For the window placement, take a curve off your saucer mesh, then add a curve modifier to your window cutter and constrain it to that, that way you'll get perfect alignment all the way round. You'll never get it right eyeballing it. I have no idea how you do that in lightwave though, lol. Looking good though, window shape looks good too. Might be worth putting some horizontal planes in to act as deck guides, that'll give you a feel for where to put windows and make it look consistent, if you just stick windows in anywhere it might look a bit off in terms of how they relate to decks.
My decks have been planned out since the beginning of the build. I'm super anal about that with every ship I build.
Obviously, the ones above and below the ship's main habitable area aren't actual decks. The windows I cut already are skylights on deck 3.
I didn't eyeball the placement of the windows. I used a curve from my saucer and a tool called Rail Clone. It will clone any object along a curve:
Obviously, I deleted the ones I don't want. The only hand movement I did after that was to line them up better with the geometry, as some of them are somewhat less than ideally placed:
(note: this is just an example)
The hand movement was very minute and basically so that they wouldn't intersect verts in a bad way when I cut them.
Are there other ways of doing this? I'm sure there are. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to do it in Lightwave. However, this works. So, I'm doing it this way.
Ah I think what threw me off is the ones nearer the front are aligned to what would be the pivot poit of the curve, as opposed to the grid lines on the hull. The underside of the Galaxy are the same, the windows don't follow the grid lines. Yeah if you find a method that works its pointless messing around with other ways, just get a workflow that's comfortable.
edit; It's these ones that don't look right to me, I feel like the curve should intersect cleanly across the horizontal centerline of the windows.
Yeah, it's not a perfect method, but it works for what I need it to do. The first time I used the tool, it irked me that the windows didn't follow the curve as well as I'd liked, but I think it's just due to the extreme curve involved. The software does the best it can.
Also, one thing that's interesting to note is that the windows on Voyager don't all follow the curve either:
The CG model the created for the show is truly incredible, especially for 1994-ish. It was used from the beginning of the series for the opening credits and other shots. I'd imagine they improved it as they went on, but one cool thing about it is that it also kept that window layout. Obviously, the idea was for you to not know which model you were seeing.
And, on that note, I'm pretty tired. I think it's about time to get some food and watch some Voyager on Netflix.
I decided to take a break from modeling and do some texture work. I created some paneling for the upper saucer. This is pretty easy to do. I took my saucer from an earlier file, without grid lines or windows, etc, and I applied different materials to the geometry to come up with a panel pattern that exactly matches my hull shape. Then I rendered that with an orthographic camera and used planar projection to map it to the upper saucer. I also made the name part of the texture, rather than being modeled text.
I didn’t like the distribution of light and dark panels. It was too much light in one spot and dark in another. So, I swapped two of the colors around all over the map and I think it looks much better.
Soooo… I had this all ready to post earlier and I realized I had my windows on a bad line. Due to the curvature of the saucer, they wouldn’t have been effective on the deck they were on, they only could have been skylights for the deck below with unusually large rooms. That made no sense, so I changed them to farther up the curve and, thus, farther up the deck. Now they can be windows in quarters like the ones on the Enterprise-D that you saw over Picard and Troi’s beds (probably others too, but I definitely remember those two.) So, this works better. Though, if you’ve never removed window cuts and rebuilt geometry by hand, I don’t recommend it.
Aside from that, I also added some escape pod hatches. They’re the same type on a lot of TNG-era ships. 3x3m, 6 people per pod, and there are currently 31 of them. That means the ship can currently evacuate 186 people. Of course, there will be more pods later. To get those in place, I created a flat hatch shape and positioned it over my saucer. Then I used Rail Clone to create duplicates along the curvature of the saucer and the heat shrink to put them right against the hull. Then I just had to extrude them and then round the edges and that all worked great. They’re on the same line where I had those windows, but having pods there makes more sense as they can used the extra space for launch systems.
Aside from windows and pods, I added some transporter emitters and some things to make us go.
And, to make life more fun, the right button is going out in my mouse. It will randomly decide I’m not still pressing it anymore. I’ll have to see what I have laying around until I get around to replacing it. I have some “mobile” mice, but I generally don’t like using them because they’re smaller. But, if I must I will.
I think they both look really good but I'm partial to your new look
Thanks a lot. The beautiful part about the new one is that it uses no textures. So, I don't have to waste time making texture maps and messing around with UV mapping.
More stuff. And a name change. I got the name Sunstreaker from The Transformers. Sunstreaker is an Autobot who is vain and arrogant. He thinks he’s the best and lets everyone else know it. He also points out the shortcomings of others and doesn’t help others. Basically, he’s a d-bag. He’s a skilled warrior, which is why the Autobots put up with his attitude. Aside from being associated with a character who’s a d-bag, I don’t want to use a name from another franchise. So, I renamed the ship the USS Minerva. Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare. She’s not a violent battle craving psycho like God of War Mars, Minerva instead prefers to fight defensively. I feel that type of character fits the Federation a bit more than a sociopathic Autobot. Minerva’s Greek counterpart is Athena, which is what I was going to go with, but it’s used more frequently. I feel Minerva gets less use, so I went with that.
Posts
Obviously, the ones above and below the ship's main habitable area aren't actual decks. The windows I cut already are skylights on deck 3.
I didn't eyeball the placement of the windows. I used a curve from my saucer and a tool called Rail Clone. It will clone any object along a curve:
Obviously, I deleted the ones I don't want. The only hand movement I did after that was to line them up better with the geometry, as some of them are somewhat less than ideally placed:
(note: this is just an example)
The hand movement was very minute and basically so that they wouldn't intersect verts in a bad way when I cut them.
Are there other ways of doing this? I'm sure there are. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to do it in Lightwave. However, this works. So, I'm doing it this way.
edit; It's these ones that don't look right to me, I feel like the curve should intersect cleanly across the horizontal centerline of the windows.
Also, one thing that's interesting to note is that the windows on Voyager don't all follow the curve either:
The CG model the created for the show is truly incredible, especially for 1994-ish. It was used from the beginning of the series for the opening credits and other shots. I'd imagine they improved it as they went on, but one cool thing about it is that it also kept that window layout. Obviously, the idea was for you to not know which model you were seeing.
And, on that note, I'm pretty tired. I think it's about time to get some food and watch some Voyager on Netflix.
Nice to see you back at it.
Thanks.
Thanks.
Aside from that, I also added some escape pod hatches. They’re the same type on a lot of TNG-era ships. 3x3m, 6 people per pod, and there are currently 31 of them. That means the ship can currently evacuate 186 people. Of course, there will be more pods later. To get those in place, I created a flat hatch shape and positioned it over my saucer. Then I used Rail Clone to create duplicates along the curvature of the saucer and the heat shrink to put them right against the hull. Then I just had to extrude them and then round the edges and that all worked great. They’re on the same line where I had those windows, but having pods there makes more sense as they can used the extra space for launch systems.
Aside from windows and pods, I added some transporter emitters and some things to make us go.
And, to make life more fun, the right button is going out in my mouse. It will randomly decide I’m not still pressing it anymore. I’ll have to see what I have laying around until I get around to replacing it. I have some “mobile” mice, but I generally don’t like using them because they’re smaller. But, if I must I will.
Thanks a lot. The beautiful part about the new one is that it uses no textures. So, I don't have to waste time making texture maps and messing around with UV mapping.
Thanks.