3DCJB-94 3D and what not

CJB-94

Hello there,

I'm a 3D modeller, renderer and sometimes productive member of society. You may have seen some of my stuff under the name KillaBC or Conner Bentley (Me). In my professional life I am a junior artist at a visualisation company, in my spare time I've helped some mods out and things surrounding that.

Now onto the topic, here is my completed mesh of Bill Krause's excellent USS Sentinel which will be a part of the Star Trek Infinities mod for Stellaris. Because of this it's only just shy of 20,000 polygons and will be mapped to two 2048 textures. All the pesky window modelling will be relegated to bump mapping.

Starscream

Looks nice and clean, can't wait to see it textured! :thumb:

Vortex5972

Yo Killa. Welcome to Scfi-meshes.

Nice to see the Sentinel being done in 3D. Looking forward to seeing the progress.

evil_genius_180

That's really cool. I'm amazed it's under 20k polygons. I mean, I can see some segmentation, but it looks really smooth overall.

CJB-94

Cheers chaps, i'll have some WIP texture shots later. On the modelling front I mostly concentrated on chamfering obvious hard edges and keeping segmentation to a minimum. It is visible though it's not enough to make you recoil in horror circa '99. I also compromised what could be done with bump mapping and what could be modelled in. Deflector detail stayed whilst shuttle bay doors could be bumped in.

CJB-94

And here we are some textures, still need to add a few more details but the saucer is nearly complete. I'm trying to capture the clean TOS aesthetic with a little bit details so it doesn't look completely flat.

evil_genius_180

Looking great. Are those darker gray rectangular things escape pod hatches?

CJB-94

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

Looking great. Are those darker gray rectangular things escape pod hatches?

No idea they're on the original model so I stuck them on there too.

Arsene Lupin

Ooh, I really like it. I haven't heard of Star Trek Infinities, but I love Stellaris, so I can't wait to play with it. But I do wonder if I'll be able to--it looks waaaaay more detailed than the fairly low-poly models Stellaris uses.

Random aside, this is *very* similar in overall composition to a ship I recently finished. I designed a kinda-sorta proto-Excelsior, with basically the exact same arrangement and at about the same scale (unless the saucer is more than 1 deck thick?). Lore-wise I envisioned it as a refit of a TOS-era ship, built with TMP-era tech. I only modeled the "refit" version, and wanted to do an "original" version, but couldn't quite figure it out. And I think that original, TOS-era version might look very similar to this.

Here are the orthos, if you're curious:
[Starship] Salamander refit-class Orthographics.jpg

Starship

Welcome aboard Conner! Good to see you here.
Good work!

@Arsene: Good ship. Download done!

CJB-94

@Arsene rather interesting design. Always like the Excelsior style deflector.

Not much progress as work got in the way but it's something.

CJB-94

I've changed up the textures a bit, whilst the colours were accurate to the original filming model it didn't look/feel like a TOS ship and even with quite low lighting it blew out quite a lot of the detail. Here's what I have the moment.

evil_genius_180

I like that. It definitely has a more authentic TOS feel to it.

Arsene Lupin

Definitely. It's got the panel lines that are more at home in TMP-era designs, but they're subtle enough that the hull still feels super smooth like a TOS-era ship.

How'd you create the "interior" effect w/ the viewports? It almost looks like there are proper rooms inside. I know the actual physical models had film cells with photos from the shooting sets to create the illusion of a 3D interior... did you do something similar? I almost expect to see the fuzzy gray silhouette of a person walking from one end to the other. (Those were always my favorite kinds of sfx shots)

homerpalooza67

Nice!

CJB-94

Arsene Lupin wrote: »

How'd you create the "interior" effect w/ the viewports?

It's just a texture of an office block window altered and coloured.

You can all now view it in 3D here: https://sketchfab.com/models/ba778452bdd34232a16d54d6778c27a5

CJB-94

After seeing Rekkert's Buenos Aires Class bridge I thought what better wat to complement it with a 3d model of the ship? He did after all build the bridges to my Leander class starship.

I will be taking some liberties with the original design mist notably the neck and the deflector area will be getting a rework. Everything else will stay as is on the original design.

The image below is only a rough idea model on where to go with it, I like it and I'll probably build the final mesh in that design.

Rekkert

Huh, despite reading this thread a few times I never realized that you were... well... you. I definitively have to pay more attention when I read.

I like what you have so far. I'll miss the oval deflector but the shape you used complements the shape of the hull better.

Really eager to see what your take on this design.

publiusr

Some information about bridge modules in TOS that may help you in other work

http://federationreference.prophpbb.com/topic1560.html

CJB-94

Well it's been a couple of months since I last posted due to work being horrendously busy.

At the moment the Buenos Aires is on hold because I've been 'drafted' into a helping a friend of mine shore up his TLE line up. Which is going to be the Rigel class, a very elusive ship in Trek lore as it has been mentioned a couple of times but never seen. I have made a Rigel before but it was based of a design by Suricata and looked a little too much like an Ambassador.

This version I've envisioned as a stepping stone to the W359 fleet but firmly in the Ambassadors design lineage.

I'm not super happy with the engineering hull and may remodel that to be a bit more sleek.

Rekkert

I really like what you have here. The neck is a highlight, clearly a middle ground between Enterprises C and D.

I'm not that fond of that mustache on the deflector though. Maybe making it less prominent might help?

CJB-94

Yeah, the lip was waaaay too thick. So after a morning of remodelling it from scratch I've finally cracked it. Looking much smoother now.

1.jpg

CJB-94

I'm pretty much happy with the mesh as it is now. As like most of my models it's for games, so more details are to come with bump maps etc.

What's interesting as the ship has developed in how it looks like an Ambassador from certain angles then nothing like it in others. I'd say that's mission accomplished.

Schimpfy

This is a great bridge in design from the Ambassador- to Galaxy-class. Nice work. :thumb:

Rekkert

I really like how the modeling turned out, and looking forward to see what you do with the textures!

Vortex5972

I almost wish that this was the Ambassador class. Only thing that sticks out to me is the bridge not being centred on the saucer. Great work on it.

CJB-94

Cheers chaps, I've been working on the textures when I can. I've also made a way to easily swap out registries using opacity maps and a bit of mesh so I can create variants if I want.

So here'a quick peek.

Material Test.jpg

CJB-94

I've pretty much finished the Rigel, I might do another Detail pass on her later to see if I've missed anything.

Orthos: http://i.imgur.com/Uspnhqo.jpg

Vortex5972

That's one hell of a nice ship.

CJB-94

Well after losing my job my 3D stuff has been put on the back burner for a bit. Now that a job is on the horizon I've manged to find some time to do something a little bit different.

I call it the Vanguard Class Star Cruiser. I've worked on it a bit more since these images were taken but the general shape is the same. I haven't got the length down yet though she's in the range of around 900m.

It's also giving me a great opportunity to test out a new script i've bought which is proving a god send to add all the greeble detail directly into the mesh without booleaning. All I've had to do is create a library of what bits I want to stick on.

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evil_genius_180

That's a really cool design, great work so far.

Good luck with the prospective job, I hope it works out for you.