›

Greetings!

Welcome to Scifi-Meshes.com! Click one of these buttons to join in on the fun.

Sign In Register

Quick Links

advanced shapes - deridex hull?

hhhhhhhhhh0 Posts: 0Member
edited March 2007 in Technical Questions and Answers #1
Hallo,
its probably one of the most difficult ship shapes and thereby a good training object and certainly interesting for others: the romulan deridex warbird, im ok at general modelling but i still have problems with such very complex shapes, ive checked some other modelers meshes; most of them flatted a sphere and cut the edges, the result is acceptable but still not very precise and not really practical for further modification (edge smoothing!!),
i also considered splinecaging but i always get endless problems with the crossing lines and max not accepting certain "nodes" for no reason

what would be your approach in 3ds max to do the basic shape (and the later detailing esp. the edgesmoothing)?

thanks in advance, hhhhh (lazy me, should get a proper name sometime ^^)
Post edited by hhhhh on

Posts

  • count23count23361 Posts: 781Member
    #2
    Teh common misconception with the D'Deridex is that it's actually one large shape, the warbird is actual a dual-wing design. When it was originally built, it was connected together by the two nacelles and the neck, but each piece was actually built seperately.

    A lot of modellers i've seen try to tackle this, try to do both wings at once and bridge them together in one go, when in actuality, the should be modelled seperately and combined afterwards.

    Splinecaging is probably the best way to go, with subd/nurbs as an alternate route.
    Formerly Nadesico.

    Current Projects:
    Ambassador Class
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9803 Posts: 5,327Member
    #3
    Go to google and search for SUB-D tutorial Max This should help. As well as look for tuts on poly editing. Or the use of the Editable Poly modifier. And as with any shape like that consider the flow of the polies over the shape (hull) Once you achive the use of these using basic primitives will be only for a rough form or a start to your final mesh. For the ship you refer to Id model the top bottom and Head seprately. Just like the ERTL model in a way >_> Then later on you can attach the parts to create a single object mesh or leave the parts seprate (usualy easier to UVW map it in parts)
    Good luck.

    MKF
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • Mr. ExtrudeMr. Extrude0 Posts: 0Member
    #4
    <- got name and avatar (my first model lol)

    thankyou madkoifish, so you suggest the normal approach over editable poly, most meshes i found did everything in little pieces but i want to do as big chunks as possible (so that its seamless), the term "sub-d" is an effective key indeed, strange that i hardly encountered it so far

    lol nadesico now that you say it, indeed, and if you look at the original model they actually covered the seam of the wings with greeble stuff top, bottom and even back under the shuttle ramp, that ll make it easy

    but one more thing: is there any trick to do the "birdwing-chasing" on top and bottom? another tricky thing on the deridex, damn this thing is like the boss stage of ship-modeling ^^
  • count23count23361 Posts: 781Member
    #5
    Simplest method would be to find a bottom view photo and "trace" out the shapes so you can stencil them onto the finished hull pieces. They're just simple bevels once you get the shapes right.
    Formerly Nadesico.

    Current Projects:
    Ambassador Class
  • MadKoiFishMadKoiFish9803 Posts: 5,327Member
    #6
    follow the link in my sig and have a look at my panel tut that in its form is the basics of what nandesico suggests. Im not suggesting you build in a million small peices just comparmentalise certian parts. IE upper half, lower half, neck parts head and nacels. (in regards to the romulan ship) One can detach heavly detailed parts to work seprately then return and attach and weld then back in later. I did such with both of my FED ships. (Balmung, Onimaru) The benift to this too is once the mesh details in you can hide parts of the ship to keep viewpor performance up. Nothing drags a project down faster than laggy viewports. EXP when cutting faces.

    Only thing I see as a issue with this particular design would be getting the overall shape right. IE to get the curves in and not end up with segmentation but not such a heavy mesh that the basic form is enough to drag the viewports down.
    Each day we draw closer to the end.
  • Mr. ExtrudeMr. Extrude0 Posts: 0Member
    #7
    yeah the overall shape is the core problem, its pretty dynamic and all the essential shapes are very exponated, but i have another model frozen and opaque, that helps, im splinecaging right now, no problems yet, thanks for the tips so far :)
Sign In or Register to comment.