3DFinally made progress on learning hull textures

Captainjerky

Hey all-

I've posted pics here before of the starship I've made for reference to some writing I'm doing. I was really proud of the ship's design and layout, but couldn't get satisfied with the hull textures. I left it alone for a while and finally came back to it after reading many more tutorials on texturing in Sketchup with Twilight Render. Basically, instead of doing multiple layers in the program itself like Blender seems to be able to do, all the prep needs to be done before you apply the image maps in Sketchup. I took the image I wanted to use for the hull plating and had to save several versions of it (including one in gray scale). Then, in Twilight I applied the original image as a texture, with radiance/reflection maps and bump maps all derived from those alternate versions of the original. Suffice it to say, if I'm not happy with the way it turns out, I'd have to alter the original image, resave it, and texture the whole damn thing all over again, panel by panel. Yech. But in any case, here's a few versions of the newly-textured hull.
I've also included a few renders of a bridge-level conference room, maybe also serving as an Admiral's flag Bridge.
A few more are available at the link below which goes to my blog where I've hosted a few other renders of vehicles from my universe.
Any suggestions/comments welcome, as always, and if you want to know why something ended up the way it did I can probably make up a real as well as in-story response!



http://rekroom.wordpress.com/images-and-models/avengers-bridge/