I'm still trying to create the "hero ship" I think I'm going for the nova type look though with a mission specific module and when none is present the support arm can act as an attack sail. I felt that the Enterprise E look of the other saucer had a little too much room and what I an going for is a smaller ship.
I know nothing about your software, but I've never had any success moving stuff along a spline. I tend to wind up with a non-constant movement rate because the frames are not equally distributed. If I'm doing simple forward movement, I just move the ship into starting position at frame 0, change the frame number to my end number, move the ship to its finished position and the program fills in the rest of the frames in between with the proper movement rate. I have no idea if that can be done in Max, though.
Wow, many moons since I have been here last and many a computer issue along the way. Luckily that has given me time to sketch out the perfect plans. I'm going for a different look, sort of like modern, sleek connie style with a cool neck. I intend to fix the error by the airlock, if anyone knows how to smooth or subdivide without making the entire mesh transmorph beyond recognition, that'd be great. :thumb:
Wow, many moons since I have been here last and many a computer issue along the way. Luckily that has given me time to sketch out the perfect plans. I'm going for a different look, sort of like modern, sleek connie style with a cool neck. I intend to fix the error by the airlock, if anyone knows how to smooth or subdivide without making the entire mesh transmorph beyond recognition, that'd be great. :thumb:
I'm working on the preliminary intro scene and was wondering if I could make the ship move along a spline instead of having to use set key?
- sorry, still somewhat of a noob...
Yes you can look in the inbult tuts you just need to constrain the ship to the spline.
Go help, tutorials, in the help menu click animation choose "flying a spacefighter"
Really what it is is setting up a spline as a path then applying the constraint to the ship.
Animation, constraints, path constraint I think.
TUTs might be arranged differently in various max versions too. Im running max2010.
As for that hull smoothing planning the poly density early on would help most but as it sits smoothing it would req a lot of editing. Like mentioned detaching elements of the mesh and applying turbo smooth or the other subdivisoin methods to it would work.
YOU might be able to get away with just selecting and looping all the horizontal splines long the hull and chamfering it. It wont be the prettiest wireframe but it would avoid a rebuild or the major editing. (least to round out that segmentation in the hull.)
Thank you colbmiesta, MadkoiFish, It's an honor to have you in this thread. I'll take that advice and see if I can't try to clean it up a bit. Also, in your fantails/shuttle buts tutorial you mentioned edge looping, how does that work?
Edge looping is part of subdivision modeling. It is hard to fully explain everything involved in subd. Myself I had to self learn how and what works. I have tried many times to write a tut on subdiv but it really is hard to cover all bases and reasons behind what you do. Likely it is just my lacking in skill of putting words to it and arranging my thoughts lol.
Anyhow edge loops basically control the base mesh before subdivision. This image might help explain how I use edge loops and smoothing groups to control a wire.
#1 shows the base mesh without subdiv
#2 shows turbosmooth meshsmooth (whichever max subdivision modifier you prefer)
#3 shows the same mesh with subdivision and smoothing groups set to push all the wires to the edge curve where it is needed. Thus providing a consistent flat surface I can optimize.
#4 shows that object optimized.
SO in this set of images edge loops would be those inset edges dividing the gray from the purple bits. These loops do not change any geometry on the base mesh. But since they are there they affect the curve of the resulting subdivided mesh.
When working in subdiv you have some rules to follow too things like that dividing bar in the deflector will have to be a separate object or modeled very carefully into the subdiv object since objects intersecting a curve at right angles will distort curves. There is more involved but I would search out existing tuts on subdivision. Do not worry about app specific tuts just look for ones with good wire frame step by step work since subdiv is universal in the rules. THERE are some slight differences in what you can do and what you can and cannot get away with between apps. But it is very minute.
example of base mesh with loops on for subdiv
SOme more subdiv examples. They show loops smoothing groups and manual clean up.
TO see full size click the image and drag it to a new tab or view image. The ship wire is a large image 3519X981
See if you can get the blue glow behind the metallic plates, I think that could look cool. I've been trying to wean myself off the 'glow' options on textures (my apologies if you're using something different on the blue deflector variant), instead going for light emission or luminance behind a diffusion layer (a lit surface behind frosted glass, usually), and adding the 'glow' as a bloom effect in photoshop in postproduction which is surprisingly easy to do. The glow option tends to look a little artificial and forced at a high-end scale. The design itself is really nice, though. There's a blockiness to it, but it's handled very well, instead of looking primitive it looks purposeful, which can be difficult to manage. I look forward to seeing how this pans out.
See if you can get the blue glow behind the metallic plates, I think that could look cool. I've been trying to wean myself off the 'glow' options on textures (my apologies if you're using something different on the blue deflector variant), instead going for light emission or luminance behind a diffusion layer (a lit surface behind frosted glass, usually), and adding the 'glow' as a bloom effect in photoshop in postproduction which is surprisingly easy to do. The glow option tends to look a little artificial and forced at a high-end scale. The design itself is really nice, though. There's a blockiness to it, but it's handled very well, instead of looking primitive it looks purposeful, which can be difficult to manage. I look forward to seeing how this pans out.
Thanks I do like the idea of glow placement, that would give it a much better feel.
Okay, so I added the effects to the surface behind the deflector, probably not going to be the final version, I do want to add the frosted glass and I will need to remodel the deflector. Here are some images, question; when I go to videopost and add the output event to be an .avi file, it saves with the starfield, but without the glow effect, anyone know why?
Had some time right before finals to do this quick thing. Three different saucer designs let me know which one you think works best or if I should go in a different direction because I don't think any of them truly look like they work.
Feedback welcome as always.
Hey, back. I've been busy doing other things this summer like cgi for a short amateur film and rendering things for my school's news program I wrote a grant application and if that goes through then I can hopefully have my team commence the news set construction and get some stuff on the air. But I digress, in short, I've been busy and, while my modeling skills have increased, work on the ship has been close to none, I started an interior bridge model although I think I'll hold off on that for a while. While I get to work on that, anyone have suggestions as to what the ship should have?
Posts
OK, I got lost somewhere. Are you still trying alternate ideas for the same ship or are these for different ships in your fleet?
- sorry, still somewhat of a noob...
secondary_hull_1.jpgsecondary_hull_2.jpgsecondary_hull_3.jpgsecondary_hull_4.jpgsecondary_hull_5.jpg
select there are u wanna subdivide in polygon mode detatch it add the subdivide then reattach??
Yes you can look in the inbult tuts you just need to constrain the ship to the spline.
Go help, tutorials, in the help menu click animation choose "flying a spacefighter"
Really what it is is setting up a spline as a path then applying the constraint to the ship.
Animation, constraints, path constraint I think.
TUTs might be arranged differently in various max versions too. Im running max2010.
As for that hull smoothing planning the poly density early on would help most but as it sits smoothing it would req a lot of editing. Like mentioned detaching elements of the mesh and applying turbo smooth or the other subdivisoin methods to it would work.
YOU might be able to get away with just selecting and looping all the horizontal splines long the hull and chamfering it. It wont be the prettiest wireframe but it would avoid a rebuild or the major editing. (least to round out that segmentation in the hull.)
Anyhow edge loops basically control the base mesh before subdivision. This image might help explain how I use edge loops and smoothing groups to control a wire.
#1 shows the base mesh without subdiv
#2 shows turbosmooth meshsmooth (whichever max subdivision modifier you prefer)
#3 shows the same mesh with subdivision and smoothing groups set to push all the wires to the edge curve where it is needed. Thus providing a consistent flat surface I can optimize.
#4 shows that object optimized.
SO in this set of images edge loops would be those inset edges dividing the gray from the purple bits. These loops do not change any geometry on the base mesh. But since they are there they affect the curve of the resulting subdivided mesh.
When working in subdiv you have some rules to follow too things like that dividing bar in the deflector will have to be a separate object or modeled very carefully into the subdiv object since objects intersecting a curve at right angles will distort curves. There is more involved but I would search out existing tuts on subdivision. Do not worry about app specific tuts just look for ones with good wire frame step by step work since subdiv is universal in the rules. THERE are some slight differences in what you can do and what you can and cannot get away with between apps. But it is very minute.
example of base mesh with loops on for subdiv
SOme more subdiv examples. They show loops smoothing groups and manual clean up.
TO see full size click the image and drag it to a new tab or view image. The ship wire is a large image 3519X981
Thanks
Video:
http://www.filedropper.com/deflectorvptest1
Feedback welcome as always.