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3Da history of space fighters

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  • SchimpfySchimpfy396 Posts: 1,632Member
    that, i am afraid is one of my handwavium points. i restricted myself to 5 pieces of handwavium and that is second on the list. sorry about that, somehow by an unexplained method the intake can collect enough hydrogen. that's all there is to it.

    What exactly are your "handwavium points"?
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    Juvat wrote: »
    What exactly are your "handwavium points"?

    i swear i'd already listed them but for clarity here they are
    1. hyperspace(you can't have much of an interstellar war without it)
    2. ultra efficient and unrealistically powerful bussard ramjets(somehow i can get enough gas into the intakes because it must be done for the ramjets to work properly and to avoid problems from the tsiolkovsky equation)
    3. diracium(because a supermaterial that can take huge stresses is needed for protection against particle impacts at high speeds, reliable protection during reentry time after time, surviving the high temperatures near the fusion reactors(not in cintact with the fusing plasma but pretty close). my explanation is that the structure of diracium produces a unique effect where the range of the strong nuclear force is increased slightly, adding superstrength nuclear force bonds to the metal)
    4.acceleration damping(because being crushed when you accelerate isn't very fun. my explanation is a graviton generator that can produce equal and opposite forces to large accelerations)
    5. shielding (almost all sci-fi s have it and with some form of plasma window type device it may infact be possible)

    it's not absolutely true to reality but most sci-fi has more than 5 pieces of handwavium, even some fairly hard sci fi.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    didn't get a chance to do any work this weekend. old computer did something weird and i now suspect i may have had a virus, tried several scanners but found nothing. i'm still trying to work out what's going on with the "old girl". anyway a quick favour to ask of you all, where might a find a flat on high res pic(for texturing, seamless is preferable but i can make it seamles myself under certain circumstances) of a dirty submarine hull. it's easy enough to find pics of rusting/ dirty subs but they all show large curved sections of the hull(i can't eliminate this curvature so those pics would be mo good for texturing). or alternatively does anyone know of settings in blender to produce a good procedural texture which looks something like that. the sort of thing i am meaning is shown below but it's shown on a hull from a distance so i can't use it.
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    similar to these but perhaps a little dirtier than the last two
    thanks
  • CoolhandCoolhand289 Mountain LairPosts: 1,298Member
    why not have a shuffle around in here and see what you can find, combine different textures if you can't find the one you want. http://www.cgtextures.com/
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    thanks, i'll check it out.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    damn, so long since i've done anything to the model, so many things to sort with old computer(still not all dealt with). anyway i can provide some new pics of the fighter, showing the minor changes i made since the last image. toying with the idea of attaching (a more detailed version of )the old gatling laser to the nose, thinking i may preserve the difference between a MK III lacking that gun and the MK IV with it. i alterd some parts so there should not be the funny shading upon blender import, the latest model has yet to be imported so i do not yet know if the changes(just broke up some shapes with extra lines, nothing visibly different unless you look at all the edges) will help. i put the "DANGER RAMJET INTAKE" labels on the secondary motor's intakes, they appeared too big afterwards so i changed the shape of the rear end of the labels. model is shown here in space flight configuration(final pic in atmo entry configuration).
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    inside work coming soon
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    ok, so about to start on the interior. now please don't rant about what should and shouldn't be in there, what i wanted to ask about was the internal structure. you see the metal surfaces inside of the fuselage and inside the cockpit are a bit featureless and i thought i should add some beams, panels and such. can i have some suggestions on the sort of panels to use, types of beams, best shapes and generally how to make the large flat surfaces less boring and more realistic?
    thanks

    p.s. i've posted the best images of it up to now on my new 3d modelling blog
    http://sendinthejagdpanther.blogspot.co.uk/
    blogspot does something funny to the grey colour if the hull when placed against the sky background
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    sorted out my old computer, should be back to work with this tomorrow or saturday.
    still would appreciate suggestions on inner structure, what shape of panels, positioned where, and the blasted shielding unit(still haven't worked that one out).

    have had some ideas about other craft also. my new interceptor will be carrying probably 4 hellhounds, 1 kks and a number of personnel shuttles(these double in place of escape pods). i haven't got any 3d or sketches showing basic plans yet, but my shuttle will be a low delta winged craft with a sort of tail hanging from the back(not for tail planes, probably best shown in a picture), the kks still following my H foil idea with some bulky matter/antimatter tanks on the rear. the new interceptor should have a forward section a bit like galatica but much smaller. connected to a rear unit with several engines arranged on supports and large heat radiators that can be folded in to protect them in combat. the escape shuttles will be in bays on the forward section with one at the rear incase engineering is separated from the front by battle damage, fighters in small bay on the underside of the forward section. one or two large turrets with several small defensive ones, bridge buried deep inside the structure. contemplating a spinal mounted "super weapon". problem with this is that for effective anti capital ship warfare in my verse you need relativistic kinetic projectiles, there is no way that a "shell" can reach these speeds in a barrel under 100m long so any use of a rail gun here will merely speed up a missile to a tiny fraction of it's full possible speed before a rocket motor on the missile kicks in. that almost makes said gun unnecessary. unsure where the kks will be attached.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    new shield generators complete. all i need to fit now is life support and the control panel, plus a few more fuel tanks if there is space.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    cockpit work...
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    and shielding COMPLETE!
    circles on the wall at the rear are vents to air recycling units. sorry to all who protested it but i'm still putting some STRIPPED DOWN pilot facilities for long missions in the rear of the fighter. have been making more small geometric alterations to avoid that annoying weird shading effect after blender import. also checked to see if my fuselage piece was a solid group. it seems to be so which helps further avoid shading nasties.
    i wanted to ask you all:
    what next? when this is complete should i start KKS or personnel shuttle? p.s. might be busy over christmas so won't be fully starting work on those till early jan. hellhound should be complete before or shortly after christmas day. once finished fell free to ask for pictures of any part that interests you.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    don't know if others know this yet but i found a little "trick" in sketchup. where i get those nasty shading errors(on faces with edges that are sharply angled to other faces sharing that edge) they can be almost entirely cured by adding an internal offset to the face of perhaps 0.1 cm. i'll post some renders when i transfer today's work onto my new computer in a few hours. it won't look hugely different to last time though.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    i now THINK i have most of those blasted weird shading bits cleaned up(radiator flaps and rear fuselage are nearly perfect now):
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    however some of the dodgy geometry on the sides of the fuselage next to the cockpit is still being quiet stubborn.
    shown below is the "wire frame" of that region from which anyone with enough knowledge may be able to spot the exact offending polys/tris.
    hhounddmesh2.jpg
    hhounddmesh.jpg
    i had to add some of the messy looking lines to try and reduce the problem but it is still not gone.
    can anyone PLEASE suggest what types of shapes to use to get rid of the fuselage shading errors?
    104056.jpg104057.jpg
  • CoolhandCoolhand289 Mountain LairPosts: 1,298Member
    like i think i've said before, when I predicted you'd have these very issues once you got the model into a proper render, you don't have enough detail in your base mesh to carry the amount of modelled detail you've put into it. It will take an awful lot of work to fix it at this point, randomly shotgunning it by cutting more lines is not a solution. as we've talked about before its no good having details on what are meant to be curved surfaces when you don't have enough data to accurately approximate that curve, its always going to look rough.

    you need to learn how to model clean meshes, you need to learn how meshes and smoothing actually work together, or you will always have this issue, aside from smoothing errors, everything else also now looks too soft as the smoothing is smooshing all the sharpness out of it.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    Coolhand wrote: »
    you need to learn how to model clean meshes, you need to learn how meshes and smoothing actually work together,
    can you please explain how to do that, or give me link to a good tut.

    also
    everything else also now looks too soft as the smoothing is smooshing all the sharpness out of it.
    please point out where you have noticed this problem, which bits of the model. other than (perhaps)the wheel centres and the (certainly) the nose fuselage section i thought the smoothing was good.

    thanks
  • CoolhandCoolhand289 Mountain LairPosts: 1,298Member
    SF, i'm sorry but you're going to have to figure this out on your own, mostly, its far too much to go into in a forum post, theres all kinds of approaches, techniques and methods too.

    This mesh is a dead end, you didn't start off with enough geometric detail to properly describe curves, so all the detail is conforming to a very rough form, I'm surprised you're not having more problems, mysterious crashes etc. its looking untidy, unclean. You can make shapes, sure, and some fairly complicated stuff, but you need to learn how to make them right.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    i tweaked the mesh a bit more last night. there now only seem to be two outstandingly bad surfaces(both of which i should be able to fix tonight). pics are shown. i did this by "subdividing", sketchup contains no subdivision facility but i added in lines on horizontal and vertical planes using intersection. it's helped a bit.
    p.s. as such a great 3d modeller can you see from these pictures that(for example) the circular cross section of the nose has only 24 sides?
    helllhoundsmooth.png
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    thanks
    104073.png
  • SchimpfySchimpfy396 Posts: 1,632Member
    Amateur artists can see the segmentation throughout your model.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    Juvat wrote: »
    Amateur artists can see the segmentation throughout your model.
    can you point out where or is it truly everywhere? i suppose i just don't know what i'm looking for there, please clarify. thanks
  • MartocticvsMartocticvs444 Posts: 524Member
    Why not post some clean wire shots (ie no textures) and then maybe people can provide some suggestions on which areas would have benefited from higher geometric detail.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    Why not post some clean wire shots (ie no textures) and then maybe people can provide some suggestions on which areas would have benefited from higher geometric detail.
    thanks for the tip, pics below(all linked from my blog)
    admiral+peck+class+mk+viii+version81ve102.jpg
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    i can provide more for any particular area should they be helpful. earlier pictures in the thread show where particular issues are once imported to blender, producing wireframes in blender is a bit harder and they are less clear to look at than these sketchup ones.
    thanks
  • StarriggerStarrigger477 Posts: 702Member
    Wow, a lot of detail in the Sketchup model, however most of your polys are wasted on what should be an applied texture. the areas that need the additional poly count is in the actual structure of the ship, here is an example:

    tute06.jpg

    when looking at the two cylinders in Sketchup they look acceptable, however when I render them in Kerk the one on the left is clearly segmented while the one on the right is showing improvement.

    tute05.jpg

    The cube is just that, a cube with a material applied and then manipulated in Kerk before it was rendered, I could have done this all in the geometry of the model but it would have cost a lot of polys.

    You will need to determine for yourself where the detail is needed, but a good thought to keep in mind is that the closer the camera is to something or the larger it is in the scene the more detail it will require.

    For example the small round detail in the inset of the cylinders looks fine, segment wise on both images (the left is a 24 segment extruded circle while the right one is a 48 segment extruded circle.)

    Also keep in mind that in the real world, there are no "knife blade" corners. You will need to round them off. An example of this is the "Intakes" of your engines.

    Hope this helps some.

    Steve
    Come on over to my place CGI Worlds
  • SchimpfySchimpfy396 Posts: 1,632Member
    I've never used Sketchup, but that was an excellent post, Starrigger. That should make it very easy to understand for him. :thumb:
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    Starrigger wrote: »
    Wow, a lot of detail in the Sketchup model, however most of your polys are wasted on what should be an applied texture. the areas that need the additional poly count is in the actual structure of the ship, here is an example:

    tute06.jpg

    when looking at the two cylinders in Sketchup they look acceptable, however when I render them in Kerk the one on the left is clearly segmented while the one on the right is showing improvement.

    tute05.jpg

    The cube is just that, a cube with a material applied and then manipulated in Kerk before it was rendered, I could have done this all in the geometry of the model but it would have cost a lot of polys.

    You will need to determine for yourself where the detail is needed, but a good thought to keep in mind is that the closer the camera is to something or the larger it is in the scene the more detail it will require.

    For example the small round detail in the inset of the cylinders looks fine, segment wise on both images (the left is a 24 segment extruded circle while the right one is a 48 segment extruded circle.)

    Also keep in mind that in the real world, there are no "knife blade" corners. You will need to round them off. An example of this is the "Intakes" of your engines.

    Hope this helps some.

    Steve
    thanks. i'll get started increasing the polys/detail of all the curved areas.
  • SchimpfySchimpfy396 Posts: 1,632Member
    This has been said already, but what the heck: You NEED to start from scratch. This situation is a perfect example of why and trying to fix the model properly will be very, very difficult. Stay with the design if you want...whatever. I would highly caution against just adjusting the current model.
  • MartocticvsMartocticvs444 Posts: 524Member
    OK what I see there is pretty common on people's early meshes, in my experience. Experience tells you that most of the weight in terms of the poly count come from the fine details you add later on, so you can afford to add more detail to your base mesh to ensure it looks smooth, and use fewer on the details which will rarely be seen up close. It's all a balancing act. Whatever level of detail you are going for, you want it to be consistent across the whole model. So in this example, the cylindrical elements of your base mesh ideally needed to have at least double the number of segments, possibly triple for the largest parts.

    You're also quite vicious in poly reduction from areas of relatively high geometric detail to those of low detail. The 'best' example of that is on the stern where you have a mass of triangles fanning out from a single point. Collections of triangles like that will often result in unpleasant smoothing artefacts. Ideally, reductions in the number of poly loops should be done in such a way that you are only using quads (the occasional tri is ok depending on the surrounding topology - avoid them in curved parts of the mesh though as they will introduce an unnaturally hard shift in shading).

    Modelled in detail such as markings and the like can be fine, but if you have any issues in your underlying mesh, such as poorly defined ngons (ie non-planar) you are going to get some wobbly results. Either consider doing the markings via textures, or alternatively, to avoid altering the underlying mesh (you could introduce smoothing artefacts by having some very skinny polys), you could take a copy of the polys where the marking will be, extrude them out by a tiny amount and cut your markings into these, deleting the surplus. Use whatever compositing properties are available to you to set the markings to not cast shadows, and you won't be able to tell the difference, AND you will have a neater (and more poly-count efficient) mesh as a result.

    I would spend some time building some simple practice models to learn about the importance of poly flow and some of the basic techniques needed to adapt poly density to the different topological needs of your models.
  • CoolhandCoolhand289 Mountain LairPosts: 1,298Member
    Juvat wrote: »
    This has been said already, but what the heck: You NEED to start from scratch. This situation is a perfect example of why and trying to fix the model properly will be very, very difficult. Stay with the design if you want...whatever. I would highly caution against just adjusting the current model.

    Spacefighter, you see... i'm not the only one saying this... you basically need to rebuild the entire model at this point, it went wrong right at the start, its unfixable, your ambition has far exceeded where you can push this model. I think your ambition basically exceeds your skillset as a whole at this point.

    really, I think you could be pretty good at this, with practice. but compared to professional, or skilled amature you're not there yet by a long way. You tell me i'm a great modeller, there are lots of great modellers here, yet you don't seem listen to me or anyone else. You don't need to pay anyone compliments like that, we will help you all the same, but you must be willing to listen - thats the greatest compliment that you can pay to someone who comments on your work.

    There's some excellent advice in the posts above, but there's a lot you're only going to pick up through experience, and that will take a while, if you do the following you will get there quicker than if you start another sketchup fighter, or continue working on this one.

    - stop working on this mesh (again).

    - make your next model in blender, and don't build a spacefighter, build something from the real world and really make it look like the real thing, this will help educate you to how a real machine would actually look, rather than the rough approximation of a machine you have here. you could build a real jet, but forget that because it could take even a skilled artist weeks to recreate in decent, realistic detail. Begin much, much smaller, like the pilots sunglasses, or joystick or something, or something completely unrelated. Maybe something you have a real physical version of - a phone, a games console or something - re-create every detail, every curve you can see. remember, the underlying structure of your mesh (Thats the topology and flow martok is talking about) has a massive influence on how your surfaces will react to lighting and rendering systems.

    - Meshwise, keep everything clean, we like quads, renderers don't like all the funky shapes and odd intersections littering your wireframes, simply booleaning a hole or a shape in something is not going to give a clean result, ever.

    - Not everything needs to be booleaned together, its perfectly acceptable (in the right circumstances) and preferable to have one shape simply intersect with another.

    - post wires more often, we will help you if we see you're going wrong, you can learn more from experience.

    I think if you carry on with this one, not only will you hold yourself back, but people will simply lose interest in what your doing, up to you though....
  • Knight26Knight26192 Posts: 838Member
    There is nothing I can add that no one else hasn't already said. But, there is no shame in starting from scratch again, we have all done it, and been better off for it.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    DAMN! i wish i had known that the base mesh's lack of detail was the problem all along. and booleaning(in sketchup terms intersection) everything together was something i had done here expecting it to prevent these issues arising. trying some blender imports far earlier would have been a good idea to. would i be right in thinking that the parts of the mesh with the worst topology are the rear end, the underside wing roots, the engine pods and the primary intakes? if i deleted all of them and completely reworked those areas would it lead to an overall good mesh? i'm a bit afraid to completely scrap the mesh, it just doesn't seem natural to me but would completely redoing those areas solve most of my problems?
  • MaxxRushMaxxRush180 Posts: 168Member
    DAMN! i wish i had known that the base mesh's lack of detail was the problem all along. and booleaning(in sketchup terms intersection) everything together was something i had done here expecting it to prevent these issues arising. trying some blender imports far earlier would have been a good idea to. would i be right in thinking that the parts of the mesh with the worst topology are the rear end, the underside wing roots, the engine pods and the primary intakes? if i deleted all of them and completely reworked those areas would it lead to an overall good mesh? i'm a bit afraid to completely scrap the mesh, it just doesn't seem natural to me but would completely redoing those areas solve most of my problems?

    IMO, you'd be far better off to, as others have said, start again from scratch. It's not a big deal, and people here have *all* done it before. There's times where it's just better in the long run to do that. I've rebuilt the Honorverse pinnace from scratch twice (for a total of three builds), and the Fearless Star Knight class heavy cruiser has also been rebuilt twice, and I've been working on these and other Honorverse ships/weapons for at least seven years.

    I did the same thing with physical model rockets way back when I used to build and fly them. Not with kits (although occasionally, I would buy several of a kit and use the previous as a learning experience for the next one), but with scratch-built scale models. There's a point where you figure there's no helping it, and you just have to do it. Sure, it seems like a waste of time, and you might not want to throw away all that you've already done, but what you do is use it as a learning experience. Others have pointed out where you made mistakes - use what they've said to make Ver 2.0 even better than Ver 1.0.
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    for a better ver2.0 what do you suggest i do to it geometry wise?
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