles as I go mostly (with as much duplication as I can). I haven't made enough similar models to really have any sort of greeble library so I make them by hand as quick as I can, lots of drawing out splines subdivision surfaces and using as many primitives as I can to build up the detail quick.
Worked on more bits on the hull, extruded the panels I had had sitting around as splines and fit them to the hull. Also made the gold corner piece at the leading corner of the hull. Also placed some panels on the bottom side of the nacelles. It's hard to see underneath there so I had to fudge them a bit, but i'm pretty happy.
jrhottel: I'm not the best texture artist in the world, and hope to have gotten better at weathering and panels after this project is done, but basically what I will do is to planar map as much as I can. So for instance I'd probably make 2 maps for the top of the hull, one for the base and one for the panels above, just so I don't have to line up everything so much. For the spherical shaped front torpedo bay I unwrapped that main part and then planar mapped the panels and kind of just placed them in convenient arears around the same texture map. After I get done placing all the decals I'll start layering dirt and panel lines on top and blend it all together. I try to use simple mapping procedures like planar, box, or Flatten and then move,rotate and scale into place on the texture map. Hope that makes sense!
Thanks, let me ask another way. You have the basic hull. You make a greeb, say a cylinder. Do you attach it to the hull, so it's a element of the hull editable poly? Do you actually work every greeb into the mesh? If so the UV is pretty straight forward but wow that looks like allot of work.
Thanks, let me ask another way. You have the basic hull. You make a greeb, say a cylinder. Do you attach it to the hull, so it's a element of the hull editable poly? Do you actually work every greeb into the mesh? If so the UV is pretty straight forward but wow that looks like allot of work.
Ha, no I don't attach them and work them into the mesh! That would be a nightmare! They basically just lay on top of the hull. I use a lot of the AutoGrid option so that things are lined up pretty much from the start. Otherwise it'd take even longer to create things on the world plane and then move them into position. I also use a lot of vertex and face snapes to draw panels at the correct angle. I'll post a screenshot of my wireframe so you can see. Of course it all depends on what I'm modeling, but for the most part it's just placing object upon object.
The engine greebles were annoyingly crazy. Got one done and with some minor additions to the left one, these will be done! Woohoo! Been putting this part off as well. Getting so close...
Also got some paneling done on the top of the shuttlebay...more will be done with bump mapping later.
Thinking of transparency mapping a lot of the brass panels. Still deciding on that one. Either way lots of work, but mapping seems like it'd be faster.
Thanks, Japetus! I work almost entirely in world view. Occasionally, I've used snap to face and Autogrid. I'll be using them much more. Thanks.
Another seemingly little known thing you can do in Max is create your own custom grid to build meshes on which can be super handy when you have things that need to be at a certain angle. It's under Helpers > Grid. Annoyingly you have to "enable" it using Tools > Grids and Snaps > Activate Grid Object.
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First things first dude - you have to get the basic shape right before you go throwing greebs all over it. This is a WIP thread after all....
Yes, well i'm just going for the hull shape, then i'm gonna be pasting greebles all over it. I've been prepping the panel shapes with splines and they're ready to conform to the hull when I get the shape right, but I don't want to redo a bunch of work.
It's getting there, it's definitely a tough shape to get that's for sure. It's one of the hardest things I've ever made.
LOL.....awesome....just wait till the greebles on those engines are done!
I'm using 3ds Max and I make my greebles as I go mostly (with as much duplication as I can). I haven't made enough similar models to really have any sort of greeble library so I make them by hand as quick as I can, lots of drawing out splines subdivision surfaces and using as many primitives as I can to build up the detail quick.
jrhottel: I'm not the best texture artist in the world, and hope to have gotten better at weathering and panels after this project is done, but basically what I will do is to planar map as much as I can. So for instance I'd probably make 2 maps for the top of the hull, one for the base and one for the panels above, just so I don't have to line up everything so much. For the spherical shaped front torpedo bay I unwrapped that main part and then planar mapped the panels and kind of just placed them in convenient arears around the same texture map. After I get done placing all the decals I'll start layering dirt and panel lines on top and blend it all together. I try to use simple mapping procedures like planar, box, or Flatten and then move,rotate and scale into place on the texture map. Hope that makes sense!
Ha, no I don't attach them and work them into the mesh! That would be a nightmare! They basically just lay on top of the hull. I use a lot of the AutoGrid option so that things are lined up pretty much from the start. Otherwise it'd take even longer to create things on the world plane and then move them into position. I also use a lot of vertex and face snapes to draw panels at the correct angle. I'll post a screenshot of my wireframe so you can see. Of course it all depends on what I'm modeling, but for the most part it's just placing object upon object.
Also got some paneling done on the top of the shuttlebay...more will be done with bump mapping later.
Thinking of transparency mapping a lot of the brass panels. Still deciding on that one. Either way lots of work, but mapping seems like it'd be faster.
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What what?
Am not!
AutoGrid:
and a custom grid object: