I really like everything about this...except one teensy weensy thing. The deflector just kind of kills it for me in the front view. I can't think of what to recommend as changes because everything I'm coming up with in my head ruins it in other views. Of course, that's just my opinion.
I really like everything about this...except one teensy weensy thing. The deflector just kind of kills it for me in the front view. I can't think of what to recommend as changes because everything I'm coming up with in my head ruins it in other views. Of course, that's just my opinion.
The OpenGL render of the front-view isn't quite as flattering because it lacks the luminous bands, but you're also not wrong. It's never going to look particularly outstanding from that angle and it's certainly not as interesting as some of the other Starfleet deflector designs out there.
Look, I have been doing 3D modeling of some form or another for 16 years (started in 1998 with trueSpace3). It's been my primary hobby ever since I picked it up. I went to art school, with an animation (i.e. 3D) concentration for five years, part of which was spent interning at a game company as part of its art department. I then went on to work in the game industry full-time for six years (before getting out because the working conditions of the game industry are stupid and it was sapping my energy for the hobby aspect of 3D work).
My point in saying all of this is that what I "can do" is purely and entirely a product of time invested (and I'm a firm believer that all skill is acquired; "innate talent" is an excuse) and learning from people around me during that time.
And, honestly? I don't even think I'm all that good. I look at the work someone like tobiasrichter does and feel equal parts dismay and awe. He is so fast and his final product is so good that it just boggles my mind. But from what I can tell, he has much the same story as I do -- plus 10 years or so. Every time I remind myself of that, I feel a little bit better.
That's the beauty of forums like SFM or F3D (and I heartily recommend becoming an active, contributing member of as many 3D communities as you can stomach!) -- they provide a great realm not only to show your own stuff and get directed feedback, but also to see what other people are doing and ask questions about how they do it and to teach others what you know. The greatest test for whether or not you know something comes when you try to teach it to someone else.
Whenever you see something that amazes you, fight the part of you that says, "Damn, I wish I could do this" and embrace the part that asks, "How did they do that and how can I learn to do it too?" That is the only real secret and that is how you get better.
Per request by Judge Death. and xumucane, here's a quick video showing how face snapping works. No sound or narration (or screen notation showing hotkeys! ... I should really figure out a solution for this, at least), but hopefully it gets the basic point across!
I also have a 40ish minute video I recorded of how I did the multi-resolution subsurf stuff on the nacelle that I'll encode overnight and upload tomorrow. After about the first 5, you'll probably get the basic idea and be able to shut it off.
Here's the 45-minute video showing the actual multi-resolution subsurf process for the nacelle that I did last night.
Definitely watch in 720p, fullscreen for maximum clarity. It's way too easy to lose some of the detail without it, and because it doesn't have the hotkeys displayed, clarity's even more important.
I was wondering what happened when you began to convert the circle to an oval. I noticed a lot of numbers appear on the selected verts. What was that?
If you look in the Properties bar, right around 0:40, I'm turning on "Edge Length" in the "Mesh Display" roll-out. I'm doing this to see how tall I make the window. By default, it shows the lengths of all selected edges, but when you make changes to a mesh, it will also show the lengths of edges you're changing, as was the case here.
Just before turning on Edge Length, I selected the top and bottom vertex of the circle and split the face by joining them with an edge (hotkey J), giving me an edge that represented the window height.
Are the radial spars going to be permanently attached to the ship and the wedges just slide in? It's be cool to see this throughout the development both with and without the wedges in place.
Please do! If there are any issues you encounter, don't hesitate to let me know. Also, feel free to request more. I can't promise I'll get to them right away, but I'm always happy to field requests.
Are the radial spars going to be permanently attached to the ship and the wedges just slide in? It's be cool to see this throughout the development both with and without the wedges in place.
Yep! The spars have common "trunks" that hook into each module -- power conduits, turbolift tubes, corridors, etc. -- but they are an integrated part of the ship's structure, fictionally. They're separate objects on the model for ease of construction.
Everything's now frozen and optimized! That means it's time to start cutting! My first stop was the large Spectre fighter catapult bay. I decided to make this an open-air bay rather than two separate conduits to give maintenance crews easier access to a craft on one side or the other, allow for common feeds (fuel, munitions, etc.) to be housed in the midline and service both catapults, etc. The (eventual) doors will be "garage door"-style segmented doors, like those on the main shuttlebay of the Galaxy class.
Here's a quick viewport render of the frozen bridge module, too.
Inspired by Martocticvs, I spent some time yesterday fooling about with lighting and tone mapping with my Ambassador as a guinea pig to figure out the workflow for that. The results are pretty cool! I then continued working on the Spectre bay interior. The exterior spine needed more interior representation, and the bay was cavernous enough that it felt like it needed more structural support, so I continued the spine's structure into the bay as a sort of aqueduct-like shape. This still allows crews to easily flit from one fighter to the other, but makes the ship a bit more sturdy.
All of this is still light by one external point light and one emissive "fill" plane, with a very small amount of the AO pass added in. The rest of the illumination is due to the tone mapping, which I am just so excited about. I'm actually going to ditch everything but the single point light, which I'm going to convert into a "sun" (think "infinite" or "distant" light) light. With tone mapping, that should be all that it needs and it should make the resulting images much richer.
The ship is looking good. The bridge module reminds me of one or two I've done in the past. The lighting for the bay is a definite improvement over the previous lighting, which was too dark.
Started adding detail to the modular wedges, in the form of Deck 3's windows!
The windows and rooms are a bit more complex than on my Ambassador. There, the windows were just cut-outs in the hull, with full-emissive UV-mapped texture boxes behind them. This time around, the windows have two polygon layers of actual "glass" that includes a slightly glossy surface. The rooms are still UV mapped boxes, but the shader is more complex: the "top" of the box is full emissive, but the rest of the room is a mixture of diffuse with emissive hotspots. In other words, the rooms are not just providing light, they're also being lit this time. Should make for somewhat more realistic looking interiors...not that you'll usually see anything this close-up anyway.
I also did away with my old lighting rig and have gone to a single "sun" lamp model now, with all of the fill light provided by indirect bounce and tone mapping.
These panels will end up being dark, dark gray once they're textured, with some light gray trim. See the paintover several posts back for a clearer idea.
Of course, had I filleted the corners first, then extruded and beveled, I would've saved myself a lot of trouble! The next three panels took a total of only fifteen minutes.
Pushed through to finish out the various panel blocks for the modules and put the windows into the deck 6 sub-modules.
Here's an OpenGL shot of what the modules look like without their sub-modules plugged in:
Speaking of escape pods, ever consider making the whole bridge module an escape module? I did that concept on the Hephaestus for the landing section, the main control section could do an escape to orbit if the lander were disabled on the surface of a planet. In space it would be even easier to make the command section it's own escape pod. Your command module practically looks like a small ship in it's own right as is.
Speaking of escape pods, ever consider making the whole bridge module an escape module?
Starfleet bridges are designed to be modular to begin with, presumably to be replaced at a starbase with an upgraded version or some such. I wouldn't be surprised if this also included some kind of emergency break-away mechanism that made it a large escape pod.
I always thought the modules were the entire segment.
They are! There are two levels of modularity at play here.
The idea is that you'd have a number of prefab module wedges that sit around ready to be picked up by a starship as-needed. They're fully self-contained, so basically they could just sit floating in space near a starbase and a ship could swing by, dock with one, and head out on its mission.
Some modules are going to be dramatically different than others, necessitating a completely different interior structure than other modules. But not all of them! Some modules may not need any large structural changes, but only smaller mission-specific components swapped out. Perhaps you want four module types to all contain living quarters. That's where the sub-modules come in. They're designed to be pulled out and plugged in by a starbase (or other drydock facility) to create the prefabs the ships ultimately use.
From a modeling POV, it also lets me change the superficial components of each module without too much hassle.
The hull would have to be pretty thin around the round inset windows, since there's not much space between the top of them and the lip of the insets. Other than that, it's looking great.
The hull would have to be pretty thin around the round inset windows, since there's not much space between the top of them and the lip of the insets.
All of the hull plating is at least 30cm thick (consistent with TNG TM), though there are places where it ends up being basically double that due to the paneling. The portholes only really get the benefit of the paneling hull thickness, though one might postulate that those panels are ablative in nature and, when blown off, there's another 30cm-thick window inset. No, it's not on the model.
Windows and paneling (and "shield grid reinforcements") on the ventral module surface. That blank flat area between the Deck 10 windows and the sort of square-bracket-shaped paneling will be home to the ventral phasers and banks of escape pods.
Does the rear hull have impulse engines? With the galaxy class design starfleet seemed to be trending towards designs that could separate and operate independently so both section's needed impulse engines.
All of the hull plating is at least 30cm thick (consistent with TNG TM), though there are places where it ends up being basically double that due to the paneling. The portholes only really get the benefit of the paneling hull thickness, though one might postulate that those panels are ablative in nature and, when blown off, there's another 30cm-thick window inset. No, it's not on the model.
Ah, I see. It's probably just one of those things where it looks thin, due to the size of the ship. I'm used to building ships a wee bit smaller than this one. So, what did you do, add up all of the numbers of the hull layers? I was looking at the TM and I couldn't find 30 cm, but I found all of the numbers for the different layers.
Does the rear hull have impulse engines? With the galaxy class design starfleet seemed to be trending towards designs that could separate and operate independently so both section's needed impulse engines.
They started going this way, but then seem to have backed off from it. Intrepid and Sovereign both don't really show evidence of secondary impulse engines, for example. Prometheus obviously does, but it follows such a radically different design paradigm anyway.
Coro only has the pair of impulse engines. Her modularity is embodied in her saucer segments, rather than the saucer/stardrive pairing.
Ah, I see. It's probably just one of those things where it looks thin, due to the size of the ship. I'm used to building ships a wee bit smaller than this one. So, what did you do, add up all of the numbers of the hull layers? I was looking at the TM and I couldn't find 30 cm, but I found all of the numbers for the different layers.
I sure did.
You actually have to read it back-and-forth a few times, comparing it with the diagram provided, in order to figure out the exact structure, but it looks like this:
For Coro, I just rounded it to 30cm for easier modeling. Typing 0.3047 each time I extruded something seemed like a huge pain in the ass.
Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. That's what I do when I have to keep using the same number over and over and it's not a tool that remembers the setting from the previous time it was used.
Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. That's what I do when I have to keep using the same number over and over and it's not a tool that remembers the setting from the previous time it was used.
It isn't that remembering it would be hard, but rather than it's a much more unfriendly number to work with.
"What's half the height of the hull panels?" "15cm." "What's one third?" "10cm."
vs
"What's half the height of the hull panels?" "Uh....15.235cm?" "What's one third?" "Oh, piss off, I'll just use 30cm!"
Posts
There isn't really any visual progress here, but the modules and modular connectors are all UVed, frozen, and optimized now.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
That said, that's what Dauntless -- the only purpose-built slipstream ship in canon -- had for a deflector, so that's why it's shaped the way it is. Kind of an intrinsic part of the design.
You can!
Look, I have been doing 3D modeling of some form or another for 16 years (started in 1998 with trueSpace3). It's been my primary hobby ever since I picked it up. I went to art school, with an animation (i.e. 3D) concentration for five years, part of which was spent interning at a game company as part of its art department. I then went on to work in the game industry full-time for six years (before getting out because the working conditions of the game industry are stupid and it was sapping my energy for the hobby aspect of 3D work).
My point in saying all of this is that what I "can do" is purely and entirely a product of time invested (and I'm a firm believer that all skill is acquired; "innate talent" is an excuse) and learning from people around me during that time.
And, honestly? I don't even think I'm all that good. I look at the work someone like tobiasrichter does and feel equal parts dismay and awe. He is so fast and his final product is so good that it just boggles my mind. But from what I can tell, he has much the same story as I do -- plus 10 years or so. Every time I remind myself of that, I feel a little bit better.
That's the beauty of forums like SFM or F3D (and I heartily recommend becoming an active, contributing member of as many 3D communities as you can stomach!) -- they provide a great realm not only to show your own stuff and get directed feedback, but also to see what other people are doing and ask questions about how they do it and to teach others what you know. The greatest test for whether or not you know something comes when you try to teach it to someone else.
Whenever you see something that amazes you, fight the part of you that says, "Damn, I wish I could do this" and embrace the part that asks, "How did they do that and how can I learn to do it too?" That is the only real secret and that is how you get better.
Remember Egoyan's rules:
::gets off soapbox::
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
I also have a 40ish minute video I recorded of how I did the multi-resolution subsurf stuff on the nacelle that I'll encode overnight and upload tomorrow. After about the first 5, you'll probably get the basic idea and be able to shut it off.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
Definitely watch in 720p, fullscreen for maximum clarity. It's way too easy to lose some of the detail without it, and because it doesn't have the hotkeys displayed, clarity's even more important.
Really need to look into OSD for hotkeys...
If you look in the Properties bar, right around 0:40, I'm turning on "Edge Length" in the "Mesh Display" roll-out. I'm doing this to see how tall I make the window. By default, it shows the lengths of all selected edges, but when you make changes to a mesh, it will also show the lengths of edges you're changing, as was the case here.
Just before turning on Edge Length, I selected the top and bottom vertex of the circle and split the face by joining them with an edge (hotkey J), giving me an edge that represented the window height.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
Are the radial spars going to be permanently attached to the ship and the wedges just slide in? It's be cool to see this throughout the development both with and without the wedges in place.
Yep! The spars have common "trunks" that hook into each module -- power conduits, turbolift tubes, corridors, etc. -- but they are an integrated part of the ship's structure, fictionally. They're separate objects on the model for ease of construction.
Everything's now frozen and optimized! That means it's time to start cutting! My first stop was the large Spectre fighter catapult bay. I decided to make this an open-air bay rather than two separate conduits to give maintenance crews easier access to a craft on one side or the other, allow for common feeds (fuel, munitions, etc.) to be housed in the midline and service both catapults, etc. The (eventual) doors will be "garage door"-style segmented doors, like those on the main shuttlebay of the Galaxy class.
Here's a quick viewport render of the frozen bridge module, too.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
All of this is still light by one external point light and one emissive "fill" plane, with a very small amount of the AO pass added in. The rest of the illumination is due to the tone mapping, which I am just so excited about. I'm actually going to ditch everything but the single point light, which I'm going to convert into a "sun" (think "infinite" or "distant" light) light. With tone mapping, that should be all that it needs and it should make the resulting images much richer.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
Started adding detail to the modular wedges, in the form of Deck 3's windows!
The windows and rooms are a bit more complex than on my Ambassador. There, the windows were just cut-outs in the hull, with full-emissive UV-mapped texture boxes behind them. This time around, the windows have two polygon layers of actual "glass" that includes a slightly glossy surface. The rooms are still UV mapped boxes, but the shader is more complex: the "top" of the box is full emissive, but the rest of the room is a mixture of diffuse with emissive hotspots. In other words, the rooms are not just providing light, they're also being lit this time. Should make for somewhat more realistic looking interiors...not that you'll usually see anything this close-up anyway.
I also did away with my old lighting rig and have gone to a single "sun" lamp model now, with all of the fill light provided by indirect bounce and tone mapping.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
This took way longer than it had any right to!
These panels will end up being dark, dark gray once they're textured, with some light gray trim. See the paintover several posts back for a clearer idea.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
Pushed through to finish out the various panel blocks for the modules and put the windows into the deck 6 sub-modules.
Here's an OpenGL shot of what the modules look like without their sub-modules plugged in:
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
They are! There are two levels of modularity at play here.
The idea is that you'd have a number of prefab module wedges that sit around ready to be picked up by a starship as-needed. They're fully self-contained, so basically they could just sit floating in space near a starbase and a ship could swing by, dock with one, and head out on its mission.
Some modules are going to be dramatically different than others, necessitating a completely different interior structure than other modules. But not all of them! Some modules may not need any large structural changes, but only smaller mission-specific components swapped out. Perhaps you want four module types to all contain living quarters. That's where the sub-modules come in. They're designed to be pulled out and plugged in by a starbase (or other drydock facility) to create the prefabs the ships ultimately use.
From a modeling POV, it also lets me change the superficial components of each module without too much hassle.
Thanks!
Spent most of the day on this, other than a break to watch the US vs. Russia hockey game.
There are some mesh errors around the top of the deck 8 windows (the outer-most ones) that I still need to deal with.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
All of the hull plating is at least 30cm thick (consistent with TNG TM), though there are places where it ends up being basically double that due to the paneling. The portholes only really get the benefit of the paneling hull thickness, though one might postulate that those panels are ablative in nature and, when blown off, there's another 30cm-thick window inset. No, it's not on the model.
Windows and paneling (and "shield grid reinforcements") on the ventral module surface. That blank flat area between the Deck 10 windows and the sort of square-bracket-shaped paneling will be home to the ventral phasers and banks of escape pods.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
Ah, I see. It's probably just one of those things where it looks thin, due to the size of the ship. I'm used to building ships a wee bit smaller than this one. So, what did you do, add up all of the numbers of the hull layers? I was looking at the TM and I couldn't find 30 cm, but I found all of the numbers for the different layers.
They started going this way, but then seem to have backed off from it. Intrepid and Sovereign both don't really show evidence of secondary impulse engines, for example. Prometheus obviously does, but it follows such a radically different design paradigm anyway.
Coro only has the pair of impulse engines. Her modularity is embodied in her saucer segments, rather than the saucer/stardrive pairing.
I sure did.
You actually have to read it back-and-forth a few times, comparing it with the diagram provided, in order to figure out the exact structure, but it looks like this:
For Coro, I just rounded it to 30cm for easier modeling. Typing 0.3047 each time I extruded something seemed like a huge pain in the ass.
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog
Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. That's what I do when I have to keep using the same number over and over and it's not a tool that remembers the setting from the previous time it was used.
"What's half the height of the hull panels?" "15cm." "What's one third?" "10cm."
vs
"What's half the height of the hull panels?" "Uh....15.235cm?" "What's one third?" "Oh, piss off, I'll just use 30cm!"
Books: [ Ashes of Alour-Tan | Embers of Alour-Tan ] | Blender Tutorials | Blog