Thread will contain original designs and work for various stories I have outlined or written over the years. Some are redesigns of old work others are clean slate replacements.
Decided to post this progress here after thinking over a thread here about inactivity and that what better way than to post content.
As this is first post for this project I guess some of the early work should be summarized here.
Love it - the ship has beautiful overall lines as well as excellent details.
I'd consider removing the structure extruding from the rear - or maybe fattening it up. Right now it looks too thin to me to balance the rest of the ship in a pleasing way.
Your sketch suggests a metallic surface to me, something shinier than the average Trek ship.
I also have two questions for you:
1) Can you post a render with the same camera angle as your sketch? I think the ship's lines look great in that sketch - I'd like to see how well your mesh matches them.
2) What hardware/software do you use to make sketches like that? I'm considering Wacom graphics tablets and the new iPads with stylus support. Do you have any advice on this?
Well I thought I answered the question posted above but 3yrs late go wacom with paint tool SAI or Clip studio. If you have a GPU and cpu with enough power corel painter or whomever owns it now. Dunno where the old reply went.
Started blocking out the 3d model today. Clearly I had not worked out the rear end well and am considering other changes. I am also using bits of the old model as stand ins. (mostly grav engines and the obs deck tower.) ATM I am unhappy with the overall feel as it is a lot like the other ship in looks and feel. It just looks like the same races ship with different FTL drives tacked on. I might just abandon them and figure something else out.
As for the grav drive and other sublight drives I have not fully decided on the look. The planetary sublight units are just flared sticks atm lol. You do not want to be using gravity sublight drives in a system or near stations or other ships.
Also some things are a bit off scale too such as the cut out and the ball weapons. It needs to be made larger and that means redoing bits so I put it off for now. Probably using a plane with the image mapped would have helped but max SUCKS for doing detail maps in viewport as they are all scaled down to something gross like 512 or 1024. Quite useless for working off of I can do a high rez mapping but that lags max horribly like.005fps, move a vert and I have to wait 4min for it to move. Oddly the ball cannons can almost face forward anf fire so least the ship has directional fire coverage with the main weaponry besides torpedos/missiles out the front end.
Lots of work ahead to work out funky shapes and angles. Anything wonk in the modeling is just due to it being a quick mock up and me not wanting to invest time to model things that req too much work and would cause a lot of rebuilding to change.
Stuff mostly from last night, new conning tower and gubbins. Spent way too much time on that glow dome as it is ugly so that will be replaced. Though I dunno what it is or would be so maybe itll become something else. Again large parts are subdiv atm so there is detail yet to come.
Delayed from working on this by a everything and the kitchen sink cold. Ugh. Anyhow engine bits new forms and shapes and rebuilding of some of the rough shapes. Time to start working them in vs fooling around with rough proportions.
More butt images and placing of all the lateral thrusters and retroish drives. I will likely replace the drive elements for something omre than a rounded rectangle and grooves and glow bits.
Wow your detail is great!:thumb:
your work is some of the best I've seen here!:o
Ranks, top 10 artist!:p
Ship design is unusual but I'm sure its going to grow on me.
You Artwork skill however FANTASTIC!:thumb:
Love to see more!:D
Bit of a slow progress. Mostly today it was collapsing and redoing shapes. I got the most visible changes on the conning tower thing as I collapsed and optimized the super and tower objects allowing me to settle in some of the details and start modeling in stuff too.
Posts
I'd consider removing the structure extruding from the rear - or maybe fattening it up. Right now it looks too thin to me to balance the rest of the ship in a pleasing way.
Your sketch suggests a metallic surface to me, something shinier than the average Trek ship.
I also have two questions for you:
1) Can you post a render with the same camera angle as your sketch? I think the ship's lines look great in that sketch - I'd like to see how well your mesh matches them.
2) What hardware/software do you use to make sketches like that? I'm considering Wacom graphics tablets and the new iPads with stylus support. Do you have any advice on this?
Started blocking out the 3d model today. Clearly I had not worked out the rear end well and am considering other changes. I am also using bits of the old model as stand ins. (mostly grav engines and the obs deck tower.) ATM I am unhappy with the overall feel as it is a lot like the other ship in looks and feel. It just looks like the same races ship with different FTL drives tacked on. I might just abandon them and figure something else out.
As for the grav drive and other sublight drives I have not fully decided on the look. The planetary sublight units are just flared sticks atm lol. You do not want to be using gravity sublight drives in a system or near stations or other ships.
Also some things are a bit off scale too such as the cut out and the ball weapons. It needs to be made larger and that means redoing bits so I put it off for now. Probably using a plane with the image mapped would have helped but max SUCKS for doing detail maps in viewport as they are all scaled down to something gross like 512 or 1024. Quite useless for working off of I can do a high rez mapping but that lags max horribly like.005fps, move a vert and I have to wait 4min for it to move. Oddly the ball cannons can almost face forward anf fire so least the ship has directional fire coverage with the main weaponry besides torpedos/missiles out the front end.
Lots of work ahead to work out funky shapes and angles. Anything wonk in the modeling is just due to it being a quick mock up and me not wanting to invest time to model things that req too much work and would cause a lot of rebuilding to change.
BTW 2120ft long. (646m)
your work is some of the best I've seen here!:o
Ranks, top 10 artist!:p
Ship design is unusual but I'm sure its going to grow on me.
You Artwork skill however FANTASTIC!:thumb:
Love to see more!:D
Why am I thinking of Space Battleship Yamato when I see these.