and that thing Janeway was in in that nick cgi show.
Ugh, that's an ugly ship. Honestly, the art style of ST:Prodigy is half of the reason I've never tried that show. The other half being that the show's whole premise doesn't do anything for me.
As for the Yeager, I almost posted that one too. It looks like an unusually large Maquis Raider flew into the back of an Intrepid class. The reason I posted the Curry is because they had the nerve to show that up close. Most of the DS9 kitbashes were put in the background.
In my opinion, most kitbashes don't really work. Probably the reason the Constellation works for me is because two top level ST designers worked on it and they put a lot of thought into the design. They didn't just slap two model kits together and call it a ship.
Well, the mini ship from that isnt too bad just damn small for the shapes. It acually takes queues from VOyager unlike other shows that take nothing then puke flying bricks. EG lack of scale. As for the story I think it really is a rehash of one of the older Voy episodes, or Enterprise.
Dauntless thing, oh man it is like one of those you got an hour to do this, this is what the committee of gits wants, make it.
I mostly watched it to see the cgi of the show. Dunno why it just caught my eye. Kinda like how SNW is using that video wall, while not as complex the "room" or whatever the name it is for wars it is generally a live background via UR5, not a prerendered scene (well as far as I understand how the Lucas wall works). So that added to my interest in how it was being utilized.
It also had some interesting interior design work on the Protostar.
I might have checked out Prodigy, if it was still on Paramount+. I get that service free through my work. But, they cancelled it (for unknown reasons) and Nickelodeon picked it up. Once that happened, it was removed from Paramount+. I don't do Nickelodeon, in fact I don't have cable television.
I mean it isnt like chase it down gotta watch tv. I'd just watch a few meh uploads on YT. It is acualkly how I saw the last few eps as they took forever to release those.
Yeah gave cable/fios up over a decade ago just yt stream or watch streamers. . . twitch kept me from going nuts during COVID.
I mean it isnt like chase it down gotta watch tv. I'd just watch a few meh uploads on YT. It is acualkly how I saw the last few eps as they took forever to release those.
Yeah gave cable/fios up over a decade ago just yt stream or watch streamers. . . twitch kept me from going nuts during COVID.
Oh, I definitely wasn't going to chase it down. I didn't even watch it when it was on Paramount+. The whole idea of a kids' ST show didn't do much for me. Nickelodeon is probably a better place for it.
I just don't like cable. Paying a lot for a lineup of channels when only a handful appeal to me and still having to put up with commercials isn't my thing. Besides, streaming has spoiled me as far as watching stuff when I want to. I pay extra to have no commercials on most streaming services and I still don't pay near what people pay for cable. I have commercials on Paramount+ because I don't pay for it, but the breaks aren't bad. Their timing could be better, though. They'll often miss those ad break spots in shows and interrupt during a sentence. Tubi is also pretty nice, no subscriptions, just some ads.
Reports of my assimilation have been greatly exaggerated. No, seriously, I haven't been around for a while because I just wasn't in a CGI mood.
Anyway, the mood struck again and I opened the Rycon because I'm actually very close to being finished with it. I added impulse engines and started on the shuttlebay area:
Here's a render without the pod to show details better:
One funny thing I find is that I'm using Fedora 40, which is the latest version of Fedora Linux. If I try to render with my RTX 4060 using the version of Blender 4.1 in the repositories, I get an error:
Yet, if I download the exact same version from Blender's website and run it from a folder, it works fine:
Anyway, that's one of those weird things. *shrugs*
I'm about to go to work, but I'll be back on later to see what other people have been up to.
Was hoping to see you again. I left for a while too. But I'm back baby! Since we last spoke, I'm sure you're aware that someone bought Lightwave and is giving it life. Looking forward to seeing all you do here.
Thanks a lot, everyone. Yeah, I've mostly been playing a lot of games in my down time lately. Also, since January, I've been looking into the viability of switching entirely to Linux (again) because Steam Proton has gotten really good at allowing people to play Windows games on Linux. I think in my whole library of 250 games, I only have a couple that don't work in Linux. I've also been messing around with different hardware configurations, including dabbling with Intel Arc graphics and Chinese PC parts from AliExpress, which has been an interesting time. And I've been looking into different Linux distributions. Ones that I've liked in the past have been less than thrilling with their more recent offerings (looking at you, Ubuntu) while Fedora, which I haven't used in years, has been working really well for me. But, I have peeked at my CGI stuff once in a while, but until today it was mainly open files, take a look at them, then close them again and go back to gaming.
Was hoping to see you again. I left for a while too. But I'm back baby! Since we last spoke, I'm sure you're aware that someone bought Lightwave and is giving it life. Looking forward to seeing all you do here.
Yeah, I got alerted to the news that Lightwave was being sold slightly beforehand, due to having a few licenses. I've somewhat been following it, but two things have kept me from checking it out. One thing is the fact that the upgrade from LW2018 to LW2024 is about $700, which is almost half what I pay a month for my mortgage. That's more than I want to spend on software. But, the main issue is that I'd have to reinstall Windows to run it, which I don't want to do. I follow a few tech channels on YouTube, and Microsoft has been doing some really weird crap lately with Windows 11 and Windows 10 has less than 17 months of life left before they end free support for it. So, I don't really want to run Windows with its weirdness just for one piece of software, especially since I'm pretty comfortable with Blender. But, I'm glade LW found a new owner that will treat it right and that people who love that software will be able to continue using it.
I added a whole bunch of transporter emitters. The Enterprise-D and Voyager are covered in these things. I also added a couple more phaser strips, but I'm keeping the armament on this ship light. I don't know if I said so before, but this is a scout ship. So, it shouldn't have as much weaponry as a Galaxy class ship. I'll probably put a couple of strips on the pod to make sure all angles are covered, then I'll add some torpedo launchers to the pod as well, and that's going to be it for weapons.
Now THIS is a believable Galaxy inspired design.. that's NOT a literal kit-bash.. excellent work sir.. I've started going through your thread like I did with Lizzy's and seeing all of the progress on your other projects.. so good..
But it's a fan ship. It should have all of the weapons and 21 warp nacelles.
Since it's a light armament ship, maybe strips for the main banks and single point emitters to cover the blind spots?
Yeah, plus it has transwarp, quantum slipstream and can go warp 10.
As for the weaponry, I'm sticking to TNG-style, which is phaser strips. With the emitters where they are, most angles can be covered. I'll add a strip or two to the top of the pod for the rest of the coverage. Historically, scouts are lightly armed and armored, with the advantage of speed and maneuverability on their side.
Nice work. Do you shrink wrap your lettering and paint onto the surface? Blender and Lightwave both have the function.
For lettering, I typically don't use the Shrink Wrap modifier because there's a lot more prep work to use it with lettering in Blender than there was in Lightwave. I usually do a Booleans intersect and have the lettering "raised" slightly off of the hull. However, I do use Shrink Wrap for things like phaser strips, escape pods and transporter emitters. Since those are made from regular geometry and not the mess that converting lettering to a mesh makes, there's less prep work to Shrink Wrap those.
I'll have to look into the Boolean intersect. I wonder if it is possible in Lightwave.
It is. That's how I used to do text/registries in Lightwave too. Sometimes even other details that were tight to the hull, like stripes and whatnot. In fact, that's a method I started using back in my Truespace days, because Truespace lacked tools like shrink wrap.
Edit: Also, I just remembered a tool I used to use in Lightwave. It was some kind of knife tool, but you could actually stencil stuff onto the hull. That was good for stripes and whatnot, but I usually left the names and registries as separate layers, so that I could rename the ship later. I forget what the exact name was (maybe I'll install Lightwave onto my laptop and take a look) but it was a really cool tool. I used to use it for windows and all kinds of things. I miss that tool in Blender.
This is one of my old Lightwave meshes that I converted to Blender, and the windows, stripes, text, and whatnot were all done by stenciling that stuff onto the hull with that knife tool:
Not an update to any of my projects, but I had a frakking "AHA" moment earlier. A couple months ago, I bought a Sparkle Intel Arc A750 Orc OC graphics card. I'd been hearing good things about Arc, but I hadn't tried them due to past experiences with Intel graphics being crappy. But, some YouTube videos changed my mind.
Well, when running Blender, one does not simply render using a CPU if they have a gaming GPU in their system. Why? Because it will take many, many times as long. My tests with the Arc graphics in Windows went well, but I much prefer running Linux. And that was where the troubles started. I tried using my Arc card to render in both Ubuntu and Fedora, with no luck. I couldn't even make Blender find the card. The problem is that both AMD and Intel have entirely open source drivers. They work "out of the box" on Linux for gaming, but not for stuff like rendering in Blender. (NVIDIA has proprietary drivers that work just fine) You need more than just the open source drivers for that. I did a search and found out what I needed to install on Fedora to make it happen. Finally, Blender on Fedora would find the card and let me select it for rendering. But, trying to render anything with that stuff installed on Fedora just made Blender crash immediately. So, I decided to try Manjaro. Not only did installing Blender let me choose between NVIDIA CUDA or Intel oneAPI, but it automatically installs what I need. And, it works:
So, I'm happy. As you can see, I rendered that image at 4096 samples in 1 minute 35 seconds 84 milliseconds. I'm definitely not getting that kind of performance out of my Ryzen 5 5600X.
So, I guess I'm running Manjaro now. I'm testing Steam to make sure I can also game on it, because I've had issues with Manjaro and Steam in the past, but it seems to be working fine.
Also, I just remembered a tool I used to use in Lightwave. It was some kind of knife tool, but you could actually stencil stuff onto the hull. That was good for stripes and whatnot, but I usually left the names and registries as separate layers, so that I could rename the ship later. I forget what the exact name was (maybe I'll install Lightwave onto my laptop and take a look) but it was a really cool tool. I used to use it for windows and all kinds of things. I miss that tool in Blender.
This is one of my old Lightwave meshes that I converted to Blender, and the windows, stripes, text, and whatnot were all done by stenciling that stuff onto the hull with that knife tool:
You remembered the Lightwave tool without realizing it. It's under the Construct tab, then select "Solid Drill" then "Stencil." Stupid me, I use the function all the time to make surface panels that follow the contours of the hull. Smack my forehead (duh) I can copy the hull surface again like I do for the panels and use the text in 3d to stencil the lettering. Of course, as you so correctly said, do it in another layer so you can change the name and registry later. My surface panels are always in another layer anyway.
Solid Drill. Yeah, that's it. One of my favorite tools in Lightwave. I know Lightwave can seem clunky to the uninitiated, but I swear there's a tool in a tab and sub-menu somewhere to do pretty much anything you want.
Solid Drill. Yeah, that's it. One of my favorite tools in Lightwave. I know Lightwave can seem clunky to the uninitiated, but I swear there's a tool in a tab and sub-menu somewhere to do pretty much anything you want.
I used/use that tool a lot as well in both Lightwave and Modo for my ship decals. My favorite in Lightwave was the Multishift tool. It was great for doing panel work, where you could save a series of shifts as a preset and then use it as many times as you like.
I used/use that tool a lot as well in both Lightwave and Modo for my ship decals. My favorite in Lightwave was the Multishift tool. It was great for doing panel work, where you could save a series of shifts as a preset and then use it as many times as you like.
I've got to explore multishift. I've tried it a few times and didn't understand it.
I used/use that tool a lot as well in both Lightwave and Modo for my ship decals. My favorite in Lightwave was the Multishift tool. It was great for doing panel work, where you could save a series of shifts as a preset and then use it as many times as you like.
I've got to explore multishift. I've tried it a few times and didn't understand it.
It's another really great tool. Luckily, Blender has a tool that's close enough to it.
I'm tired of staring at this thing trying to figure out more details to add when it realistically has about the same level of detail as the Enterprise-D. So, I'm calling it nearly finished. I added some escape pods to the central lower section and some running lights to the whole ship. Incidentally, I know the light for the upper saucer registry is bullcrap, but they typically are. I also added twin forward and twin rear torpedo launchers. My justification for this is that the ship doesn't rapidly fire torpedoes like the Ent-D and E, but more like Voyager, the Enterprise-A and Excelsior. That's why it has twin launchers. And, yes, I know the pod is a big blind spot for phaser coverage as I didn't put any phasers on there, but the same can be said for the Nebula class. I still have to add an interior to the ship and maybe some details on the pylons holding up the pod.
Posts
Ugh, that's an ugly ship. Honestly, the art style of ST:Prodigy is half of the reason I've never tried that show. The other half being that the show's whole premise doesn't do anything for me.
As for the Yeager, I almost posted that one too. It looks like an unusually large Maquis Raider flew into the back of an Intrepid class. The reason I posted the Curry is because they had the nerve to show that up close. Most of the DS9 kitbashes were put in the background.
In my opinion, most kitbashes don't really work. Probably the reason the Constellation works for me is because two top level ST designers worked on it and they put a lot of thought into the design. They didn't just slap two model kits together and call it a ship.
heh, Angelfire.
Dauntless thing, oh man it is like one of those you got an hour to do this, this is what the committee of gits wants, make it.
I mostly watched it to see the cgi of the show. Dunno why it just caught my eye. Kinda like how SNW is using that video wall, while not as complex the "room" or whatever the name it is for wars it is generally a live background via UR5, not a prerendered scene (well as far as I understand how the Lucas wall works). So that added to my interest in how it was being utilized.
It also had some interesting interior design work on the Protostar.
Yeah gave cable/fios up over a decade ago just yt stream or watch streamers. . . twitch kept me from going nuts during COVID.
Oh, I definitely wasn't going to chase it down. I didn't even watch it when it was on Paramount+. The whole idea of a kids' ST show didn't do much for me. Nickelodeon is probably a better place for it.
I just don't like cable. Paying a lot for a lineup of channels when only a handful appeal to me and still having to put up with commercials isn't my thing. Besides, streaming has spoiled me as far as watching stuff when I want to. I pay extra to have no commercials on most streaming services and I still don't pay near what people pay for cable. I have commercials on Paramount+ because I don't pay for it, but the breaks aren't bad. Their timing could be better, though. They'll often miss those ad break spots in shows and interrupt during a sentence.
Anyway, the mood struck again and I opened the Rycon because I'm actually very close to being finished with it. I added impulse engines and started on the shuttlebay area:
Here's a render without the pod to show details better:
One funny thing I find is that I'm using Fedora 40, which is the latest version of Fedora Linux. If I try to render with my RTX 4060 using the version of Blender 4.1 in the repositories, I get an error:
Yet, if I download the exact same version from Blender's website and run it from a folder, it works fine:
Anyway, that's one of those weird things. *shrugs*
I'm about to go to work, but I'll be back on later to see what other people have been up to.
Yeah, I got alerted to the news that Lightwave was being sold slightly beforehand, due to having a few licenses. I've somewhat been following it, but two things have kept me from checking it out. One thing is the fact that the upgrade from LW2018 to LW2024 is about $700, which is almost half what I pay a month for my mortgage. That's more than I want to spend on software. But, the main issue is that I'd have to reinstall Windows to run it, which I don't want to do. I follow a few tech channels on YouTube, and Microsoft has been doing some really weird crap lately with Windows 11 and Windows 10 has less than 17 months of life left before they end free support for it. So, I don't really want to run Windows with its weirdness just for one piece of software, especially since I'm pretty comfortable with Blender. But, I'm glade LW found a new owner that will treat it right and that people who love that software will be able to continue using it.
Since it's a light armament ship, maybe strips for the main banks and single point emitters to cover the blind spots?
Yeah, plus it has transwarp, quantum slipstream and can go warp 10.
As for the weaponry, I'm sticking to TNG-style, which is phaser strips. With the emitters where they are, most angles can be covered. I'll add a strip or two to the top of the pod for the rest of the coverage. Historically, scouts are lightly armed and armored, with the advantage of speed and maneuverability on their side.
For lettering, I typically don't use the Shrink Wrap modifier because there's a lot more prep work to use it with lettering in Blender than there was in Lightwave. I usually do a Booleans intersect and have the lettering "raised" slightly off of the hull. However, I do use Shrink Wrap for things like phaser strips, escape pods and transporter emitters. Since those are made from regular geometry and not the mess that converting lettering to a mesh makes, there's less prep work to Shrink Wrap those.
It is. That's how I used to do text/registries in Lightwave too. Sometimes even other details that were tight to the hull, like stripes and whatnot. In fact, that's a method I started using back in my Truespace days, because Truespace lacked tools like shrink wrap.
Edit: Also, I just remembered a tool I used to use in Lightwave. It was some kind of knife tool, but you could actually stencil stuff onto the hull. That was good for stripes and whatnot, but I usually left the names and registries as separate layers, so that I could rename the ship later. I forget what the exact name was (maybe I'll install Lightwave onto my laptop and take a look) but it was a really cool tool. I used to use it for windows and all kinds of things. I miss that tool in Blender.
This is one of my old Lightwave meshes that I converted to Blender, and the windows, stripes, text, and whatnot were all done by stenciling that stuff onto the hull with that knife tool:
Well, when running Blender, one does not simply render using a CPU if they have a gaming GPU in their system. Why? Because it will take many, many times as long. My tests with the Arc graphics in Windows went well, but I much prefer running Linux. And that was where the troubles started. I tried using my Arc card to render in both Ubuntu and Fedora, with no luck. I couldn't even make Blender find the card. The problem is that both AMD and Intel have entirely open source drivers. They work "out of the box" on Linux for gaming, but not for stuff like rendering in Blender. (NVIDIA has proprietary drivers that work just fine) You need more than just the open source drivers for that. I did a search and found out what I needed to install on Fedora to make it happen. Finally, Blender on Fedora would find the card and let me select it for rendering. But, trying to render anything with that stuff installed on Fedora just made Blender crash immediately. So, I decided to try Manjaro. Not only did installing Blender let me choose between NVIDIA CUDA or Intel oneAPI, but it automatically installs what I need. And, it works:
So, I'm happy. As you can see, I rendered that image at 4096 samples in 1 minute 35 seconds 84 milliseconds. I'm definitely not getting that kind of performance out of my Ryzen 5 5600X.
So, I guess I'm running Manjaro now. I'm testing Steam to make sure I can also game on it, because I've had issues with Manjaro and Steam in the past, but it seems to be working fine.
You remembered the Lightwave tool without realizing it. It's under the Construct tab, then select "Solid Drill" then "Stencil." Stupid me, I use the function all the time to make surface panels that follow the contours of the hull. Smack my forehead (duh) I can copy the hull surface again like I do for the panels and use the text in 3d to stencil the lettering. Of course, as you so correctly said, do it in another layer so you can change the name and registry later. My surface panels are always in another layer anyway.
I love your enterprise mesh. So sweet looking.
I used/use that tool a lot as well in both Lightwave and Modo for my ship decals. My favorite in Lightwave was the Multishift tool. It was great for doing panel work, where you could save a series of shifts as a preset and then use it as many times as you like.
I've got to explore multishift. I've tried it a few times and didn't understand it.
It's another really great tool. Luckily, Blender has a tool that's close enough to it.