3DIrishman's Sci-fi Blender Thread

[Irishman]

Hi guys. I suppose it makes sense to treat this as my introduction on scifimeshes.com, but IA’ve technically had a membership since 2009. IA’ve been one of those members whoA’s mostly lurked, and rarely popped up to offer encouragement or critique. (make that VERY rarely, I see in my post history less than a page! Oy.

In the past, IA’ve been mostly a 2D artist, using Illustrator for the most part, and IA’ve been prolific on TrekBBS, the old Flare board (barely hanging on now), the 602 Club board (now defunct), and the Federation Reference Series board. IA’ve always loved to draw, and have always seemed to have ideas knocking around in my head.

As far as my nerd cv goes, I am a sci-fi nut from way back, and cut my teeth on Star Trek TOS reruns in the 70s, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and any sci-fi from the 70s on would at least get one viewing from me, more if I liked it.

I bought the art of all the Star Wars movie books, Franz JosephA’s Tech Manual, Shane JohnsonA’s Mr. ScottA’s Guide to the Enterprise, etc, etc. , and like a lot of us, I found that the hardware resonates with me, especially spaceships.

So, I say all that to say this: IA’m VERY new to 3d modeling - as in 4 months new - but IA’ve finally found a 3D program thatA’s my price - free - and seems intuitive to me - itA’s Blender 3D, and IA’m driving myself to get good at it. This being the 21st century, and Youtube existing a a result, IA’ve found a metric crapton of tutorials online. My process has been to find a tutorial that solves an immediate creative problem IA’m having, implement it, tweak it, and move on to the next bit. I think itA’s just a result of how short a time IA’ve been at it, but IA’m now beginning to get to the point where IA’m learning better ways to do things that I only JUST kludged together a couple months ago. The same thing happened to me when I began getting more into 2D digital art back in the day, so that part of the process feels familiar.

Hopefully, you guys will be open to give me more than just polite encouragements. I'm just as open to focused critiques as well. I've definitely got such room for improvement.

[Irishman]

My art with the biggest positive reaction so far has been my take on the Pointer Class from the Spaceflight Chronology. ItA’s a Rick Sternbach original that I loved and wanted to give a post-Enterprise/Romulan War treatment. I took to it quite easily, evoking the saucer rim, shuttlecraft dropbay and sensor palettes of the NX-01, as well as the twin impulse engines of the Iceland Class ship from Enterprise. I took it on back in 2004-2005, and hereA’s a reminder of the original:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/Originalpointer.gif.html


Here is the final 2D data sheet I did back then:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/pointershadedfinal.gif.html?sort=3&o=54


Well, time goes on, and I got an opportunity to learn 3D while bringing both my own work and otherA’s work to life. ItA’s going to be painful and ugly, too. As an example, here is the first Blender spaceship render IA’ve posted online. ItA’s not even a complete spaceship. ItA’s the phase cannon from the Pointer Class. How rough is it? Well, I hadnA’t even learned to turn on smooth shading yet, so yeah.

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/Pointerprog1.png.html?sort=3&o=31

This is me beginning to learn colors and materials:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/Pointerupgradedcannon3.png.html?sort=3&o=26

Next, after finding Andrew PriceA’s Pro Lighting: Skies HDR (credit where credit is due):

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/Pointerupgradedcannon5.png.html?sort=3&o=8

And, most recently IA’ve done basic bridge dome and turbolift modeling:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/Pointerupgradedcannon5.png.html?sort=3&o=8

[Irishman]

Of course, as a Star Trek fan and an artist, I’ve got to try my hand at the TOS USS Enterprise, even with my negligible skills. I’m using the usual Casimiro and Shaw efforts, taking as few of my own liberties as possible, because I don’t think I can really do better than these gentlemen.

Here is my very first blocking in of the E-nil’s saucer and nacelle:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/TOStest2.png.html?sort=3&o=28

And, after adding the second nacelle:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/TOStest3.png.html?sort=3&o=27

And a straight-on shot:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/TOStest4.png.html?sort=3&o=25

After finding proportional editing and getting the non-pilot bridge dome and deck 3:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/TOStest5.png.html?sort=3&o=6

The straight-on shot with the bridge:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/TOStest6.png.html?sort=3&o=5

A from above and back showing the curvature of the deck 3:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/TOStest7.png.html?sort=3&o=4

Moving ever so slowly into the secondary hull, a far more complex geometry:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/TOStest10.png.html?sort=3&o=1

Getting the taper of the secondary hull is proving slow going (remember I’m learning as I go), so this angle is all you get until I am happy with the lines from all angles.

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/TOStest11.png.html?sort=3&o=0

Thoughts, so far?

Vortex5972

I believe I've seen you posting over at TrekBBS. (I don't have a membership there.) You seem to be doing great. It took me way more than 4 months to be able to get results that good.

[Irishman]

Vortex5972 wrote: »

I believe I've seen you posting over at TrekBBS. (I don't have a membership there.) You seem to be doing great. It took me way more than 4 months to be able to get results that good.

Thanks, Vortex! Your feedback is super welcome, honestly, thanks for participating in my little thread. Hopefully it will run a few pages, and I'll finish a few projects!

evil_genius_180

I remember your orthos from back in the day. It's great to see you back at it and in 3D now. You're off to a good start with those models. The secondary hull on the Enterprise is a royal pain, even for an experienced modeler. It took me many years and many versions to get it right. So, I'd suggest just keep plugging away at it.

Finding tutorials that solve your immediate issues as you go is definitely a great way to go. I did that when I was learning Lightwave and now that I've switched to Blender I'm doing it again. I find the information sticks in my brain better if I only use the tutorials to get me partly there and figure out the rest on my own.

McC

Yay, more Blender people!

There are bunch of tutorials I've written linked in my forum signature, if you're so inclined to take a gander at any of them.

As for feedback, my biggest would be: don't use photobucket! As an alternative, I suggest something like Imgur with an account set to "unlisted", so you can link to images but they won't be findable otherwise.

[Irishman]

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

I remember your orthos from back in the day. It's great to see you back at it and in 3D now. You're off to a good start with those models. The secondary hull on the Enterprise is a royal pain, even for an experienced modeler. It took me many years and many versions to get it right. So, I'd suggest just keep plugging away at it.

Finding tutorials that solve your immediate issues as you go is definitely a great way to go. I did that when I was learning Lightwave and now that I've switched to Blender I'm doing it again. I find the information sticks in my brain better if I only use the tutorials to get me partly there and figure out the rest on my own.

The more things change, eh? Thanks for the encouragement, man. It means a lot. As far as tutorials go, Ali Arango is great. Andrew Price is great. BornCG is great.

Hey, if you see me digging myself in a hole, feel free to shout "hey dumbass, you're digging yourself in a hole!" I really don't mind.

[Irishman]

McC wrote: »

Yay, more Blender people!

There are bunch of tutorials I've written linked in my forum signature, if you're so inclined to take a gander at any of them.

As for feedback, my biggest would be: don't use photobucket! As an alternative, I suggest something like Imgur with an account set to "unlisted", so you can link to images but they won't be findable otherwise.

Ryan,

Thanks so much for the introduction. I don't think we've met before. It's great to repair that mistake now.

Yes, your spaceship-specific tutorials on your site are incredible and I do imagine I'll begin using them as early as today.

In the meantime, I'm working on straightening out (literally) the secondary hull lines of my E-nil. I may post a render later today of what I've gotten done so far.

[Irishman]

I'm hitting a problem with the results I'm having with the secondary hull curve. It's too concave, especially on the top of the geometry. I'm using David Shaw's 2007 plans of the 1964 shooting model for the pilot. Also, you can see it a little in this screenshot how ribbed and ridgey it is due to the attempts I've made to taper it down to the shuttle bay in the back. (I've intentionally left the rear end alone, so no need to correct me there.

I've turned off matcaps to more readily demonstrate the problem.

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/Screen%20Shot%202015-10-03%20at%209.48.02%20AM.png.html?sort=3&o=0

Has this one gone too far to fix and should I start over? Any insight?

evil_genius_180

What steps did you use to make the secondary hull?

Yeah, Andrew Price has some great tutorials. He got me into Blender with his 747-400 and space ship tutorials. Since I wasn't completely new to 3D, I didn't finish them, but doing part of them helped me get a feel for the software and its tools. I've also watched a number of tuts from Blender Cookie on YouTube, as well as some stuff by other people. YouTube is a wonderful resource. When I was first starting out in 3D using TrueSpace in 2000 or 2001, that wasn't an option.

[Irishman]

I started with a cylinder that I extruded forward to the concentric housing for the deflector. It's all one object.

To get the taper, I turned on proportional editing and used it to move and scale the geometry. Somewhere along that line, the geometry began to develop the ridges you see in it.

evil_genius_180

I'd suggest using one of two methods, both of which have been successful for me.

Method 1: Start with a low polygon circle (24 sides or so.) Align that to the widest/tallest part of the secondary hull. Do a series of extrusions and scaling of verts to roughly get the shape you want. (large-ish extrusions) Don't do the deflector area just yet, focus on the main part of the section. Anyway, once you have the shape roughed out to your satisfaction, add a subdivision modifier. Get it as smooth as you want it by adding subdivisions. (for some reason, there are two settings, "View" and "Render," I have no idea why, but "View" seems to be the one that makes a difference. Still, I'd set them to the same value.) Once you have it as smooth as you want it, apply the subdivision modifier and then extrude the front to make the deflector housing. Note: if you don't apply the Sub D before extruding the deflector housing, it may not turn out the way you want it, but you can still fix it with a few loop cut and slide operations.

Method 2: Make a bezier curve. Align it to your blueprints and use it to trace the shape. (again, ignore the deflector housing for now) Extrude to add more points to the curve, both to better match the shape and to add more polygons. Once you have this shaped how you want it, convert it to a mesh. Then use the spin to make the circular shape of the hull. Once you've done that, extrude the deflector area. Now, this method has a disadvantage to method 1. That disadvantage being that, once you spin it, the top and bottom of the hull will have the same curvature. However, on Matt Jefferies' plans, the bottom has a different curve. So, that could be an issue if you want it to exactly match the plans.

Anyway, those are my suggestions. If you need visual aids to explain anything, don't be afraid to ask. I've got some stuff to do now, but I'll be on later. Also, one of the other Blender users can (I'm sure) help with that.

Vortex5972

^^ Method 1 is what I tend to go with.

As for the SubD, View is what you're working in, Render is what shows in the actual render. Therefore, you could be working in view with a setting of one, but have your render set to 3. Your render will look smoother, but you'll essentially be working with a lower polly mesh. Could be useful if you have a high polly mesh. I usually keep both at 3 and have no problem.

evil_genius_180

I could swear it looks no smoother when rendered with the render setting higher, but maybe that's just me.

Vortex5972

You'll notice it if you don't have your control loops/ edge creases in.

Samurai

Irishman, you are a blast from the past indeed. Good to see you back around, and congratulations on finding a new challenge to get your teeth into. It's great to see a learning journey like this on SFM.

Regarding feedback, I can't say I'm an expert in the kinds of shapes you're looking at for the secondary hull, however the advice above looks good- I'd suggest (time permitting) that you experiment with both methods to build your familiarity with the tools at hand. Your proportions look good to my eye, though you may want to consider being more generous with segments when working from primitives or extruding splines, as there are some angles where there shouldn't be (the saucer edges are what caught my eye).

Otherwise, keep working on it- looking forward to seeing your progress.

evil_genius_180

Samurai wrote: »

I'd suggest (time permitting) that you experiment with both methods to build your familiarity with the tools at hand.

I agree with this. It's always good to do that not only to build familiarity with the tools, but also to figure out what works best for you.

[Irishman]

I know this may be a bad word for some, but what about booleans?

:ducks:

evil_genius_180

Booleans is by no means a bad tool, but it does have some drawbacks. You usually have a bit of cleanup to do after using it. But, the one in Blender isn't as bad as some.

[Irishman]

Thanks for the great input, guys.

I think that, for now, I'll use Evil Genius' plan 1, with one exception. I'm going to separate and keep my concentric deflector housing to reuse. That was the most work, and I see no reason not to keep it. I am going to make another change that will probably help a lot. Last time, I made the hull undercut before having the rest of the secondary hull the way I wanted it. That was probably a mistake. So, you've got this nearly straight line (but not level) along the top surface, a compound curvature along the bottom surface, and a different compound curvature along the sides. Thank God for being able to constrain scaling and proportional smoothing on one or more axes!

[Irishman]

A quick update:

Been away doing dad stuff the past few days. Turns out that I was making things way harder with this secondary hull than I needed to, so here's an image to show what I made:

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/TOStest14.png.html?sort=3&o=0

The hull is a lot more of a straight angle than I thought previously. So, I got it positioned like I wanted, and applied a subsurf to it of 3 view/6 render.

The thing that's stopping me cold is the order in which to do certain operations or apply certain modifiers. I tried the boolean to make the undercut, which gave me weird geometry problems. None of the usual trouble-shooting I do helped (edge split, CTRL-N to recall normals, SHFT-e to pull out subd weirdness). So, I dropped the idea of using a boolean shape (which you see still rendered in this image). How to make that undercut in a precise way that won't create as many problems as it solves??

Insights?

Vortex5972

I use the knife tool on the undercut. Work one side and then mirror it and apply the mirror when done. Just make sure the mirror is at the top of the stack with clipping enabled, you shouldn't have any problems, then it's a case of manually filling in the faces. Not sure how anyone else here does it, though some probably do use booleans.

evil_genius_180

Booleans will work, but there's a lot of cleanup involved. Though, there will be with Knife Project too. I actually do exactly what Vortex5972 said. I cut it, delete what I don't want and fill in the faces manually. It seems like a lot of work, but it can be cleaner than just using a booleans to cut out the shape. There will still be some cleanup necessary, though. When I have time, I can whip up a quick example of what I mean by what you'll most likely want to cleanup and how I go about doing it.

[Irishman]

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

Booleans will work, but there's a lot of cleanup involved. Though, there will be with Knife Project too. I actually do exactly what Vortex5972 said. I cut it, delete what I don't want and fill in the faces manually. It seems like a lot of work, but it can be cleaner than just using a booleans to cut out the shape. There will still be some cleanup necessary, though. When I have time, I can whip up a quick example of what I mean by what you'll most likely want to cleanup and how I go about doing it.

That's an incredible and generous offer, man.

evil_genius_180

[Irishman] wrote: »

That's an incredible and generous offer, man.

No problem. This is actually a process I'm very familiar with even though I'm fairly new to Blender, because it's the same thing I used to do in Lightwave. Just so you know, it's going to be hours from now. I'm about to got to work here in a little bit and won't be home until around midnight. But, what I'm talking about isn't something that takes a lot of time to do for example purposes.

evil_genius_180

I was beat after work last night, so I never got around to doing this. However, I have some time before I go and do it again, so here's a quick example of what I'm talking about. For example purposes, I'm just going to use a simple tapered cylinder with some edge loops cut into it to simulate the back of the secondary hull. The first thing I want to do is cut a second cylinder out of it to create the undercut. My tool of choice to do this is the booleans modifier:


(click images to enlarge)

Now, after using booleans, you may get something like this:



This actually isn't a problem, because I want to delete everything that's highlighted anyway. I simply hit "Delete" and select "Faces" from the menu to get rid of that. Then I'm left with this:



Of course, this left behind some of these nasty looking smoothing errors:



Here's what causes this to happen. When you cut, your verts didn't line up between your objects, so you have some "extra" verts in the middle of the faces, which are making those ugly things appear:



What I do with those is select them as I have above and then hit "Delete" and select "Dissolve Vertices" from the menu. That gets rid of those, because we don't need them. However, there may still be some other issues that I'm going to address now. You'll also have things where you'll have a 5-sided face caused by the cut because of how the second cylinder cut across it, like so:



These may cause issues during rendering and they may not, but I personally like to just get rid of them. I do this like so. I select the two verts causing the 5-sided polyon:



Then I simply hit "Alt+M" to merge those. Then I'm left with a couple triangles and a quad, as opposed to a couple triangles and an ngon:



And, I'll go around and do that for all of those. While ngons will happen from time to time, it's best to get your mesh down to triangles and quads where possible. They render better. Another point of concern are these little triangles left behind. While they're not a massive issue, they can cause problems if you want to do any edge rounding (that's a different tutorial. ) So, I select them as such:



Again, I merge those to get rid of them. Then I'm left with what I think is nicer geometry there:



Is this necessary? Beats me. It's a personal preference of mine. As you model, you'll build preferences as to how you like to do things. You may even find a way you like better to clean up around booleans cuts than what I'm showing you that you like better, this is just my preferred method. Anyway, after you have that all cleaned up to your satisfaction, you'll be left with something like this:



OK, almost done here. To fill in the faces along the undercut, I'm simply going to select my edge verts along that cut:



You may notice I left the bottom two off, I'll get to those in a moment. Anywho, I extrude those along the X axis:



After that, I shrink those to the center. To do this, I have my 3D cursor dead center in the 3D space and I use that as my control. I hit "S" and then "X" to constrict it to the X axis and shrink it to 0.000:



I'm left with an opening at the bottom from those two verts I didn't have selected during the extrusion, so I select the (now) 4 verts and hit "F" to fill that in:



So, I'm left with this:



Of course, that's all ugly from the smoothing, but the edge split modifier makes it all nice and pretty:



So, that's it. It's not a difficult process, but it takes a bit of time. That took me about 40 minutes, including taking time to type and upload and post pictures. It will be quicker when you're doing it and, of course, repetition will increase your speed. As I said, I'm sure this isn't the only way to clean it up, it's just the way I personally do it. And, it works every time.

[Irishman]

Sorry for the delay in getting updates out.

I always seem to have trouble making booleans work right, and this time it's making me feel like an idiot.

Ugghhhh....

Wish me luck. Back to work.

evil_genius_180

Yeah, booleans can be a real pill sometimes, some more than others. I just about didn't use the one in Lightwave unless I had absolutely no other option. At least the one in Blender is better than that one.

[Irishman]

So, this is the problem I'm having now. I select the hull in Object Mode, link to the object I'm using to make the curve, then select Difference. When I apply it, it makes the undercut, but when I pull down the curved object, I saw a weird extra geometry added to the hull.

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Irishman/media/Screen%20Shot%202015-10-15%20at%208.16.14%20PM_1.png.html?sort=3&o=0

Any suggestions on what I can do to prevent this from happening again?

evil_genius_180

I don't know how to prevent it from happening. It's the same thing I had in this image:

https://evilgenius180.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/windowshot_2015-10-12_101032.png

The cylinder is attached to the hull part, even though I selected difference. It's one of those weird things that seems to happen with any booleans tool I've every used, in three different programs. I just delete the geometry I don't want and move on.