3DNew cruiser model

skynet3020

After scrapping a few designs I decided this one was worth working on further. So far just the basic hull with engines and the major weapons are in place. There's nothing yet to convey the scale, but windows will help with that. Detailing will commence next.
p12_initial_fore_port.jpg

P12_composite.jpg

McC

I like it! Looks mean.

Knight26

Aggressive looking ship, not seeing any means of slowing down though.

evil_genius_180

That's really cool. Great design. I like the colors too.

MaxxRush

Knight26 wrote: »

Aggressive looking ship, not seeing any means of slowing down though.

Could be it goes through a turnover maneuver, like my Honorverse ships do.

spacefighter

part of me thinks narn(babylon 5) (because of the colours). it's got some rather nice and menacing features.

Aresius

Also firth thought about the Narn.... Nice idea... Just 2 things I don't really like/think that fit into the design. The engine pods on the aft wings. They somehow disrupt the otherwise flowing lines.

skynet3020

I was also unsure about the engine pods protruding back there. Your comment reinforces my desire to remove them. I'll need to find something else to do with that part of the ship - either leaving it flat or having some kind of raised area. The engines in the back don't seem quite right either - perhaps having a few be slightly bigger will work better.

spacefighter

if you like the pods, leave them in. "all beauty has some element of strangeness to it"(i don't remember who first made that quote but it's quite true). i think you should maintain some sort of pods in that position however you change the shape of those pods individually. in the bow and stern views they give a good break on the otherwise simple silhouette.

Aresius

Maybe a less blocky pod will do the trick indeed....

skynet3020

I filled in the details on the "head" section. I'm cheating a bit because I'm reusing some greeble sets from my last model - which is in a different style.
p12_head_dorsal.jpg
p12_head_ventral.jpg

I'll get to the engine pods eventually. I'm guessing I'll better integrate them into the hull and use smaller engines there. That should still break up the forward/rear profiles but not clash with the lines so much.

Aresius

Holy crap, now the size of that monster comes to show! Impressive work on the details!

McC

Oh my! That's outstanding!

evil_genius_180

Awesome work on the details. :thumb:

spacefighter

i'm guessing this is a villain's ship. i don't know if you have any plans of a narrative involving it yet but i would like to know what the hero says when he first confronts it...

lovely work, and recycling greebles from your own models is never cheating.

skynet3020

There's nothing friendly about this one... I always imagined a force of ruthless, aggressive, telepathically controlled Pakleds bred in large numbers to do their masters' bidding.
I'd like to do an animated film of sorts with these models but to be realistic it will take forever because last time I did this it took forever with me doing everything.
As for the greebles - I would like to have used more round shapes, pipes, and the like on this but I'm afraid the mesh would get too complex for what I'm targeting here. The squarish ones I use before and are sprinkling on now are much lighter on the polygon count.

evil_genius_180

Lower poly greebles are definitely a good idea for medium to long distance shots, but you may want to keep the fancier ones for close ups.

spacefighter

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

Lower poly greebles are definitely a good idea for medium to long distance shots, but you may want to keep the fancier ones for close ups.

i recognise what you are discussing there. one thing that often happens is some parts of your ship get higher poly detail levels than other regions(in my case the cockpit often gets details as small as 5 mm modelled where parts of the hull might not get anything below 3cm) so you end up with a model where if your camera takes specific paths around it when zooming in you can maintain a VISUALLY consistent detail level in the final render.

skynet3020

For optimizing poly count at any fixed distance it's great to have a uniform impact from each poly (not just size, but effect on profile and shadow, etc...) but people like to get in close to interesting sections, as you wrote. I also think it's good to have some areas of concentrated detail separated by areas that are relatively flat - the contrast tends to draw the eyes toward the detailed areas which can use more mesh detail because of the sparse detail in between. With this model I have a higher percentage of detailed areas compared to my previous one - I'm not sure whether it'll work or if it'll end up being a boring mess.

Here are a couple closeups of the area that I finished this week, the upper half of the "neck" area. This is closer than I'm expecting it to be seen from but it shows the low-poly greebles, complete with sharp, non-beveled corners.
p12_neck_port.jpg

p12_lower_fore_port3.jpg

Next I'll work on the underside of the forward hull which is mostly flat and will have a lower detail density. Perhaps I'll have time for the hangar area this week too.

evil_genius_180

That's looking awesome. I never have the patience to do that level of greebling.

McC

Wow! That's a ton of greeblework. Kudos for having that much patience.

Aresius

wow, that's impressive!

publiusr

I have always wanted to see a secondary hull for a huge federation starship with that cut out along its spine and that level of greebles--except with not one, not three as on the Franz Joseph dreadnaught--but a whole cluster of dish antennas surrounding a huge one with the level of detail you see on deep space/VLA type dishes.

skynet3020

The shape of the lower hull is very similar to The typical Federation secondary hull, except with a turret instead of a navigational deflector. Frankly I think the deflector is a more interesting and functional design element but I didn't want this to look too much like a Federation ship.

The lower portion of the neck (engineering hull if you will) is done. The hangar area, on the aft of this section under the "battleaxe blade" part of the ship is also filled in. I went with a slightly higher detail resolution here anticipating hangar closeups.

Overview, looking forward on starboard side:
p12_hangar_area.jpg

Hangar area from starboard:
p12_hangar_starbord.jpg

Lower mid cutout, from starboard:
p12_center_cutout_starbord.jpg

Lower fore cutout, from starboard:
p12_fore_cutout_starbord.jpg

Next I will work on filling in the remaining large greeble areas, including the side trenches. It will be a repetitive task for sure. I still didn't deal with the engine pods - I'll likely deal with that near the end when I'm filling in the largely flat upper and lower aft hulls.

evil_genius_180

That's looking awesome. I love all of the greebles and the hangers.

spacefighter

this is looking great but i think the area near those hangars is (a word i thought i'd never have to say) over-greebled. the is awesome but that first image in the row of ones you have uploaded shows something a little visually unpleasant. the grey parts around the hangar have too much on them, not that a lot of detail is bad but those parts look like the greebles were placed on purely to look complex. the best greebles have a function, even if it's an obscure and implausible function, as long as the designer knows what it is. the repetition on that area of the ship is a little too high and somehow the layout is annoying to the eye, i'm sorry i can't give a more specific description of that. detailed as it is i don't think that area needs so much going on to look at, it's a bit distracting and "looks like deliberate greebling". in the side image some of those greebles are obscured so the area doesn't look so packed and the other parts of the ship show a more reasonable greeble density. hopefully a little bit of careful rearrangement and thinning can make those areas look like fascinating industrial systems rather than unfortunate targets of a "greeble shotgun". the large scale features are coming on well and i rather like the large scale curves of the hull, those red plated bits still look great. your picture of the "lower fore cutout" shows an example of greebling which better than near the hangars, all the main greebles(the pipes) are going from and to a clear feature(the gun turret) so they could easily be imagined as carrying coolant between it and the rest of the ship or pumping hydrogen gas in to fuel some sort of fusion reactor in the turret, the large block supporting the turret can be interpreted as a high strength structure keeping the turret attached to the very heart of the ship's structure, the little lines on it could be radiators(albeit tiny ones) for regulating the gun's temperature.

skynet3020

Over greebled? Are you out of your mind?
Seriously, I think this is good feedback. I was hurrying through that hangar section trying to make the best of the weekend time and the stuff there doesn't have very much thought put into it.

The area aft of the hangars is easy to improve - I can put in some cargo / launch doors there along with some tractor beam emitters and related infrastructure which will give it a less dense but functional look. The boxes containing the upper two hangars are a bit harder to deal with though. In reality there wouldn't be much there, but I think that would be boring. A couple tractor beam emitters won't be enough to fill that section. Perhaps a couple more control rooms would help.

For now it's off to greeble-shotgunning some more parts. I'll revisit the hangar as part of the polishing work I do at the end, once I had some time to think about it and see some inspirations.

spacefighter

greeble shotgunning now, then tidying and polishing later works fine. it also gives you the satisfaction that your completed model has a slightly lower file size that you were expecting before the tidying. one or two extra control room like structures could look good but not every square micrometre must be filled with stuff, although its a lot better to have areas slightly over-greebled than severely under-greebled. it's amazing work nonetheless.

skynet3020

Another week of greebling. The ventral side is more than halfway finished now.
p12_lower_halfway_done.jpg

The Main "wingtip" guns and surrounding sea of greebles are finished. This area would be a good place to put the reverse engines if I ever get to it.
p12_wingtio_cannon2.jpg

The trenches along the side show a lot of repetition - I wasn't patient enough to customize all the junk in there. For now I want to fill in the whole model and consider revisiting parts to make them more unique later. I'm not sure what should go in this area though - perhaps the broadside guns I removed and related infrastructure, but the firing arcs are crappy from inside of there.
p12_side_trench.jpg

The aft wings have some detailing on the underside.
p12_rudders.jpg

Next it's time to tackle that blocky engine section.

McC

Geeeeeze!

No worries about sense of scale with this one.

Aresius

Lovely work. The details are most impressive.