This week I went back into my archives and dug out my TOS Battlestar Galactica work files - they date back to 2003 when I first started this thing.
Over the years I have been gathering every photo I can find of the original 6 foot long studio filming model as well as pictures of the studio scale replica builds people are posting on the Internet.
I now have 750 MB of photos.
This week I decided it was time to fix my model and get back to work on it.
I was stuck for the longest time because I couldn't get the whole front structure of the model to look right - until now that is.
I recently found a simple top down drawing full of measurements published by a guy who spent a little time with the original filming miniature.
Those measurements gave me enough information to rebuild the front structure of my model with a great deal of accuracy.
I was also able to correct some minor scale issues for the rest of the basic structure.
Here are some pics of the basic structure sans any details.
I plan to finish this model over the next 2 years or so.
My books and the 3D models that go with them are going to take priority and this will be a fun side project.
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Posts
Thank you sir!
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Thank you sir! Yes the detail will take a lot of work and you are right it will be worth it in the end.
I added the bridge base and discovered that the slope of the front section was way off so I fixed that.
Then I discovered the angles of the center arms of the landing bays were wrong so I fixed those.
Then I discovered the cutouts for the main thrusters that I originally built were wrong so I totally rebuilt those and added the proper hexagonal grills.
Every time I add a piece of detail it reveals any errors in the base structure - which is good - eventually I will get everything correct.
My goal here is to make the most accurate Galactica possible no matter how long it takes.
Next I will be adding the large base details on the top of the ship.
Once those are done I will move on to the smaller details.
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This week I started back to work adding in the large details on the top of the Galactica so I could check the accuracy of the shell.
So far everything is fitting perfectly - doing lots of measuring on photos and lots of scale calculations to check to make sure.
After adding in all these big details on the top I have an anomaly showing up when I render it from certain angles.
As you can see in the pictures below I have large black spots that are showing up on detail that is stacked more than 1 section high.
I am using a very simple render setup using a skylight and light tracer - these pics are done with the default settings.
I have tried adjusting a whole bunch of settings in light tracer and in the scanline renderer and I can improve the situation, but I can't get rid of it all together.
I have checked the geometry, normals ...etc. and all is good.
As you can see by the last picture it doesn't show up unless you render at a sharp angle.
Anybody else run into this before?
If so were you able to find a solution?
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I'm doing my best to make this as accurate as possible, but some of the pictures I have of the original model are a little bit blurry.
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