I consider the Klingon D7 one of the most beautiful ships in the Star Trek universe. Inspired by REL777's physical model, I decided to tackle this complicated ship. What you see here represents numerous starts and redo's.
The teardrop front structure has been redone 4 times. The top twice. I finally found some very good photos to work from. A certain amount minor things you see here will be redone. But I wanted to start a post.
Enjoy my faltering efforts. This is done in Lightwave.
Edit: Changed /updated the Thumbnail 1/12/2013
Posts
I've see other sites compare drawings of the Connie, with overlays to show differences. I don't think anyone has done that from D-7 to K't'inga yet.
REL777. Would love those photos. Hey your work made me want to be a better artist!
Publiusr. Related to what you said, sometimes you wish that orthos of the ship pieces were posted. Some of the pieces are impossible because they are obscured by something closer to the ortho camera.
I'll try to have another pic up soon. Thanks all.
Surelly will rivalize with one of the bests D7 meshes ever made, which was built by Ebolli to many years ago. :thumb:
Yeah, if you could post the pics, I would be more than happy to start modeling them.
Al
Various Work: U.S.S. Constellation - Matt Jefferies Concept Shuttle
Either way, she's looking good so far! :thumb:
You rang?
Good start, very clean and efficient details. That design is awesome, although there are some very odd shape transitions that seem very daunting for a CG artist, particularly where the neck meets the main hull.
Edit: New front view - removed for image posting
Oh, and the Enterprise (TOS version at least) was a Constitution class not Constellation, wasn't the Stargazer a Constellation? I forget.
... Just ask a moderator to change the title of the thread... there usually nice about it.. unless there not :P
D7 is different class of ship shown on the original series, the K'tinga is the upgrade/refit/new class seen in the movies
About the following render. I want to state up front, that the engines you see were modeled by yours truly, but using EBOLII's engines as a pattern guide in the background. I did this about 8 months ago for fun, and then set it aside never planning to do anything with them. I am using them here only as a temporary placeholder. I use Lightwave and I believe the mesh I used was a Lightwave conversion. Apparently as part of the conversion process the small pipes became very crimped, distorted and crooked. In the rest of the engine, every polygon was tripled and then some. I redrew it, reducing the poly count, tripling only when necessary. Everything you see was redone. No parts were borrowed. However, I want to give credit to EBOLII's work as an inspiration.
For this project, the engines will be redone, following the movie model from the "Undiscovered Country." The rest of the ship is original, with no use of another mesh as a background pattern.
Edit: Removed the image to post others
Edit: Removed image to allow for others.
Shouldn't have. Though I wouldn't be surprised. The geometry on that thing was awful and I had to be real careful not to screw with anything too much as I didn't have the tools back then to ensure that the UVs remained ok. But I never noticed any crumply bits.
M.
I started to detail the neck some.;)
Nah, not at all. It was 10 years ago. Time flies.
I had a look at the UV mapping a few minutes ago....ugh, I'm not sure I could sort out that mess. What I could do is re-lay out the UV's and then regenerate the ambient occlusion maps. That might be where the distortion you're describing is coming from. The geometry itself on the nacelles is actually not bad.
Yours, however, is looking really good. Looking forward to seeing it finished.
Bets of Luck,
M.
It doesn't change the fact that your work was appreciated.
He used the meshsmooth modifier a lot without then checking how the base geometry turned out.
I started thinking about it, and actually I probably have more polys in what you see in the example, than he does. It's nice to get it done with less polys without sacrificing how it looks.
Completely off topic: Just out of curiosity, what is the criteria for SFM Guru and the other designations?
Oh and... Thanks.