to be fair you only lose the depth in the third shot, so you swapping it ut for a texture probably won't give you anything except a lower poly count.
Also, as the bridge section, this is an area likely to get close camera passes, so I woudn;t change it. (Though that's mainly because I wish I was half as good!)
I am not texturing anything, it is all physical modeling.
What I refer to are the panels and visual detail at various distances from the model. For my eye the distance shot of the dome it looks messy vs closer in and in relation to other parts of the ship as a whole. Solution could be to alter gaping between panels lower overall height or alter the pattern of the panels.
ATM I am considering loosing some of the panel count and eliminating small panels so it better matches stuff around it. Granted I have a second level of panels to do on the cylinder part.
As for textures it will be all procedurals, I do not even want to attempt unwrapping this thing. Typical rooms and maybe detail objects will get bitmaped and unwrapped but the rest is all going to be projected and use cheater shaders like AO to fake grime etc.
Adding this as I made the cap for another forum figured it might be of interest. Ignore the connie in detail as it is not properly square to the ortho view it was posed for some scene at one point and the zero settings got lost along the way.
Lost of distractions today it seems as I got little done so far. But enough to get a rough test of altered panels and extrusions. These are not as deep and are larger in units also messing with the angles of the extrusions Might not be evident but the upper panel extrusions are a bit taller than lower down.
Stuffed a light inside to sorta show the inner shapes better. ATM it is just render double sided I will add thickness later. Ignore the shadows as the inner grids are hidden allowing light through.
I decided to change these for the relays or what not that is mentioned as going down too often. While I was at it I added some homage to the shapes of the things. Maybe someone will get where they are from. Of course ratios are a bit squiffy as I need to fit them in the hull and not conflict with other internals.
NOW I spent time making these I doubt they will be as clearly seen as this render depicts, you might see just a bit of one or 2 poking up from the hull.
Now there are 4 of these things, least on the one side as you wont see squat from the other. Time to frame that area up but instead I lazed about after dinner so these 2 renders are from then and likely where I will leave this bit of ship as mentioned they wont be sticking out much in the final work.
Some more small alterations and adding normal bump to the main 2 hull mats. Also goofing around with hidden lights that affect gloss only. Thinking of seeing if I can have a shader or map in the lights filter or something so the light isnt just one color. Thought is to replicate the old TOS lighting on the Tholians.
Yest sorta, I have to manually cut everything and detach the bits. I then select it in rows by either poly or vert and sometimes use soft selection. Dents and wrinkles are the same method. Of course you will have to add geometry to the cut areas for it to "peel" I will cut them by had or mesh smooth the area. I usually avoid meshsmooth as it can add a load of edges you have to turn or you get artifacts or it softens up the result too much. Max has a paint deform but I can never get it to be fine enough and to work with my tablet pen so there is no pressure support. Id love for say a deform tool like bomb, where I can set a force to a point near precut sections and have them peel and react accordingly.
In more complex areas the soft selection fails as the selection will "bleed" onto other areas so you have to detach segments and reattach em.
They are sort of fake as it is just gloss ref from a hidden from diffuse light source.
Dunno what sort of trouble I am opening myself for but messing with vertex paint and a blend material. Figure I could use it for scorch marks. I am sure there is probably a more detailed or complex way to do this so I can do more than mix A&B together.
It really needs more geometry than what I am giving it but eh. I do post on things so I am not to worried about it being exact.
Including some full ship renders. I might have a bit too much going on.
Depends the large ship textures I think are what kills my times and the pc being a 4770k. . . . so about a hour I think. give or take what is in scene.
Bit of a chair for debris, might only be a dozen pixels or so but heh. Need the riser on back new mats and those triangle things and it will be done. It is not meant for a interior scene or close up.
An hour isn't bad for the amount of stuff you've got. My PC used to take that with a much more basic ship... that said, I don't model efficiently, so I probably use ten times the number of polys you do, to produce ten times less effective results, but That's why I'm an ideas guy not an execution guy.
It is mostly the texture maps that are killing me and the materials set up. Pretty much anything that is not flat with no reflective properties and not clear glass just chews up the cpu.
Well not really TREK but it will be used in trek stuff so meh.
Decided my old 16k and 10~8k planets are long in the tooth and I am sure people are sick of seeing FLOODED MARS and FLOODED earth or even BLOWN up Future EARTH with various nasty atmospheres.
Started with some of the newer earth imagery with more pixels and quickly found almost all 2d apps your limited to a 30k in any direction limit for canvas. Many will let you work in it then crap a stick when you go to save it. Some even wont open these 21k images I got from the nasa site! heh.
First rough draft as I plan out the land masses.
First continent in
Original file for this was 5.4k wide.
A few renders of it on a globe with atmo. No clouds as the vertex clouds murder render times and well those sorta need redoing. Need to find new cloud data that is not so full of noise, clipping and bad stitching. And well MORE PIXELS!!!
KIM these are all using dodgy displacement, gloss, and reflection maps made from the flat diffuse. Even that is going to need a final grading done to it. I cant do this to the ref files in a batch as they are too large to do without issues. It is also easier to do as a final as I often have to grade parts as I blend and shape them to match them up.
The fires must be horrible. A friend of mine, that's been clamoring for years about wanting to move back to California, is now saying "Yeah, I'm through with California."
Looks good. The 'cleaved' part of the landmass (fault line?) looks like an interesting place to visit.
Well in all the years I have lived here growing up then returning this is the only really bad one. For horrible try Oregon or further east. (Yellowstone comes to mind) Heck Seattle in winter was not much better as almost every house was burning oil (diesel) to heat them so the whole city stank of big rigs idling.
I would worry about the low pay vs high cost of living here. I am only here because of family and I hate snow and ice.
WIP:
That torn area would be like a large rift valley. It is in the northern areas so itll likely be dry and hot. The land mass layout I chose though would be hard to predict what areas would be green. Think of how most of the Americas are green compared to equivalent areas on the same longitude. Looking at it I did a pretty poor job matching those coasts between the continents, first test at a lower rez I think they looked better.
Posts
Also, as the bridge section, this is an area likely to get close camera passes, so I woudn;t change it. (Though that's mainly because I wish I was half as good!)
What I refer to are the panels and visual detail at various distances from the model. For my eye the distance shot of the dome it looks messy vs closer in and in relation to other parts of the ship as a whole. Solution could be to alter gaping between panels lower overall height or alter the pattern of the panels.
ATM I am considering loosing some of the panel count and eliminating small panels so it better matches stuff around it. Granted I have a second level of panels to do on the cylinder part.
As for textures it will be all procedurals, I do not even want to attempt unwrapping this thing. Typical rooms and maybe detail objects will get bitmaped and unwrapped but the rest is all going to be projected and use cheater shaders like AO to fake grime etc.
Adding this as I made the cap for another forum figured it might be of interest. Ignore the connie in detail as it is not properly square to the ortho view it was posed for some scene at one point and the zero settings got lost along the way.
892ft or 272meters long
Stuffed a light inside to sorta show the inner shapes better. ATM it is just render double sided I will add thickness later. Ignore the shadows as the inner grids are hidden allowing light through.
NOW I spent time making these I doubt they will be as clearly seen as this render depicts, you might see just a bit of one or 2 poking up from the hull.
I'll be following along.
Interested in what technique you used for the nacelle damage? Were you manually cutting polys and moving vertexes?
In more complex areas the soft selection fails as the selection will "bleed" onto other areas so you have to detach segments and reattach em.
Dunno what sort of trouble I am opening myself for but messing with vertex paint and a blend material. Figure I could use it for scorch marks. I am sure there is probably a more detailed or complex way to do this so I can do more than mix A&B together.
It really needs more geometry than what I am giving it but eh. I do post on things so I am not to worried about it being exact.
Including some full ship renders. I might have a bit too much going on.
Then elsewhere.
Ignore the colored light wash some how the omnis are not behaving right and spilling through the objects.
Bit of a chair for debris, might only be a dozen pixels or so but heh. Need the riser on back new mats and those triangle things and it will be done. It is not meant for a interior scene or close up.
Final chair
Decided my old 16k and 10~8k planets are long in the tooth and I am sure people are sick of seeing FLOODED MARS and FLOODED earth or even BLOWN up Future EARTH with various nasty atmospheres.
Started with some of the newer earth imagery with more pixels and quickly found almost all 2d apps your limited to a 30k in any direction limit for canvas. Many will let you work in it then crap a stick when you go to save it. Some even wont open these 21k images I got from the nasa site! heh.
First rough draft as I plan out the land masses.
First continent in
Original file for this was 5.4k wide.
A few renders of it on a globe with atmo. No clouds as the vertex clouds murder render times and well those sorta need redoing. Need to find new cloud data that is not so full of noise, clipping and bad stitching. And well MORE PIXELS!!!
KIM these are all using dodgy displacement, gloss, and reflection maps made from the flat diffuse. Even that is going to need a final grading done to it. I cant do this to the ref files in a batch as they are too large to do without issues. It is also easier to do as a final as I often have to grade parts as I blend and shape them to match them up.
I have not started to remap the "dry" zones yet. I also need to source more ridge lines sans the snow caps.
Looks good. The 'cleaved' part of the landmass (fault line?) looks like an interesting place to visit.
I would worry about the low pay vs high cost of living here. I am only here because of family and I hate snow and ice.
WIP:
That torn area would be like a large rift valley. It is in the northern areas so itll likely be dry and hot. The land mass layout I chose though would be hard to predict what areas would be green. Think of how most of the Americas are green compared to equivalent areas on the same longitude. Looking at it I did a pretty poor job matching those coasts between the continents, first test at a lower rez I think they looked better.