Looking good, I gotta get off my but and do this too as my old slap together walls wont work well. But heh just been avoiding the pc for more than the planned break.
Not a great deal to report, I went back to the pre-subd freeze to modify the area where the lower part of the secondary hull meets the neck, i had the curve coming up way too 'high' before and it was going to interfere with a row of windows that are sat along there. I've brought it down and flatted it out a fair bit (to my eye it doesn't really bulge up much at all). This meant freezing out new geometry and then stitching it in to my existing model which was not fun. I then had to recut the area for the torpedo launcher and make a new panel for that as the curvature had changed slightly.
I also had a go at creating a slightly better bussard effect, bringing in some of the 'cloudy' effect we've sometimes seen. I also reduced the saturation on the room map as they were looking a bit too colourful before.
Next up I'll probably cut some windows in to the neck in strategic places so I can check the the geo is right (it's really hard to recreate what's on the studio model without windows for reference).
Ok so turned out that still wasn't quite right, so I ditched it all, tweaked it, and stitched the new geo back in, again having to recut the torpedo area. I think this is as close as I'll get it. I used the lower row of windows shrink wrapped on as a guide and then tweaked the curve so they sat exactly right...well, close.
I just read through this whole thread. I love the attention to detail, and how clean the model is! Also it's good to see you understand good lighting
Thanks a lot! I've been looking through your stuff too, love your concepts, I'm a big fan of the re-designed Galaxy, it's got a good visual language to it.
More secondary hull shenanigans. I've rebuilt, frozen, stitched in and then deleted this section about 6 times now. It turned out I had the row of windows a bit too low which was throwing everything else out. Once that was corrected that then adjusts where the torpedo launcher panel sits, so that's moved up a little bit too. The studio model handily has striped decks on the neck which makes lining things up a little bit easier, and I have also been using a large plane to run up and down the mesh, watching how it intersects to check the shape. I think I'm closer now, the secondary hull has become a bit taller and looks a bit 'fatter' now but I'm confident its closer than it was. This is something I need to really lock in before I go any further because once windows start going is that basically me committing, otherwise I'll lose all the work winding it back.
Revised geo and some windows cut in. Tbh from these renders it's very difficult to see what's changed, but that window row has moved up a bit, as well as the torpedo launcher panel, then the whole curve bought up slightly to meet it. I'll do some more windows but at this point I think that's as close as I'll get it.
Looks fantastic. I'm sure most of us have been there at one point or another, where you feel you've tweaked it as close as you could and you move forward.
That is very much the technique at work here. With the saucer I could just array your cutting objects around a curve and crack on more or less. With the neck nearly every window has to to be individually placed owing to the weird curvature. Fun it is not.
I made some quick videos to show the process for anyone that might be interested, might be useful to someone:
Vid 1 shows the positioning of the cutting objects. I've started with my windows arranged in the row via an array that's been frozen in. Then i just tweak them to get the flush with the hull. If you just project from a side view without slanting them then you'll end up with stretching and uneven window sizes.
Vid 2 shows the cutting. I use knife project once they're all position then tidy up the geo before extruding in. I then use the extruded in geo as the window glass which is seperated off in to its own object, and the 'frame' itself is deleted as the thickness comes from a solidify modifier.
Skip to about 30 seconds in, for some reason I couldn't interact with blender properly for a while after starting the recording.
Note: You see me use 'Separate & Clean', this is a custom function developed by @McC for me, which separates the selected geo like the normal blender function, but also strips all vertex groups, modifiers and materials from the separated geo too, just to make life a bit quicker.
Yup that step 1 is the thing. It will not just screw up the height width ratio or actual measurements but it warps the hell out of your rounded corners. And least in max is is best to cut the curved corners in vs chamfering them as that often causes a non planar poly. Though I have not tried in newer versions as over time this window or object cutting thing has been less of a issue. I remember when doing my ENT BOP back when the final season was airing cutting on a single curve was a near impossible task and avoid smoothing errors or non planar faces.
Sounds like blender can do more interesting things. Usually I have to stencil in the object cutters then build off that stencil. So window glass comes off the hull and rough cut to the openings and all the bevels insets inner jambs etc are all extruded or beveled off the actual cuts. More of that divergence in various packages thing. Probably why I find blender so confusing. >_>
Arr seat of your pants way, some times you get the best results that way.
gets you a lot of wedgies and crack burn too.
Those blasted docking doors on the dumbell station gave me kramps that night I was so wound up by having had to redo the same modeling steps over and over because it was not close enough.
Posts
That a vast improvement.
Messing about in photoshop earlier;
I also had a go at creating a slightly better bussard effect, bringing in some of the 'cloudy' effect we've sometimes seen. I also reduced the saturation on the room map as they were looking a bit too colourful before.
Next up I'll probably cut some windows in to the neck in strategic places so I can check the the geo is right (it's really hard to recreate what's on the studio model without windows for reference).
Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC 12GB
1TB NVMe SSD, 2 x 1GB SATA SSD, 4TB external HDD
32 GB RAM
Windows 11 Pro
Thanks man, always appreciate the kind words.
Thanks a lot! I've been looking through your stuff too, love your concepts, I'm a big fan of the re-designed Galaxy, it's got a good visual language to it.
Cheers
More secondary hull shenanigans. I've rebuilt, frozen, stitched in and then deleted this section about 6 times now. It turned out I had the row of windows a bit too low which was throwing everything else out. Once that was corrected that then adjusts where the torpedo launcher panel sits, so that's moved up a little bit too. The studio model handily has striped decks on the neck which makes lining things up a little bit easier, and I have also been using a large plane to run up and down the mesh, watching how it intersects to check the shape. I think I'm closer now, the secondary hull has become a bit taller and looks a bit 'fatter' now but I'm confident its closer than it was. This is something I need to really lock in before I go any further because once windows start going is that basically me committing, otherwise I'll lose all the work winding it back.
Revised geo and some windows cut in. Tbh from these renders it's very difficult to see what's changed, but that window row has moved up a bit, as well as the torpedo launcher panel, then the whole curve bought up slightly to meet it. I'll do some more windows but at this point I think that's as close as I'll get it.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqRhLEHgwgTKxsalM5YznYQ
Formerly furswift
As I said on Discord, though, great job. They look good.
Looking good.
Arr seat of your pants way, some times you get the best results that way.
Yeah it's hard to conceive of how the interior space would look tbh, I'll leave them dark
Yeah all modelling done in blender, texturing in Photoshop, thanks!
That is very much the technique at work here. With the saucer I could just array your cutting objects around a curve and crack on more or less. With the neck nearly every window has to to be individually placed owing to the weird curvature. Fun it is not.
Vid 1 shows the positioning of the cutting objects. I've started with my windows arranged in the row via an array that's been frozen in. Then i just tweak them to get the flush with the hull. If you just project from a side view without slanting them then you'll end up with stretching and uneven window sizes.
Vid 2 shows the cutting. I use knife project once they're all position then tidy up the geo before extruding in. I then use the extruded in geo as the window glass which is seperated off in to its own object, and the 'frame' itself is deleted as the thickness comes from a solidify modifier.
Skip to about 30 seconds in, for some reason I couldn't interact with blender properly for a while after starting the recording.
Note: You see me use 'Separate & Clean', this is a custom function developed by @McC for me, which separates the selected geo like the normal blender function, but also strips all vertex groups, modifiers and materials from the separated geo too, just to make life a bit quicker.
Sounds like blender can do more interesting things. Usually I have to stencil in the object cutters then build off that stencil. So window glass comes off the hull and rough cut to the openings and all the bevels insets inner jambs etc are all extruded or beveled off the actual cuts. More of that divergence in various packages thing. Probably why I find blender so confusing. >_>
gets you a lot of wedgies and crack burn too.
Those blasted docking doors on the dumbell station gave me kramps that night I was so wound up by having had to redo the same modeling steps over and over because it was not close enough.