Took a break from 3d for a bit. Not planned but ehhhh lol I was suppose to go back to the other project but decided to give the pancake nacelles another go. It is all loose rough out in sub div and I really only have the bussard area in focus atm. Not sure how I will block in the rear ends of the nacelles.
I see that alpha clipping issue is back, not to mention odd alpha drop in the struts. (bleeding text) It only happens with the background img so dunno. Blame my cats? but they do nto walk on keyboards so might just need to restart the app. OK found the bleed issue but still lost to the clipping with the BG. Maybe it was there all along (well in regard to these reflective materials) and I never caught it but, shrug.
Definitely taking a break from something has a way of changing directions on something.
Aft bits least as they sit for now as one unit. Plan is to chop it up like the onimaru nacelles. Also ignore that lower strut, all of the early issues was something wrong with that object. Did the old attach it to another new object and it is back to rendering properly. Dunno what setting or what possible corruption there was but eh. Makes me question how much of the rest of this model might be suffering this crap as well.
I like the direction the design of the nacelle is taking. Your modelling is always so precise, it's a standard I'm trying to shoot for myself, so I always appreciate updates to this thread.
Precise? lol I mostly fudge everything as I go. Rest is just eyeballing it.
Update on bits and bobs, and a rounded main hull for the nacelles. Very subtle exp with the renderer that seems to kick corners on it's own but old habit to round all sharp edges so I still do it. This part might sit as subdiv while I mull out the end point of the warp grill. Cannot decide to have it round or square it out (like it is now)
and oooof these render times full ship image I left overnight 3.1 hrs.
and oooof these render times full ship image I left overnight 3.1 hrs.
Ouch. CUDA rendering with either a GTX 1660 Super or RTX 3060 (depends which computer I'm using) has me spoiled. Even with advanced materials, glowy bits and cast light, if a WIP render takes more than a couple minutes for 1080p, I get antsy. If it was 3 hours, I'd definitely have to either do that overnight like you did or while I was at work.
yeah and gpu for vray is a separate entity and limited least with the ver I am working with so nope not shifting over but the 4k stuff really blows up render times it seems that or some drop down got borked with me attempting to scroll a menu and the mouse is too close to some drop down menu and it scrambles the truncated test menu to something it shouldn't be and isnt easily seen vray has a lot of menus that say col... and every option starts the same. Or col..nly So far degrading settings do not seem to do anything so it is mterials I have to downgrade to some extent. I do worry if there is not more MR taint or other strangeness elsewhere in the mesh that is not helping at all.
It is like that clipping on the struts some how there was some additional thing in the editable poly menu that was never there and I had never seen it in the past, but it was assigned to it and was causing that screw up. Only noticed it cause I had to dig into a old archive to get the subdiv maes of that strut to redo the width and match the upper strut (why they were different to begin with **shrug)
anyhow some fat long renders, note the text (sigh) guess nvidia AI noise thing does this. Only happens when I let a render complete. I usually kill them when they are "good enuf"
oops missed a file. The pointless junk that is prolly not helping render times as it is behind that glass. . . heh
OH YEAH all the moaning distracted me, the updates are a lot of rounding of parts and all that junk in the bussard chamber. I also as eluded to changed out the lower struts and then realigned all the nacelle junk to be better centered in the strut connections. Eariler I am not sure if it was clear or not but the nacelles were offset by a foot or so too far outwards. Dunno how that happened likely using a bad reference object as I do the nacelles in halfs then mirror the one to the other side of the ship so like a double mirror thing. So it gets kinda messy when you are not properly centered from the start. DOUH.
It sounds like you have too many render options and not that many seem to make a whole lot of difference on your render times. I feel you there. I loaded up Lightwave a while back to take a look at some of my meshes. I tried a render and then I remembered all of the options menus I have to wade through to try and get a decent looking render without artifacts but that also doesn't take a long time to render. I struggled with it for a while then I finally gave up and wound up exporting the ship to a format that Blender could import.
I think vray is more of a this is the renderer as is, and here are some tuning tools. I'm used to MR where I can control the shot particles and then use a bias to blend them (remove the grain or chunks) Then some fine grain tools for tuning bounce etc.
What has me thinking it is something to do with imported objects is other scenes do not seem to be as intensive. But it could just be more bussard warp grill parts to calculate. Or maybe I still have some single sided windows on the mesh or, uh, I could go on and on hahahah.
Too much technical BS and not enough modeling. All made worse by my increasing inability to focus on any one thing anymore.
Some renders to test interactions and a overall to allow me to look at it to decide how I want to do thing with the rest of the nacelle.
OK I think I have gotten all the glass. . . . lol not that you can see it at all heh. Also eliminated some lighting gizmos I had in some rooms and used objects with lum materials instead. If anything it fixes the distorted views inside the rooms.
Also a test of the warp coils behind the simple grids. (need to model in the ribs and that will affect things some as well.
changed my mind on the transparency on the grills I had it set with a translucency that does eat up time on render so I just went for a refract blur or rather lack of gloss on the refraction.
Mostly collapsing of subdiv for detail passes. Been sic as hell this last week went to bed on Fri and didn't really wake up till tues. . . oops. Spent a lot of time undoing rounding on objects that just did not meld well with hard modeling next to them so they will get manual chamfers. Mostly along the aft edge of the cowling and that plating aft of the bussards. So with that there is the slow integration of the smaller details.
Love that you're always staying true to the essence of TNG models while evolving them into your own style, like here with the translucent area above the warp coils that's bronze or copper in its off state.
Really fighting the rear end on these nacelles. Heh. Placement of aft markers (gonna be dumping these as I forgot the registry number is way past these designs so all the right of ways and other "lights" gotta get replaced.
held off posting to render out the RCS. Matched them scale wise to the ones on the ship. Having to reproduce something modeled who knows how many yrs ago.
eugh maybe a bit too large even though I modeled off the saucer ones lol. sigh. they might stay too big.
Love that you're always staying true to the essence of TNG models while evolving them into your own style, like here with the translucent area above the warp coils that's bronze or copper in its off state.
sadly that gold is just dumped onto it for faster rendering, the blue translucent adds like 1 to 3 hrs to renders.
It really does feel that way sometimes when trying wrangle the shapes into something that works, doesn't it? For what it's worth, this is looking brilliant, although I agree with your assessment of the nacelle RCS seeming a little too big.
Love that you're always staying true to the essence of TNG models while evolving them into your own style
This. I sometimes feel that canon ships don't necessarily pay homage to what came before with the designs. Great examples are recent Trek ships, particularly Discovery. Totally dismissing what came before in favor of doing your own thing, then shoehorning in an explanation is certainly a way to do things, but not necessarily the best way. However, MKF manages to stay fresh and in his own style while still paying homage to what came before. This ship looks like something you could easily drop into the Enterprise-E era and it would fit right in.
Love that you're always staying true to the essence of TNG models while evolving them into your own style
This. I sometimes feel that canon ships don't necessarily pay homage to what came before with the designs. Great examples are recent Trek ships, particularly Discovery. Totally dismissing what came before in favor of doing your own thing, then shoehorning in an explanation is certainly a way to do things, but not necessarily the best way. However, MKF manages to stay fresh and in his own style while still paying homage to what came before. This ship looks like something you could easily drop into the Enterprise-E era and it would fit right in.
Most of all the trek post 2010 seems to have done this. I mean there is homage to past design flow but in such a jarring way it makes little to no sense at all. That Titan-A is a good example. Just too many shapes lifted right off TOS/TNG with no or little influence of time between them. While the originating design is grand, it fit the timeline in a TMP era not post TNG. (AdmrialBuck's original scratch build)
In some ways I see too much effort to place homage without looking at design flow or following a thematic design over time. Good example are TOS, TMP, TNG era markings. You just will not see TOS decals on a TNG era ship. TMP was a bit unique due to set reuse etc but it still happened over a period of a decade or more.
As much as I hated the 09 enterprise I still found things to filch pinch and borrow in the design. The new cbs stuff. . . . .
I keep thinking maybe these designs will grow on us over time like the Defiant or other "then" new stuff from the 90s did. . . but I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. I find myself looking more at interior set design over anything else in these shows now especially SNW.
Posts
I see that alpha clipping issue is back, not to mention odd alpha drop in the struts. (bleeding text) It only happens with the background img so dunno. Blame my cats? but they do nto walk on keyboards so might just need to restart the app. OK found the bleed issue but still lost to the clipping with the BG. Maybe it was there all along (well in regard to these reflective materials) and I never caught it but, shrug.
Aft bits least as they sit for now as one unit. Plan is to chop it up like the onimaru nacelles. Also ignore that lower strut, all of the early issues was something wrong with that object. Did the old attach it to another new object and it is back to rendering properly. Dunno what setting or what possible corruption there was but eh. Makes me question how much of the rest of this model might be suffering this crap as well.
Update on bits and bobs, and a rounded main hull for the nacelles. Very subtle exp with the renderer that seems to kick corners on it's own but old habit to round all sharp edges so I still do it. This part might sit as subdiv while I mull out the end point of the warp grill. Cannot decide to have it round or square it out (like it is now)
and oooof these render times full ship image I left overnight 3.1 hrs.
Ouch. CUDA rendering with either a GTX 1660 Super or RTX 3060 (depends which computer I'm using) has me spoiled. Even with advanced materials, glowy bits and cast light, if a WIP render takes more than a couple minutes for 1080p, I get antsy. If it was 3 hours, I'd definitely have to either do that overnight like you did or while I was at work.
It is like that clipping on the struts some how there was some additional thing in the editable poly menu that was never there and I had never seen it in the past, but it was assigned to it and was causing that screw up. Only noticed it cause I had to dig into a old archive to get the subdiv maes of that strut to redo the width and match the upper strut (why they were different to begin with **shrug)
anyhow some fat long renders, note the text (sigh) guess nvidia AI noise thing does this. Only happens when I let a render complete. I usually kill them when they are "good enuf"
oops missed a file. The pointless junk that is prolly not helping render times as it is behind that glass. . . heh
OH YEAH all the moaning distracted me, the updates are a lot of rounding of parts and all that junk in the bussard chamber. I also as eluded to changed out the lower struts and then realigned all the nacelle junk to be better centered in the strut connections. Eariler I am not sure if it was clear or not but the nacelles were offset by a foot or so too far outwards. Dunno how that happened likely using a bad reference object as I do the nacelles in halfs then mirror the one to the other side of the ship so like a double mirror thing. So it gets kinda messy when you are not properly centered from the start. DOUH.
It sounds like you have too many render options and not that many seem to make a whole lot of difference on your render times. I feel you there. I loaded up Lightwave a while back to take a look at some of my meshes. I tried a render and then I remembered all of the options menus I have to wade through to try and get a decent looking render without artifacts but that also doesn't take a long time to render. I struggled with it for a while then I finally gave up and wound up exporting the ship to a format that Blender could import.
What has me thinking it is something to do with imported objects is other scenes do not seem to be as intensive. But it could just be more bussard warp grill parts to calculate. Or maybe I still have some single sided windows on the mesh or, uh, I could go on and on hahahah.
Too much technical BS and not enough modeling. All made worse by my increasing inability to focus on any one thing anymore.
Some renders to test interactions and a overall to allow me to look at it to decide how I want to do thing with the rest of the nacelle.
Also a test of the warp coils behind the simple grids. (need to model in the ribs and that will affect things some as well.
That would look good flipped upside down and on the ventral surface of an Excelsior type fantail—for a stair-step look.
Update is mostly just planning out patterns on the nacelles. Also how I wanna break them up.
Still symmetrical top to bottom. Likely going to dump the old tooth joints that were on the strut areas in earlier renders.
held off posting to render out the RCS. Matched them scale wise to the ones on the ship. Having to reproduce something modeled who knows how many yrs ago.
eugh maybe a bit too large even though I modeled off the saucer ones lol. sigh. they might stay too big.
sadly that gold is just dumped onto it for faster rendering, the blue translucent adds like 1 to 3 hrs to renders.
It really does feel that way sometimes when trying wrangle the shapes into something that works, doesn't it? For what it's worth, this is looking brilliant, although I agree with your assessment of the nacelle RCS seeming a little too big.
Keep the updates coming!
This. I sometimes feel that canon ships don't necessarily pay homage to what came before with the designs. Great examples are recent Trek ships, particularly Discovery. Totally dismissing what came before in favor of doing your own thing, then shoehorning in an explanation is certainly a way to do things, but not necessarily the best way. However, MKF manages to stay fresh and in his own style while still paying homage to what came before. This ship looks like something you could easily drop into the Enterprise-E era and it would fit right in.
Most of all the trek post 2010 seems to have done this. I mean there is homage to past design flow but in such a jarring way it makes little to no sense at all. That Titan-A is a good example. Just too many shapes lifted right off TOS/TNG with no or little influence of time between them. While the originating design is grand, it fit the timeline in a TMP era not post TNG. (AdmrialBuck's original scratch build)
In some ways I see too much effort to place homage without looking at design flow or following a thematic design over time. Good example are TOS, TMP, TNG era markings. You just will not see TOS decals on a TNG era ship. TMP was a bit unique due to set reuse etc but it still happened over a period of a decade or more.
As much as I hated the 09 enterprise I still found things to filch pinch and borrow in the design. The new cbs stuff. . . . .
I keep thinking maybe these designs will grow on us over time like the Defiant or other "then" new stuff from the 90s did. . . but I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. I find myself looking more at interior set design over anything else in these shows now especially SNW.