and Melak... the reason I find that your av is just a tad scary is the fack of the look on his face to me looks like he is a scycho killer type of person:D
Guys, please forgive my crummy photo-shopping work. I took 6 seperate images of my 304 model, and made some gantry workings.
My thinking is that with the ORI threat gone, they can concentrate on 304 production.
In the workings right now are six 304s. These six are just frames with some exterior panelling atached. The two first to completion will be going to Britain(HMS Broadsword) and China(People's Liberation Army Navy Yang Liwei), respectively. The next two out of the blocks will be going to Russia, for services rendered to the Stargate program, with the other two of indeterminate destination as of now.
I am toying with an idea for a dock gantry, but haven't nailed anything down yet.
Bar.
Please credit aszazeroth for the vulcan hybrid map.
Can't argue with a price estimate like that, and even if it gets more expensive than that, it'll be worth it
How would you go about painting a model with such tiny details with a brush? air-brushing?
Cost is not my department. The cost of a model is arrived upon by making molds(Which deteriorate with each individual casting taken from them), assessing the cost of the mold(Say it you get 30 castings per mold), so dividing the cost of the mold by 30, then the cost per casting of the amount of resin required, then add the cost of decals, packaging materials, boxes, box art, etc, and add a tiny amount to make it worth your while. Based on kit size(Using kits which would use a similar amount of resin), i will stick my neck out and say it will probably be a $50-60 kit, or thereabouts. It might be cheaper. Might be more expensive.
It is totally dependent on the ease of casting, though.
Sorry i cannot be more specific.
Bar.
Can't argue with a price estimate like that, and even if it gets more expensive than that, it'll be worth it
How would you go about painting a model with such tiny details with a brush? air-brushing?
Well the model will be very detailed even for it's small size. It will be totally up to the builder. You can just pick one overall colour and go with that, or you can do a "many layer" paintjob(If you are not into physical modelling, you can skip the following "tutorial").
Here's the basic idea:
Once you have put together the sub-assemblies, you prime them and then paint them(For example), Gun-metal grey. Then you cut out maybe 1000 little squares/rectangles from masking tape(Ranging in size from 0.5mm by 0.5mm, to maybe 2mm by 2mm). This may seem daunting, but there is a trick: Lay a strip of everyday masking tape on your cutting mat(For a ship like this, maybe 15cm of 50mm thick tape will do). Make lots of cuts longways down the strip, at differing thicknesses. When you are done with that, make lots of cuts at right angles to the first lines. It will only take ten minutes tops, and you are left with thousands of little masking tape "panels"(All very neatly arranged on your mat).
So you take your knife of choice(I use a swann-Morton No. 26 scalpel blade in a No. 4 handle, but as long as it has a long pointed blade anything will do), and carefully lift each square(Or rectangle) of tape up and position it on the model(You carefully slide the blade tip under the square of tape, gently press your fingertip over the top, and lift it up of the mat). When in place on the model, you gently put your finger over the tape, and slide the blade out. Now comes the boring part. You do that for maybe 1/4 of the entire surface of the ship, with the panels placed in any manner you please(Don't bunch them up too close. Keep in mind every piece of masking tape you apply at this stage will all show the same colour once removed. Keep them well-spaced out). Once you have done this, you take a small amount of your original colour and add maybe 20% black to the mix. It will only be slightly darker and then you spray the model again. When this coat of paint is dry, you have to do the panelling treatment again, covering more of the model. When you have added all the new panelling, you take another small amount of the original colour and add 20% white to the mix, spray and repeat the masking effect(You really can do this as often as you like. It takes a while, but will produce a show-stopping model). Eventually, when all the paint has totally dried, you take your scalpel, and gently remove all the masking tape. What you are left with should be a paintjob that looks like the ship has been made of thousands of tiny panels. Then you add aclear coat, and then add decals if required.
Everyone's panelling will look different, and it will give your model a unique look.
Or, you can just paint it one colour and be satisfied that, in that scale, you wouldn't see the panel differences anyway...
well if I get one of those beutifal models I would go the full extent and do the paneling like you suggest. thanx for the tip on how to make it look better.
Well, even though i still have sa fair number of porjects still unfinihsed i've started another one today:rolleyes:.....
ATM it's a frigate and i'm still working on the exact dimensions (i literally started this about three or four hours ago)....
Two full decks with a seperate bridge and possibly another deck behind it. After that i've got nothing... yet
A while ago someone made mention of a 'tug' idea for rescuing crippled ships.
This what i came up with
Again still working out all the kinks but it's going to have two decks at the front with two seperate hyperdrive generators and an Asgard derived 'tractor beam' (See the S6 episode where thor tows the Prommie to the time bubble replicator planet) to actually tow the crippled ship. As for weapons..... not got that far yet:rolleyes:
Finally got a fleet image with the two latest ships inserted.
that is a nice fleet you got goin there Dr. Lee. I like the new ships that you have come up with. as for mycurrent project the Hammond (also a 308 btw ) the current poly count on that one is around 40,000. I still await some work on your carrier thou (hint hint:D) what are some spec for it? as in 302/jumpercount and armament, ya know stuff like that? I plan on getting more work on my carrier done on saturday,willpost updates when I get a chance. well anywho I have rambled on long enough... now its time for me to get some sleep. have a good night everyone
I still await some work on your carrier thou (hint hint) what are some spec for it? as in 302/jumpercount and armament, ya know stuff like that?
To be honest i've kinda put that on hold for now. It's def, going to be equipped with at least four Gatejumpers and a couple of the 311s. as for -302s... no idea the 304s carry, what, 12 F-302s per fighter bay?, so a fully equipped 304 would have 24 fighters available to defend it..... the carrier should have at least 50 F-302s in addition to the above mentioned other ships.
Weapons? ...Typical railguns, dunno how many, maybe a asgard beam or two.
Crew would be in the 100s, say each fighter/jumper/311 has a team of 5 to fly/maintain them... 280 flight deck crew. double that for other duties on the ship...
560 crew members.
I'm also thinking of changing the -3XX designations on my ships, As they are ships operated by the UK not the US.
Dr. Lee, nice ships you got there :thumb:
Though I am a bit baffled by the polycounts! Where do all these polygons go?
Would you mind if I requested a wireframe render? :P
Righty ho!....... What is it you can't work out? are the numbers too low?
(I'll have to get back to you with a 308/Maloo wire, it's being a bit of a pig to reset the mesh as i flipped soemthign to get better access and i've pushed stuff out of place.:rolleyes:)
You could reduce the polly counts significantly if you wanted to go back and clean them up. Would definately make it way easier for making changes and be less of a systems hog
That's what I kind of suspected. If the surface is flat, you don't need a lot of subdivisions. of course the panels add to it, but having it as dense as the 3rd pic is not really necessary. I suppose you select the faces you want as panels from a dense mesh like that one and extrude? With a little more work (cutting or booleaning in the panel lines) you can achieve much lower polycount
OK, finally have some updates. Everytime I went to check the image before I was gonna post it, I found something else I just "had to" fix. And when I did decide to post an update image, it seems SFM was down or something. Has anyone else been having trouble getting onto SFM at all in the overnight hours?
Anyhooo. Here's the latest on the Europa.
1.) the first and biggest change is in the nose. I can't even count the number of versions that darned nose has gone through. I think I have found a version I'm going to stick with. It's a happy medium between the stepped front I started out with and the smoother nose I last had. This one is more aggressive and has more character than the smooth version, yet is more refined than the stepped version. This one just adds soo much more character.
2.) I had to enlarge the railguns because they were way too small and out of scale. They now are approximately the same size as the ones seen in SGA "The Siege Pt. 2. & 3".
3.) Added that "bump" to the back of the bridge area that harks back to the Prometheus, yet is it's own.
4.) modified the "pontoons" so that they are now asymetrical, a little longer, and have more usable space. They don't look so "tacked on" as they did before.
5.) added a bunch of greebles. And trust me when I say there is a LOT of detail there you can't see unless you are close up. I finally found a trick to doing curved piping in Bryce without using any negatives or another program to make just the piping. This new technique will really give me the opportunity to do much more detailed and exotic piping type elements. No ship I have done up until now has had the sheer number of greebles that this one has. I actually had to make sure there was enough clear room for the railguns on the main hull to have a clear arc of fire. I'm also getting much better with designing greebles now.
6.) made the front antennas less "pointy". There's actually a sphere at the tip now, so it's smooth and rounded.
7.) got rid of the double cargo bay doors on the "pontoons".
8.) moved the windows on the "pontoons" to either side of the dicking door.
9.) added windows and an airlock door hatch to the lower levels in the bridge area. This way they can go out onto the main hull area to service things if need be.
10.) added windows to the upper levels of the main hull. Some are quarters, some are general purpose rooms. All are lit.
11.) added a name plate to the ship. Right now it says I.U.S Europa, which stands for International Union Ship. Don't know if it'll stay that way though. I may just truncate it and drop the IUS part. I also put in the the SGC military combat badge at the front nose section. May also change that too. But for now, both the name plate and SGC logo are staying put until I can find something better.
12.) shrunk the windows in the "common" areas to better reflect a proper scale.
13.) added accent piece to front of "pontoons". Right now, it's just cosmetic. I'll think of a functional purpose for it eventually.
14.) changed the lighting level so the scene isn't so dark. It's much better now.
As you can tell, I've been busy. Actually got a few things done while stuck on the metro. I think a transformer blew up again or something. I think I have a neat idea for a new SGC logo for these ships. They are primarily used by the UK, Canada, and Australia after all. So I thought about using a "crown" element in the logo. I've seen something like that before associated with those countries. So I'm gonna try to implement that. Can't say I am forgetting about the other countries, I have already done a pair of Russian ships. Now I have 3 more major SGC countries covered. :thumb:
So, how is it coming along? Better? C&C?
PS. I am also planning on re-rendering all of my ships at the Premium Anti-Aliasing level. It will take a HUGE amount of time to do so. But I think it's worth it. I did a quick test render at that level and it REALLY made a spectacular difference in texture appearance. I'll queue them when I get the chance. Though, some could take days to render at that quality.
The only crit i could make is that the SGC logo on the nose is a bit small, personally i'd make it larger, but it's up to you.
Finally someone else with the same problem. I find that over night and , often, up till about midday i can't get in here.... this is probably going to be my last post in here tonight cuz of this problem (Though now i say that it'll work fine for me all night:rolleyes:)
I'm currently trying out a new way of panelling on the Frigate. I'm using splines to make the basic shape then extruding the flat surface for the box.
Each window has a small driop down menu that activates if you riught click in the top left hand corner of each of the four viewscreens. One of the options is to show Stats... thats the one to click on.
I'm using 3ds max 7 Dr Lee and it's not in that menu. Also is it ok if I post an image of the birdge/hanger section of the ship I'm working on here? I'm gonna start a new thread when it's at a point that looks like a ship.
I'm using 3ds max 7 Dr Lee and it's not in that menu. Also is it ok if I post an image of the birdge/hanger section of the ship I'm working on here? I'm gonna start a new thread when it's at a point that looks like a ship.
you might try going into the utilitys tab and going into polycount thats the only way I know of to get the amount of polys in a mesh. I will tinker with that abit when I get home in an hour or two. I also use max 7 so if i find it I will let you know.
and if the ship is SG related it shouldnt matter on what level of completion the ship is in to post it. I think I have posted afew parts of ships in here before that were far from completion so it should be ok. I think all of us would agree that some new material would be nice to have in this thread.
and freek. the uropa is coming along very nicely. the detail that you put in it is just... it inspires awe in me! with the amount of detail you can put into a ship like that especaly seeing you use bryce. I am liking the new nose you did for it, it does have charactor now and I meen that in a good way:D overall a nice ship I am loving that greeble work you are doing on it. cant wait to see those high res pics when they get done rendering... in afew days very nice job:thumb:
Thanks scootes, there was one in the utilities tab but it can't dock anywhere. I just need some help designing the bridge section, I looked at those links and decided to go with something that looked close to the Prometheus tower but........different. Any help would be great:) and the second image is the pattern I'm gonna put them in on the top deck.
Thanks everyone. What I am most pleased about with this model is, besides the level of detail, is that ALL textures were made by me. I've been flipping between Bryce and Photoshop all night long getting some things done. I re-did the front SG logo on it too. I used the outer portion as the standard element, but replaced the inner part, the sword, wings and American star with the British Royal crest. I also made a Canadian version as well. I was planning on making an Australian version too, but couldn't find any special forces logos that were different. It seems, from what I could find, that the Aussie SF emblem is the same as the British SAS logo, but is called the SASR (Special Air Service Regiment). So tomorrow I will make a version with that on it. Had to use what I could find. Put them up on here. Use them if you want.
Thanks scootes, there was one in the utilities tab but it can't dock anywhere. I just need some help designing the bridge section, I looked at those links and decided to go with something that looked close to the Prometheus tower but........different. Any help would be great:) and the second image is the pattern I'm gonna put them in on the top deck.
well I tinkerd with it for a couple hours last night and I cant find it anywhere... looks like we are SOL until we can get max 9 then huh? lol.
nice bridge work, looks good. might I suggest that with the next render that you change the background color to white and possibly put a spot light above pointing down... would make it easyer to see in my opinion. and do you use user or perspective to render? anywho... very nice work. by chance would you have any specs on your ship as in class, armament, if it will have fighters/ jumpers or not and how many? possibly a breif background storie on it? and what is its name and designation?
@freek. nice job on those logos, I think I like the one with the british royal crest better. just seems to have more to it and kinda fills that empty space abit more.
Righty ho!....... What is it you can't work out? are the numbers too low?
(I'll have to get back to you with a 308/Maloo wire, it's being a bit of a pig to reset the mesh as i flipped soemthign to get better access and i've pushed stuff out of place.:rolleyes:)
Okay, whoa whoa whoaaaa.. THAT is way too dense for what you're doing. Why is it that dense? what purpose? whhhyyyy... You should only need like 1/20th of those polygons for what you have, mate! Learn the fine art of etching with the cut tool before you tessalate or meshsmooth!
Posts
I agree with that.
Please credit aszazeroth for the vulcan hybrid map.
Credit to aszazeroth for the vulcan hybrid map indeed. My Bad.
Apologies.
Bar.
How would you go about painting a model with such tiny details
Hell, I might buy one from ya at those prices
Here's the basic idea:
Once you have put together the sub-assemblies, you prime them and then paint them(For example), Gun-metal grey. Then you cut out maybe 1000 little squares/rectangles from masking tape(Ranging in size from 0.5mm by 0.5mm, to maybe 2mm by 2mm). This may seem daunting, but there is a trick: Lay a strip of everyday masking tape on your cutting mat(For a ship like this, maybe 15cm of 50mm thick tape will do). Make lots of cuts longways down the strip, at differing thicknesses. When you are done with that, make lots of cuts at right angles to the first lines. It will only take ten minutes tops, and you are left with thousands of little masking tape "panels"(All very neatly arranged on your mat).
So you take your knife of choice(I use a swann-Morton No. 26 scalpel blade in a No. 4 handle, but as long as it has a long pointed blade anything will do), and carefully lift each square(Or rectangle) of tape up and position it on the model(You carefully slide the blade tip under the square of tape, gently press your fingertip over the top, and lift it up of the mat). When in place on the model, you gently put your finger over the tape, and slide the blade out. Now comes the boring part. You do that for maybe 1/4 of the entire surface of the ship, with the panels placed in any manner you please(Don't bunch them up too close. Keep in mind every piece of masking tape you apply at this stage will all show the same colour once removed. Keep them well-spaced out). Once you have done this, you take a small amount of your original colour and add maybe 20% black to the mix. It will only be slightly darker and then you spray the model again. When this coat of paint is dry, you have to do the panelling treatment again, covering more of the model. When you have added all the new panelling, you take another small amount of the original colour and add 20% white to the mix, spray and repeat the masking effect(You really can do this as often as you like. It takes a while, but will produce a show-stopping model). Eventually, when all the paint has totally dried, you take your scalpel, and gently remove all the masking tape. What you are left with should be a paintjob that looks like the ship has been made of thousands of tiny panels. Then you add aclear coat, and then add decals if required.
Everyone's panelling will look different, and it will give your model a unique look.
Or, you can just paint it one colour and be satisfied that, in that scale, you wouldn't see the panel differences anyway...
Regards Jesh
ATM it's a frigate and i'm still working on the exact dimensions (i literally started this about three or four hours ago)....
Two full decks with a seperate bridge and possibly another deck behind it. After that i've got nothing... yet
A while ago someone made mention of a 'tug' idea for rescuing crippled ships.
This what i came up with
Again still working out all the kinks but it's going to have two decks at the front with two seperate hyperdrive generators and an Asgard derived 'tractor beam' (See the S6 episode where thor tows the Prommie to the time bubble replicator planet) to actually tow the crippled ship. As for weapons..... not got that far yet:rolleyes:
Finally got a fleet image with the two latest ships inserted.
Just did a quick Poly count on my fleet....
Archer- 136.686
Churchill- 167.253
308- 225,950
Gatejumper- 81,590
311- 167,937
Frigate- 1,070
Tug 106,735
Also i'm toying with the idea of naming the 308 'Maloo' which, i believe, is aboriginal for 'Thunder' but i'm not sure.... what do you think?
Regards Jesh
To be honest i've kinda put that on hold for now. It's def, going to be equipped with at least four Gatejumpers and a couple of the 311s. as for -302s... no idea
Weapons? ...Typical railguns, dunno how many, maybe a asgard beam or two.
Crew would be in the 100s, say each fighter/jumper/311 has a team of 5 to fly/maintain them... 280 flight deck crew. double that for other duties on the ship...
560 crew members.
I'm also thinking of changing the -3XX designations on my ships, As they are ships operated by the UK not the US.
Though I am a bit baffled by the polycounts! Where do all these polygons go?
Would you mind if I requested a wireframe render? :P
(I'll have to get back to you with a 308/Maloo wire, it's being a bit of a pig to reset the mesh as i flipped soemthign to get better access and i've pushed stuff out of place.:rolleyes:)
your doin good on them thou I like your ideas as far as design goes they look realy good:thumb:
Regards Jesh
Anyhooo. Here's the latest on the Europa.
1.) the first and biggest change is in the nose. I can't even count the number of versions that darned nose has gone through. I think I have found a version I'm going to stick with. It's a happy medium between the stepped front I started out with and the smoother nose I last had. This one is more aggressive and has more character than the smooth version, yet is more refined than the stepped version. This one just adds soo much more character.
2.) I had to enlarge the railguns because they were way too small and out of scale. They now are approximately the same size as the ones seen in SGA "The Siege Pt. 2. & 3".
3.) Added that "bump" to the back of the bridge area that harks back to the Prometheus, yet is it's own.
4.) modified the "pontoons" so that they are now asymetrical, a little longer, and have more usable space. They don't look so "tacked on" as they did before.
5.) added a bunch of greebles. And trust me when I say there is a LOT of detail there you can't see unless you are close up. I finally found a trick to doing curved piping in Bryce without using any negatives or another program to make just the piping. This new technique will really give me the opportunity to do much more detailed and exotic piping type elements. No ship I have done up until now has had the sheer number of greebles that this one has. I actually had to make sure there was enough clear room for the railguns on the main hull to have a clear arc of fire. I'm also getting much better with designing greebles now.
6.) made the front antennas less "pointy". There's actually a sphere at the tip now, so it's smooth and rounded.
7.) got rid of the double cargo bay doors on the "pontoons".
8.) moved the windows on the "pontoons" to either side of the dicking door.
9.) added windows and an airlock door hatch to the lower levels in the bridge area. This way they can go out onto the main hull area to service things if need be.
10.) added windows to the upper levels of the main hull. Some are quarters, some are general purpose rooms. All are lit.
11.) added a name plate to the ship. Right now it says I.U.S Europa, which stands for International Union Ship. Don't know if it'll stay that way though. I may just truncate it and drop the IUS part. I also put in the the SGC military combat badge at the front nose section. May also change that too. But for now, both the name plate and SGC logo are staying put until I can find something better.
12.) shrunk the windows in the "common" areas to better reflect a proper scale.
13.) added accent piece to front of "pontoons". Right now, it's just cosmetic. I'll think of a functional purpose for it eventually.
14.) changed the lighting level so the scene isn't so dark. It's much better now.
As you can tell, I've been busy. Actually got a few things done while stuck on the metro. I think a transformer blew up again or something. I think I have a neat idea for a new SGC logo for these ships. They are primarily used by the UK, Canada, and Australia after all. So I thought about using a "crown" element in the logo. I've seen something like that before associated with those countries. So I'm gonna try to implement that. Can't say I am forgetting about the other countries, I have already done a pair of Russian ships. Now I have 3 more major SGC countries covered. :thumb:
So, how is it coming along? Better? C&C?
PS. I am also planning on re-rendering all of my ships at the Premium Anti-Aliasing level. It will take a HUGE amount of time to do so. But I think it's worth it. I did a quick test render at that level and it REALLY made a spectacular difference in texture appearance. I'll queue them when I get the chance. Though, some could take days to render at that quality.
Finally someone else with the same problem. I find that over night and , often, up till about midday i can't get in here.... this is probably going to be my last post in here tonight cuz of this problem (Though now i say that it'll work fine for me all night:rolleyes:)
I'm currently trying out a new way of panelling on the Frigate. I'm using splines to make the basic shape then extruding the flat surface for the box.
you might try going into the utilitys tab and going into polycount thats the only way I know of to get the amount of polys in a mesh. I will tinker with that abit when I get home in an hour or two. I also use max 7 so if i find it I will let you know.
and if the ship is SG related it shouldnt matter on what level of completion the ship is in to post it. I think I have posted afew parts of ships in here before that were far from completion so it should be ok. I think all of us would agree that some new material would be nice to have in this thread.
and freek. the uropa is coming along very nicely. the detail that you put in it is just... it inspires awe in me! with the amount of detail you can put into a ship like that especaly seeing you use bryce. I am liking the new nose you did for it, it does have charactor now and I meen that in a good way:D overall a nice ship I am loving that greeble work you are doing on it. cant wait to see those high res pics when they get done rendering... in afew days
Regards Jesh
well I tinkerd with it for a couple hours last night and I cant find it anywhere... looks like we are SOL until we can get max 9 then huh? lol.
nice bridge work, looks good. might I suggest that with the next render that you change the background color to white and possibly put a spot light above pointing down... would make it easyer to see in my opinion. and do you use user or perspective to render? anywho... very nice work. by chance would you have any specs on your ship as in class, armament, if it will have fighters/ jumpers or not and how many? possibly a breif background storie on it? and what is its name and designation?
@freek. nice job on those logos, I think I like the one with the british royal crest better. just seems to have more to it and kinda fills that empty space abit more.
Regards Jesh
Okay, whoa whoa whoaaaa.. THAT is way too dense for what you're doing. Why is it that dense? what purpose? whhhyyyy... You should only need like 1/20th of those polygons for what you have, mate! Learn the fine art of etching with the cut tool before you tessalate or meshsmooth!