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3DLearning Blender

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  • GestaltGestalt187 Posts: 166Member
    Evil_Genius_180,

    You are quite right and that is something I foresaw during construction. It's a byproduct of the way I am building the saucer section. I'm building it as an instance of wedges (16) and where panels differ I'm popping them out and either keeping them as instances or making them unique depending on the variation of the detail. Since that particular panel has the same detail across every other wedge, I left it in place knowing that the impulse/engineering construction would cover it.

    It's a technique I used when I built the first generation Constitution in Max and I'm pleased to say that I've been able to carry over the techniques to Blender with satisfactory results.
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    Yeah, it's not like it's that big a deal if it's covered up by the engine. I just thought I'd point it out, though I figured you knew, as you're likely working from blueprints and pictures. ;)

    It's always good when you can carry over techniques from one program to another, especially if it's a time saver technique, like that sounds like it is. What I like to do when I have paneling like that in Lightwave is to do one wedge and then use the radial array tool to clone it as many times as needed. Then, I just have to merge the points. :) It's better than doing the same group of panels 16 times.
  • Chris2005Chris2005675 Posts: 3,096Member
    Certainly picked up modeling faster than I have. lol.

    Looking great.
    AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
    Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 12GB
    1TB NVMe SSD, 2 x 1GB SATA SSD, 4TB external HDD
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    Windows 11 Pro
  • Hunter GHunter G1905 Posts: 543Member
    This is looking good!
    Gestalt wrote: »
    Evil_Genius_180,

    You are quite right and that is something I foresaw during construction. It's a byproduct of the way I am building the saucer section. I'm building it as an instance of wedges (16) and where panels differ I'm popping them out and either keeping them as instances or making them unique depending on the variation of the detail. Since that particular panel has the same detail across every other wedge, I left it in place knowing that the impulse/engineering construction would cover it.

    It's a technique I used when I built the first generation Constitution in Max and I'm pleased to say that I've been able to carry over the techniques to Blender with satisfactory results.

    That was the same technique I used when doing saucer grids! Glad to see others have the same ideas. I always thought my techniques to be odd, not just with saucer grids. But I figure if it works, it works!
  • GestaltGestalt187 Posts: 166Member
    Last update for the weekend (by default, only 2 min left before Monday where I am :-P )

    Saucer-Fore-106.png
    106697.png
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    So, I guess it's too late for another Weekend update by now. :lol:

    Everything is looking good.
  • McCMcC373 Posts: 704Member
    Looks good to me! :D

    Curious how your wires look; mind sharing them?
  • GestaltGestalt187 Posts: 166Member
    Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

    Chris2005,

    I wouldn't say I've picked up modeling in general very quickly. If my 3D hobby was a person born when I first started tinkering with POV-Ray on my 386 back in the days of mail-order shareware, it would be able to vote AND drink in all 50 states :D Unfortunately I have an annoying tendency to get absorbed into work and loose track of my hobby for years at a time. Getting into Blender has been one of the most challenging undertakings I've experienced with 3D to date. The degree of change to mindset and practice is on the order of when I moved from 3D Studio (DOS) to 3D Studio Max.

    Boy, this has me feeling older than my all-too-recent 40th birthday!

    McC,

    I'm all too happy to share. To facilitate I've collapsed my working parts into a single mesh. I tried using the wireframe modifier but I was not happy with the results. I'll definitely be revisiting that tool when I'm wrapping up the mesh!

    Instead I opted for screenshots with 'wire' and 'draw all edges' set to on. Let me know if there is a particular area you want to see up close. A pleasing but probably unhelpful render with the wireframe modifier is included below.

    Screenshot 2014-08-18 19.40.24.png

    Saucer-Fore-106-Wire01.jpg
    106707.png106708.jpg
  • McCMcC373 Posts: 704Member
    The OpenGL screenshot was actually all I was looking for; I've had quite a time wrestling with rendering wireframes. There's a trick to doing it in Cycles that's all shader based, but I tend to find the OpenGL screenshots are the clearest anyway.

    Thanks much! :D Your topology looks pretty solid to me.
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    Screenshots definitely work. I like the ones like the top one, where it's laid over the solid object. It makes things easier to distinguish than the see through wireframes.
  • GestaltGestalt187 Posts: 166Member
    The asymmetric windows on the aft of the saucer are finally complete. Next up are the port and starboard personnel gangway hatches and then I think I am ready to move on to the lower saucer. If my experience modeling the original Constitution in Max a few years ago is any indication, this part will be less pleasant than the upper portion due to the contoured hull and window placement.

    Ever onward!

    Saucer-Aft-118.png

    Edit 1: I just remembered that I still have the RCS to complete before the rim of the saucer is finished!

    Edit 2: Must be my night for revisions! Just realized that only the port side has a gangway so while I detest asymmetry there is at least a little less work to be done!
    106711.png
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    It looks good. Yeah, only one gangway. If you hadn't noticed that, I was going to point it out. :)
  • Vortex5972Vortex5972321 Posts: 1,202Member
    That is looking awesome!!
  • GestaltGestalt187 Posts: 166Member
    Slow going tonight. Extra hours at work and a series of unpleasant crashes from Blender (and always just before I would normally have made a new, incremental save!) sapped most of my evening. Not much progress to show but the weekend is almost upon us!

    Gangway-122.png

    Gangway-123.png
    106724.png106725.png
  • GestaltGestalt187 Posts: 166Member
    I forgot to mention that I am reasonably confident that the smoothing problems will clear up once I re-weld the meshes back to the rim. As it stands the gangway is a snippet of faces I cut from the rim. I'm saving cleanup like that for once I'm happy with the final mesh construction and before I start on the <shudder /> texturing.

    Screenshot 2014-08-21 22.49.54.png
    106726.png
  • McCMcC373 Posts: 704Member
    Yep, that's a more-or-less inevitable side-effect of splitting out part of the mesh.

    If you're not already doing it, I strongly advise making sure all of your faces are set to Smooth (UV/Shading tools tab in the 3D View) and that all of your objects have the Edge Split modifier at the bottom of the stack (i.e. last to be applied after all others). That'll leave your sharp edges crisp and your smooth edges nice and smooth! :)

    It all looks great!
  • GestaltGestalt187 Posts: 166Member
    Let the weekend begin! Finished the dorsal saucer running lights and the reaction control thrusters. Colors are all placeholders. I don't intend to do any real texturing until the entire model is completed.

    I'm saving the impulse drive and engineering dome as the last pieces of the saucer so next up is detailing the ventral saucer region. This process drove me to distraction the last time I modeled the original Constitution. It looks like the refit has a much more reasonable layout for windows but FAR more doors and panels!

    RCS-132.png

    Saucer-Fore-132.png
    106740.png106741.png
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    It looks good. You can thank Richard Taylor for the odd line patterns, he's the one who did that. ;)
  • GestaltGestalt187 Posts: 166Member
    Detailing for the lower saucer is done. Next stop the planetary sensor array!

    Saucer-Dorsal-Fore-154.png

    Please ignore the hard edge just after the lip of the rim. I've separated the mesh into a few pieces and that will be mitigated on final assembly.
    106744.png
  • jay-mojay-mo0 Posts: 0Member
    All these great blender threads. I've been wanting to set some time aside to give it ago, but I haven't decided where to start. How long did you fool around with blender before you started this model? By the way, your doing a fantastic job.
  • SchimpfySchimpfy396 Posts: 1,632Member
    Quite a good job going on here. Well done so far. :thumb:
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    It's looking awesome. :)
  • GestaltGestalt187 Posts: 166Member
    jay-mo wrote: »
    All these great blender threads. I've been wanting to set some time aside to give it ago, but I haven't decided where to start. How long did you fool around with blender before you started this model? By the way, your doing a fantastic job.

    I've been routinely downloading Blender for several years but could never stomach using it for more than a few minutes. The UI quirks would leave me frustrated and I'd retreat back to the warm, safe refuge of Max. It was obvious that Blender could do amazing things but it just wasn't 'clicking' for me. I'm a huge fan of the quad menu in Max and the lack of a proper right click menu makes it particularly hard for me to get started.

    I'm aware of the plugin script to add similar right click features but I'm trying to keep as much to the 'vanilla' Blender experience so I won't be hamstrung whenever a version update comes out. I'd hate to become dependent on features and then have to wait for the script maintainer to get around to updating the python script to support API changes.

    Earlier this year I picked up "Blender Master Class" and I decided to give it another go. By reading a procedural account of how a mesh was built, combined with excellent illustrations, really made a difference for my getting started. There are a lot of great tutorial videos on YouTube but I find that our growing dependence on screen capture/video instruction really leads to a poor learning experience. Seeing someone use Blender is frequently helpful but having a proper breakdown of the modeling/texturing/animating process is a much better learning tool from my experience.
  • TralfazTralfaz412 Posts: 846Member
    You are doing an outstanding job and look forward to seeing more.

    I tried Blender once and stopped as soon as I found out there was no option to give you a chance to save your work if you accidentally close the window. Just 'poof' and it's gone. I was told that not all operating systems provide the hook to provide that feature. My view on it is provide the option for operating systems that do provide the hook. Don't know if things have changed in newer versions of Blender though.
  • Vortex5972Vortex5972321 Posts: 1,202Member
    Tralfaz, the latest version has added a feature for that.
  • McCMcC373 Posts: 704Member
    Tralfaz wrote: »
    I tried Blender once and stopped as soon as I found out there was no option to give you a chance to save your work if you accidentally close the window. Just 'poof' and it's gone. I was told that not all operating systems provide the hook to provide that feature. My view on it is provide the option for operating systems that do provide the hook. Don't know if things have changed in newer versions of Blender though.

    There's both a "confirm-on-quit" option and a pretty excellent auto-save feature, both of which have saved my bacon more than a few times.
  • TralfazTralfaz412 Posts: 846Member
    Interesting. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Blender's website I go.
  • McCMcC373 Posts: 704Member
    Tralfaz wrote: »
    Interesting. Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Blender's website I go.

    Highly recommended training material. Not going through these first will almost certainly make your life more frustrating. ;)

    Blender 3D: Noob To Pro (Contains some slightly outdated stuff, pre-2.5 when Blender got a lot better, but continuously refined and updated and most of the lessons still apply.)

    My Blender tutorials, for once you've gone through the above.
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    One book you might want to avoid is Blender for Dummies. Insulting titles aside, the book isn't so well written, in my opinion. Instead of just showing you a tool and how it works, the author goes off on tangents talking about alternate ways to do something. That's good if you already have some grasp on the software and want to explore alternatives, but not so good if you just want to learn how to do something, in my opinion. Besides, it doesn't look like there's a version for anything newer than Blender 2.5 anyway.
  • evil_genius_180evil_genius_1804256 Posts: 11,034Member
    Tralfaz wrote: »
    You are doing an outstanding job and look forward to seeing more.

    I tried Blender once and stopped as soon as I found out there was no option to give you a chance to save your work if you accidentally close the window. Just 'poof' and it's gone. I was told that not all operating systems provide the hook to provide that feature. My view on it is provide the option for operating systems that do provide the hook. Don't know if things have changed in newer versions of Blender though.
    McC wrote: »
    There's both a "confirm-on-quit" option and a pretty excellent auto-save feature, both of which have saved my bacon more than a few times.

    Yeah, "Prompt Quit." Excellent feature. Unfortunately, Tralfaz is correct, it's not available in all operating systems. It's in the Windows version:

    blendersettings_windows.jpg?w=500

    It's not, however, in the GNU/Linux version:

    blendersettings_linux.jpg?w=500

    So, once again, Linux users get screwed. (though, we're used to it) I don't know why that feature isn't in the Linux version, but it's not. It's really odd, since other cross platform programs have that (IE: Inkscape, GIMP.) I have no idea what the Mac version has, because I don't have a Mac.

    However, both versions have the "Restore Previous Session" feature, which is a real bacon saver in the event of a crash or accidental closure. So, you're at least protected there.
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