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
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Could be it goes through a turnover maneuver, like my Honorverse ships do.
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.
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lovely work, and recycling greebles from your own models is never cheating.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
No worries about sense of scale with this one.
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