I've been retired for a couple of years now and am always in search of something to do. I've been modelling for quite a few years now starting with Anim8tor, Animation Master then Cinema 4D. Well, for the umpteenth time, I thought I would give Blender a go again. And to help learn it, I was going to do scifieric's excellent Enterprise tutorial. Got quite a way through it and got so frustrated with Blender, I went back to Cinema 4D. So, this Enterprise follows Eric's tutorial about 90% and the rest is my figuring out how to do it in C4D. Gotta' admit, there were quite a number of things that I really enjoyed in Blender, but the software just closing for no reason and the large number of clicks to perform an operation was too much for me. Anyways, after all that rambling, here is what I have so far...
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And yeah, although age is definitely catching up to the old girl now. A short time after their new paint job, the paint started cracking (if I am remembering correctly). Although, I am VERY glad they made it fairly well resemble the original version of the model at the end of the second season!
what a beautiful object.
Is the bridge dome really green ?
I hear you on the frustration with Blender. I tried using it (again) recently and I found myself fumbling to do something simple in it. I went back to Lightwave and very quickly did that simple thing.
This is always an issue when changing 3d package. I suspect it's not necessarily a 'blender' issue, just a problem in that things have different names in every package. I'd have the same problems trying to move the opposite way to LW for example, I really struggle with LW, I find everything very clunky, but them I'm not used to it. Can you remember what you were trying to do?
I've built things in Blender before. The issue I was having most recently was a tool not behaving the way it has in the past. I don't know what changes they made with the 3.X release, but the last version I used was 2.8-something and it behaved very differently. I've had this issue in the past with Blender, as they tend to change the way things behave between versions. I was actually looking forward to using Blender again, as I've used it quite effectively in the past. Plus, I like the Cycles render engine better than the one introduced in Lightwave 2018, which is the most recent version I have.
Many of the tools between Lightwave and Blender actually work very similarly, or at least they used to. The biggest issue I usually have switching between Lightwave and Blender is trying to use keyboard shorcuts from one program in the other.
Edit: And, I actually just re-downloaded Blender and figured out the issue I was having. So, I might actually have to give it another look.
Thanks, I forgot about that. Yeah, 2.79b. I think that's the last version I was using effectively. I think I was making some pretty good progress on a Star Trek ship in that version at one point. If memory serves, I wasn't fond of 2.8X either. I think that was one of their big change versions. I may have to peruse the repositories. That's one great thing about free software, they don't have to try and sell you the latest version.
Somewhere between the last version I used and the current stable version (3.3.1) they changed the way box select works. You used to press a key (B, I think) to box select. Now it's activated by default. I was trying to manipulate a bezier curve but instead of grabbing the handles to move the curve, I kept accidentally box selecting. It was a frustrating experience. I realize now that it's because I needed to select something else from the left hand icons. But I didn't know that because I hadn't used Blender in a long time, I only knew it wasn't working the way I remembered.
I own licensed copies of Lightwave 9, 10 and 2018. There are more tools in 2018, but I can pick any tool that's in LW9 or LW10 and it will behave exactly the same in LW2018. They changed the interface colors for LW10, but the interface layout is the same as LW9. In fact, LW2018 looks exactly like LW10, but with more tools. I think some programmers underestimate how much people like consistency like that.
Yeah, crashing too much is a major problem. When I first started using the internet, I think the current version of Internet Explorer was IE4. It crashed constantly. I switched browsers to Mozilla. Then when they switched to Firefox, I started using that. I still use Firefox. To this day, I don't trust built in Microsoft web browsers. Stability is key to your enjoyment of any software.
I know, right? I was watching some of those thinking how cool it would have been to see those in episodes. I realize it costs money to do the work to get rid of the blue screen and other elements and add the space backgrounds, but it also costs money to do those shots in the first place, so it seems like they wasted some money, of which they didn't have a lot.