Love circular primary hulls. Late 24th century pointy 'saucers' are starting to wear thin on my conservative design sensibilities. Love circular deflector dishes too - recessing the dish in a slanted housing instead of slanting the dish itself looks functional and slick. Asymmetrical dishes have me wondering where the focal point is, should any applications still require one. Also love those linear, wrap-around bussard grilles. They also look more functional than domes. Loving this ship so far.
How many tris are you at? I'm close to 9 million on my Sovereign, and I'm starting to get nervous that I might have to start pulling some subdivisions, or I won't have enough room for the details!
And Starship does ask a good question. Is the entire secondary hull one object (minus the details)? I'm starting to wonder if I should have make the front, middle, and/or fantail as separate objects. Maybe shorter objects means shorter subdivisions, which means less tris? The reason I've been avoiding this is because I have been unsuccessful in trying to get them to appear as a solid, smooth object.
Is the entire secondary hull one object (minus the details)?
Currently my method is to break the mesh into many separate objects, it's just easier to think about that way. If I made this as more or less one object, I'd have to figure out where all the edgeloops were going. I'm a messy modeller as that above wireframe shows, compared to what professional vfx studio artists produce, (check out the efficient SNW Enterprise wireframes that are floating around online) so separate pieces keeps things from getting too out of hand. This ID pass shows the various pieces in different colours:
I wasn't quite happy with some of the smaller details on the model; the greebly things on the pylons I've remodelled again, and some of the panels have been realigned to look a little more cohesive. Now just working out the greeblies along the spine and onto the impulse engines:
Nearly there on the secondary hull. It's been a long road...
I'm at the blocking out stage for the saucer. The diagrams I did back on page 1 have a sort of excelsior style impulse engine. I still like that idea because it conveys the idea of this ship being a technological half way point between that, and the Ambassador. However, when mocking up the shapes I felt that me just tacking an impulse engine onto the back lacked some visual drama, so I flared the impulse deck out, so the engines flank the main saucer superstructure. Still looks like Excelsior tech, but it's a more dramatic design feature now - much like they are on the original Excelsior model.
I've been thinking about this too. A few people have commented about the ship starting to look rather angry hehe. I was intending to call this ship Adelie, after an Antarctic species of penguin that is famously rather fearless despite its diminutive size, but I don't think this ship has that kind of underdog vibe to it right now, so maybe USS Acheron? I'm looking for an 'A' name to evoke a sense of it being an Ambassador precursor.
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Various Work: U.S.S. Constellation - Matt Jefferies Concept Shuttle
It was started from a cilynder?
And Starship does ask a good question. Is the entire secondary hull one object (minus the details)? I'm starting to wonder if I should have make the front, middle, and/or fantail as separate objects. Maybe shorter objects means shorter subdivisions, which means less tris? The reason I've been avoiding this is because I have been unsuccessful in trying to get them to appear as a solid, smooth object.
The wireframe is getting rather messy at this point, but still manageable for now:
It was started as a tapered cylinder, which was then cut and booleaned into to produced the various shapes:
Currently my method is to break the mesh into many separate objects, it's just easier to think about that way. If I made this as more or less one object, I'd have to figure out where all the edgeloops were going. I'm a messy modeller as that above wireframe shows, compared to what professional vfx studio artists produce, (check out the efficient SNW Enterprise wireframes that are floating around online) so separate pieces keeps things from getting too out of hand. This ID pass shows the various pieces in different colours:
Uau! The wire is dense! But beautifull
Thank you for the detailled explanation and images!
Nearly there on the secondary hull. It's been a long road...
This thing looks mean…
I've been thinking about this too. A few people have commented about the ship starting to look rather angry hehe. I was intending to call this ship Adelie, after an Antarctic species of penguin that is famously rather fearless despite its diminutive size, but I don't think this ship has that kind of underdog vibe to it right now, so maybe USS Acheron? I'm looking for an 'A' name to evoke a sense of it being an Ambassador precursor.