No real update just some bowl renders and adjustments to those rear brackets on the nacelles. What I am looking at today is the head. As a ortho top down view shows the balance seems a bit off. The viewport view of it seems to emphasize it more than the render. I am thinking maybe narrowing it a bit or just scaling the mass down a bit should help. Then again it could just be me.
Changes to head bots and some attempts to work up the bottom of the ship and maybe work in a shuttle bay. Latter is unlikely, unless it is a much smaller shuttle than the one I am using as a template shuttle. Also wanting some girth down here and not something that flows with the neck root like what I had there. I am sorta keeping that valley in the middle in the hopes I can mount a turret in that forward bulkhead where the tubing goes into the ship. No matter what the aft arcs would be obstructed.
A bit blocky atm but I think it sorta works time to start rounding the stuff off and figuring where to add curvature and how. Tempted to mount a cannon turret like on one of the ENT ships had. The ENT bop had it but I think they reused it on another ship. Been a while lol.
Here is another solution with just simple bulges dealing with the lower hull. It lacks any of the ribbing and possible plates (like the nacelles) Though both examples req a lot more work to refine. First one gives me those large flat surfaces seen on much of the Klingon ships of this layout. I can just possibly claim the flats on image A as shuttle bays. I doubt though either will be any sort of shuttle bay. Figure these wont have the in out access of a federation ship. All cargo is transported by modules or by airlock connected ships, or even better transporter.
Keep in mind all that stuff forward of these bits is all rough too.
Think I am going with the original work. Added a dummy cannon. It clears the nacelles but not the head and of course wings, but this is to be used for strafing attacks where the forward guns and aft weapons cannot cover. IE same use as it was with the ENT BOP. Excuse could be the small disruptor turrets would have less coverage if used. And well they would as you would need multiples to cover what this does. I will however have some sort of smaller turret across the ships hull like the Ktinga.
Anyhow the entire turret is temporary and does not reflect the final object. Heck I might opt for a single barrel or over under arrangement, dunno yet.
Well the ship officially has a butthole. I also changed up that underside crud again. I think this one is a keeper. Bit of an oops though as some smoothing groups are not set right so ignore the odd artifacts in the center. Got some badly turned edges too stupid max always triangulates those in the worst possible directions.
not much progress as I spent the afternoon buffing out flat paint. bleah.
Not much work just a few hours work on new engine pods and stuff inside those shoulder guns. Maybe some other things here and there that I have forgotten about.
er, ok. I was going to show renders of the head in the last stages of roughing in but then I got tired of waiting on the renders and started collapsing and adjusting all the subdiv objects to phase them in to the first detail pass.
Including a scale render next to my connie that needs adjustments. (all the lum are overblown.)
Some panels on 2 bits of the hull. I might junk those slots with the green crap in. Have to get my panel mojo back in flow heh. Still debating how I want things to flow on the hull Some bits I would like to do a more sunburst pattern on but so far much of the hull just does not lend itself to it. I want to avoid a load of small panels and keep them all a bit in scale with each other.
Great fun will be cutting crap on that wart thing and the deck below it. Though the bridge wart might be left mostly as a solid to infer it was say foamed metal shell with internal layers of hull and support built into it. dunno.
Oh boy am I sick of turning hidden edges. . . . . that and finding them turned the wrong way as max is prone to choose the wrong way 90% of the time. And as I have said many times to make things worse max since 2010 has decided to make it a nightmare to do this procedure by removing the dashed line effect and make it so random bits of the mesh wont display the hidden edges at all. -_-. I think I whine about this every time I do plating. hah.
Anyhow some stage 2 plates and wee detail bits.
I have argued about increasing the samples on the hull to eliminate some of that "noise" that seems to obliterate some of the detail. Not to mention doing some basic mapping and applying the hull surfacing I had on the old cruiser. Wondering if I am being to conservative with the plating.
Also getting a bit distracted with the idea of reproducing this.
as the one in the show sort of lacked that vertical feel the drawing has. EXP in the neck.
Well restarted the windows as I could not justify the patch bodge to cover that poorly chosen panel split nor did I like the split panels against the window frames. So instead I inset a section for the window frames themselves. I had planned to do asymmetric but it is just faintly so. shrug. I might colour the inner window frame panel dark to create a visual inset. Currently the inner panel is a bit short compared to the full height panels.
That glittery crap I think is just a too low sample rate reflection/light bounce off the walls. I will probably put some garbage in there later and run a flat material in there. I am also considering making some rooms red lit too, using a filter vs color balance. I will soon have to decide how I will deal with those braces on the turret. MMMMM
Loads of messing about and all I got to show for it is this neck joint thingy. Just couldn't decide how I wanted it to look. I think this is how it will stay with additional detail later on. Oh, I guess there are the panels adjoining it too. Forgot about those. Also noticing I forgot about the damned neck intruding on that part so uh, some of the panels go into it. I will have to fix that. PEH.
Just some sub panels and material changes and tests. Ignore that blue plate it was just to see how it rendered out next to the tan. (getting a bit green due to the reflection colors) I really do need to look at the render set up and compare it to the old Cruiser scene and the TOS CONNIE to see what is up with the lum and selfilum.
color on this one is a bit off. Well it is Klingonish green but I want to avoid green as a primary hull color.
Diff7use is still untouched, I have a map for tonal variation but it is disabled atm as it really shows off badly uvwed parts and some of them I do not want to deal with it in the stack as well as they would only be representative. For example the offers deck, those plates would need separate uvws to not look like it was wrapped in printed sticker.
Something that really bothers me with the canon studio models is scale. Windows are often just 10X4" ordeals. Here the small windows are cutters 3X1.5' so something like 28X12 when beveled in and extruded out with trim etc. A very small hole. So while this thing is huge in consideration to say a D7 (I think it being near the length of a connie has it a good 50m longer.) It visually appears much smaller as I am building to scale. All rooms are filled out spaces and all connecting parts are navigable. Only things like struts and nacelles are crawl through tiny tubes or a ride in corpse capsules. I am starting to question those large windows in that officers section though.
Ah heck heh the jambs are so thick and the windows so small at angles they obscure the view in! bah, I refuse to make the hull thinner than 8" or a jamb of 6" so itll have to do or I go with larger holes. Anyhow mostly just those windows rooms and a layer of plating on that wedge area. Dunno what these rooms would be, likely officers quarters as crew would reside in bunks like in those Klingon novels where they bunk in slots in a hall way. I think the NIVEN shorts for the EMPIRE OF MAN had something like this in the arcologies.
Oh yeah ignore the mesh error under that one plate on the outside windows saw it and too lazy to re-render. I also move the docking collar to that whatever flange thing for now. I dunno if I will keep it or not or use that space for something else. Figured a more enclosed area that isn't inside the structure might be more klingon so that if the port is damaged or forcefully detached it would not damage the core of the ship. Dunno lol. I just need to add something there shape wise to fill in the head as it felt like it was missing something.
You are so patient with making complex panels. I saw your tutorial about it and even if I can do it, I find it very tedious. I don't want to go there until I am better at other places. Great work on the head of your ship. Impressive is the word.
yup sadly there is no make panels button or anything. Could do it in displacement or bumps if you have to but those always leave tells or require even more tedious UVW unwrapping and flattening of the faces as simple uvw projectio0n wont cut it when you need to be fairly pixel perfect.
OOOhhh some BIG updates, not. Just some panels as I will have to stop here and decide what I will do with those airlocks and that ribbing stuff next to the nav lights.
AH, I forgot I did model up a hatchway/airlock to access the top area of the hull. That image also shows those old bracket plates that I am not sure if I will use on this ship or not. Be they in some shade of blue green or burgundy color. Likely these color palettes will appear on the ship in what form I am not sure yet. I am also debating on if I will add the Ktinga black head stripes. (in my case it likely would only be one with the windows above and below vs windows in the stripes). Or if I should go with the head window look that was on that eaves ENT Klingon concept.
Some changes to those docking things. I simplified the form and shape. Got a wa6ys to go but not sure if I will get much more done tonight. Triangle like polys would be a sort of bumper or repulsor emitter. The dock collar itself would extend past the hull rim for standard docking or to another ships "tube" or collar. This is a hard ring while the extend tube to allow forced docking via cutters and extending clamps is a wire cloth affair. Next to it is the control room. It can access the inner room/space via a hallway and airtight locks. The collar itself has a small airlock space that travels out but could only hold at most 4 Klingons intimately. The further spaces behind and to the side can be used as locks as well. More often they are registration ans clerical spaces for loading of crew/passengers or any light cargo. I might have been a bit to generous for the window size as it is only for visual inspection.
And yes ignore the badly turned edges, max yet again choose the wrong directions for them.
underside
overall of the head to show how the new shape affects it as a whole.
Mostly panels and working down that divider bulkhead thing. I do need to adjust the reflective colour on the shadow side of the hull material, that white highlight is too much.
Ended up having the bodge up the while underside of the head/wedge because of finding a flat area in the lower chin. As changes to the perimeter of the chin alters the interface all those slanted lower panels would not intersect properly. So I had to trim it all to the profile and redo the chamfers and whatnot. Due to those I lost all the notches that were on these inner edges of the panels. I do not think this will really be obvious or visible unless I render really close up into that area which is not practical for any image or animation.
Few other renders are of the new contours on the chin part. I also shortened it up ad it was starting to get out of proportion. I think it needs more rounding off in the lower profile. ATM it is just a bit to triangular.
Buncha plates. Really hate how max skews lateral lines on oblique angles. Loads of manual tweaks. Probably loads of faces that need turning.
A text of using soild glass and the related settings. The large windows are set to 5" thick. Sadly it really darkens the light transmission. I though, have not tweaked settings. I just wanted to see if it was worth the render hit. It seems to create a better surfacing on the glass vs the thin wall setting.
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A bit blocky atm but I think it sorta works time to start rounding the stuff off and figuring where to add curvature and how. Tempted to mount a cannon turret like on one of the ENT ships had. The ENT bop had it but I think they reused it on another ship. Been a while lol.
Here is another solution with just simple bulges dealing with the lower hull. It lacks any of the ribbing and possible plates (like the nacelles) Though both examples req a lot more work to refine. First one gives me those large flat surfaces seen on much of the Klingon ships of this layout. I can just possibly claim the flats on image A as shuttle bays. I doubt though either will be any sort of shuttle bay. Figure these wont have the in out access of a federation ship. All cargo is transported by modules or by airlock connected ships, or even better transporter.
Keep in mind all that stuff forward of these bits is all rough too.
Anyhow the entire turret is temporary and does not reflect the final object. Heck I might opt for a single barrel or over under arrangement, dunno yet.
not much progress as I spent the afternoon buffing out flat paint. bleah.
Including a scale render next to my connie that needs adjustments. (all the lum are overblown.)
Great fun will be cutting crap on that wart thing and the deck below it. Though the bridge wart might be left mostly as a solid to infer it was say foamed metal shell with internal layers of hull and support built into it. dunno.
Anyhow some stage 2 plates and wee detail bits.
I have argued about increasing the samples on the hull to eliminate some of that "noise" that seems to obliterate some of the detail. Not to mention doing some basic mapping and applying the hull surfacing I had on the old cruiser. Wondering if I am being to conservative with the plating.
Also getting a bit distracted with the idea of reproducing this.
as the one in the show sort of lacked that vertical feel the drawing has. EXP in the neck.
That glittery crap I think is just a too low sample rate reflection/light bounce off the walls. I will probably put some garbage in there later and run a flat material in there. I am also considering making some rooms red lit too, using a filter vs color balance. I will soon have to decide how I will deal with those braces on the turret. MMMMM
color on this one is a bit off. Well it is Klingonish green but I want to avoid green as a primary hull color.
Diff7use is still untouched, I have a map for tonal variation but it is disabled atm as it really shows off badly uvwed parts and some of them I do not want to deal with it in the stack as well as they would only be representative. For example the offers deck, those plates would need separate uvws to not look like it was wrapped in printed sticker.
Something that really bothers me with the canon studio models is scale. Windows are often just 10X4" ordeals. Here the small windows are cutters 3X1.5' so something like 28X12 when beveled in and extruded out with trim etc. A very small hole. So while this thing is huge in consideration to say a D7 (I think it being near the length of a connie has it a good 50m longer.) It visually appears much smaller as I am building to scale. All rooms are filled out spaces and all connecting parts are navigable. Only things like struts and nacelles are crawl through tiny tubes or a ride in corpse capsules. I am starting to question those large windows in that officers section though.
Ah heck heh the jambs are so thick and the windows so small at angles they obscure the view in! bah, I refuse to make the hull thinner than 8" or a jamb of 6" so itll have to do or I go with larger holes. Anyhow mostly just those windows rooms and a layer of plating on that wedge area. Dunno what these rooms would be, likely officers quarters as crew would reside in bunks like in those Klingon novels where they bunk in slots in a hall way. I think the NIVEN shorts for the EMPIRE OF MAN had something like this in the arcologies.
Oh yeah ignore the mesh error under that one plate on the outside windows saw it and too lazy to re-render. I also move the docking collar to that whatever flange thing for now. I dunno if I will keep it or not or use that space for something else. Figured a more enclosed area that isn't inside the structure might be more klingon so that if the port is damaged or forcefully detached it would not damage the core of the ship. Dunno lol. I just need to add something there shape wise to fill in the head as it felt like it was missing something.
AH, I forgot I did model up a hatchway/airlock to access the top area of the hull. That image also shows those old bracket plates that I am not sure if I will use on this ship or not. Be they in some shade of blue green or burgundy color. Likely these color palettes will appear on the ship in what form I am not sure yet. I am also debating on if I will add the Ktinga black head stripes. (in my case it likely would only be one with the windows above and below vs windows in the stripes). Or if I should go with the head window look that was on that eaves ENT Klingon concept.
And yes ignore the badly turned edges, max yet again choose the wrong directions for them.
underside
overall of the head to show how the new shape affects it as a whole.
And, a whole ship render for a general overview.
Few other renders are of the new contours on the chin part. I also shortened it up ad it was starting to get out of proportion. I think it needs more rounding off in the lower profile. ATM it is just a bit to triangular.
A text of using soild glass and the related settings. The large windows are set to 5" thick. Sadly it really darkens the light transmission. I though, have not tweaked settings. I just wanted to see if it was worth the render hit. It seems to create a better surfacing on the glass vs the thin wall setting.