Miscellaneous Stuff

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks bro.

I’ve been working on various bits. I added the docking ports. They’re a simplified version of what’s on Enterprise. I don’t ever plan to show them closely enough to justify doing a full detail version. If I do, I can build one that’s higher detail. I also added the RCS thrusters and impulse engines. And, the bridge dome. It still needs the smaller dome on top, but it’s mostly done. Also, I may put a hatch on the bridge, Enterprise has one or two. Though, Enterprise’s bridge is also less curvy, but I can add a section to the back that’s less curvy and put it on there, or just work it into the curves.

[evil_genius_180]

More stuff. This should do it for main structures.

[gmd3d]

the more I see this the more I like .....

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks bro.

[evil_genius_180]

More bits. I’m closing in on being done with the modeling phase of this ship. It’s all small stuff left, which is both a relief and a pain because you can spend more time working on little detail bits than big structures because of the size and intricacy. But, it’s nice to almost be done.

[gmd3d]

great,,,,,,,,, any chance of wire-frames when finished ?

[evil_genius_180]

There's chance, but who knows if it will actually happen?

Seriously, you're probably going to have to remind me about that. I have a bad memory. Also, will Lightwave render wires or do I have to do screen grabs from Modeler?

[evil_genius_180]

Never mind on the wires question, I found my answer. It will, but I don't like how they look, so I'll probably just do the screen grab thing.

More stuff. I added a bunch of sensor/communications things. The NX had these all over it, so I'm doing the same. Ignore the piece of the secondary hull that's intersecting the sensor thing below the impulse engines, I'll be rebuilding that when I finish the secondary hull. Also, I haven't figured out what's up with the overblown white glow on the port dorsal navigation light. Though, that may just be a result of the crappy scene lighting. Still, it shouldn't be happening.

[Starship]

Chris, your work with Lightwave is already looking so good (or even better) as your truespace stuff.
Just the "bodyboard" plataform appears a bit strange there, But I´m sure it will change after you detail it.

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks dude.

Though, I don't know which part you're talking about with the bodyboard remark.


I think this is going to do it as far as modeling on this one. I could add more greebles, but it’s a Trek ship. (not a Borg ship ) One thing I definitely try to avoid doing is over-greebling Federation ships.











Gerard Duffy (AKA Taranis) asked for some wires, so here they are. Lightwave does have a render to wireframe option, but I don’t see anywhere that I can render to a “hidden line” wireframe (where you can’t see the lines on the other side that shouldn’t be visible from the view.) So, I just did some screen shots.











Up next is UV mapping and textures.

[Starship]

Originally Posted by evil_genius_180

Thanks dude.

Though, I don't know which part you're talking about with the bodyboard remark.

It´s under the crystal, where the pylons are connected. Maybe, if it isn´t blocked by the saucer, you can put two torp launchers there.

[evil_genius_180]

Oh, that thing. Yeah, that's not my favorite structure either, but it's as close as I could get to John's drawing. Though, I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. And, it does have torpedo launchers, they're on the back of the "bat ears." Keeping with the style of Enterprise, the torpedo launchers are nothing more than round openings. I also put a couple little hatch things on the bottom that are supposed to be phase cannons. I may put something else down there, or I may not. I'll decide after I do some textures.

[evil_genius_180]

One of the advantages to posting work on the Internet is that you have more eyes on your stuff and people can help you spot mistakes. It was brought to my attention earlier that the impulse engines near the saucer edges are too close to the docking ports. It’s true, the location of the docking port would leave no room for the impulse engine components. Also, there were some windows close to the engines, but I wasn’t worried about those. Nobody said your impulse engine rooms can’t have skylights. However, the docking port was an issue. It was suggested that I move the port. To do that would have required deconstructing and reconstructing much of the saucer section edge, which I didn’t want to do. The easier option was to simply move the impulse engine back. I (very briefly) toyed with the idea of moving the engine back and extending the exterior part forward. This would have worked, but I didn’t like how it would have looked. Instead, I decided to add a 6 meter extension onto the back of the saucer because I knew I could do that seamlessly. So, that’s what I did. This leaves plenty of room for the impulse engine components behind the docking ports.

[evil_genius_180]

This is kind of a mini update, but I want people to know what is going on with this. I’ve begun texturing the ship, which is not an easy process. For starters, I have to teach myself texturing in Lightwave. As with a lot of things, the manual is only kinda sorta useful. It tells me the basic crap about mapping and adding textures, as one would expect from a manual. The book I have is pretty much useless. If it was a real book and not an ebook, I’d probably chuck it in the trash. But, it’s not and it’s forever on my Amazon account.

Anywho, so the challenge here was to get the maps to conform to the hull. In TrueSpace, I couldn’t do this. I had to use flat maps and apply them with plane, cube, sphere and cylinder UV mapping tools. Unfortunately, that’s also what I have in Lightwave, though Lightwave’s tools are much more intuitive. (in some ways) I tried what Lightwave has for UV unrwapping, which is a great method for making maps that conform to the hull contours, and it’s a joke. It makes way too many different parts for the map. I think it creates new parts for everything, even the friggin’ grid lines. So, that wasn’t working. So, I was back to flat maps. This isn’t really an issue, I have used flat maps since I started texturing seven or so years ago and they work fine.

My biggest hurdle with the saucer was making the panels match the contours of the shapes. With a “normal” saucer, I would just create some panels, make them follow a circular pattern, and call it a map. However, the saucer isn’t all circles. The inner parts taper inward into oval shapes and the paneling has to follow those shapes to look good. I started by trying to lay out some lines in Inkscape, (an open source vector graphics drawing program, for those who don’t know) and that went dreadfully. So, I finally decided to try setting up a saucer top in Layout with an orthographic camera above it and I rendered that out to a wireframe. That worked great. I had lines going in the correct pattern. So, I went with a “clean” saucer so as to not have the grid lines, etc. on there. I added lines where I needed them using Band Saw Pro and removed them where I didn’t need them by combining the faces. What I wound up with was a nice grid pattern that follows the contours of the saucer. So, with that I went to work.

In Gimp, (open source Photoshop-type program, for those who don’t know) I loaded up my grid and started using the bucket fill to fill in the panel colors for the spec map. Again, this worked great. After a while, I had my Aztec pattern on there and it came out exactly as I wanted it to. To make sure I got panels where I wanted them in relation to the grid lines, I also rendered a saucer top with the lines and other cuts to a wireframe image and laid that over the top of my grid with an alpha channel. That also came in handy later, when I wanted to us the airbrush tool to go around the grid lines and darken them a bit. So, after a bit of work, I now have my first texture map, for the saucer top. This is a “proof of concept” test and I think it came out great:





I wasn’t sure what specular settings to use, so I downloaded one of Dennis Bailey’s wonderful Lightwave meshes and checked out what he has. It looks kinda poopy in my WIP lighting, but it will look better in some regular scene lighting.

Also, for those who are interested, this ship is going to be named Endeavour. Those who know my body of work know that, when I built the Intrepid, I moved the nacelles back to do a variant that I named Endeavour. This ship will be replacing that one:



For the registry, I won’t be going with that stupid NY-07 crap that I did before. Obviously, there’s an issue there with the NX-01 registry. Prior to the episode Fortunate Son, you just think that refers to the ship’s experimental status, like NX-2000 an NX-74205. Unfortunately, in that episode, they first uttered the words “NX class.” That means that “NX” refers to the ship’s class, not its experimental status. From then on, “NX class” is used frequently and the second ship of the class was “NX-02.” Unfortunately, those are also the only two Starfleet ships in the series to have registry markings. The Intrepid and other Starfleet ships don’t have them. So, you have to guess what the others are. Some people have given the Intrepid the marking NV-01, as I did. As a natural extension, I added “NY-07″ to the Endeavour’s hull. Well, that won’t fly here. The cargo ships on Enterprise had the designation “ECS,” Earth Cargo Ship. IE: ECS Fortunate, ECS Horizon. I’ve decided that the NX class ships are special and other ships have a more standard registry. So, for this ship, I’m going with ESV-34. ESV = Earth Starfleet Vessel. I like that better than ESS (Earth Starfleet Ship) and I think it works great. (34 is my current age, for those who aren’t getting the connection there)

So, that’s what is going on with this. Thanks to anyone who stuck around to actually read this long-winded post.

[Starship]

Just 34? You´re still a young man, don´t worry!
The texture test is looking good, but looks like you must tune the speculars (is it the right word?).

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks. I'll fix all of that when I have the ship in better lighting. Right now, the lighting is so horrible that the specular highlights will look borked no matter what.

[evil_genius_180]

I was going through folders the other day and I found this ship, so I decided to resume work on it. When I was working on it last year, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I’ve learned techniques for doing stuff in Lightwave since then, so I need to rebuild some parts. Up first was the nacelles. There were a lot of horrid errors and yucky parts, so much of the nacelle has been rebuilt. The nacelle body, bussard outside, end cap and RCS thrusters have been redone. The bussard innards, running lights and fins are parts from the old build, since I feel they look OK. Also, many of the materials have been tweaked. I haven’t done anything with the sphere or secondary hull, but expect big changes there as I progress forward.

[gmd3d]

ah I wondered what happened to this great to see it making a return

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks bro. Yeah, I got busy with other stuff, so it got shuffled to the "pits."

[evil_genius_180]

Continuing on. I built the connector between the sphere and engineering section, which includes the nacelle pylons. This is how I’ve always wanted this part to look for this model, and now it does. The only thing left to do is add some grills in the cut-out sections and probably some windows. Now, this ship is considerably smaller than the conjectured scales I’ve seen for the “canon” Daedalus class, so the connector is only one deck. It’s basically a hallway. I’m likely going to model the entire interior for it, as it won’t take long and will be simple. Though, I’m probably going to have to do that with all of the interior spaces, as I’ll have to get close enough to the model that you’ll be able to tell if they’re just textures on a box. Speaking of textures, my 4K texture map for the nacelles holds up nicely at close range, though I knew it would. But, it’s always nice to see it actually happen.







Unfortunately, my free time (as usual) is split between this and gaming, so I don’t know if I’ll do any more with it today. I’ve been playing Mass Effect again, and I’m determined to actually finish the game this time. I’ve never played that game all the way through. But, I’m farther than I’ve been in the past and I’m having a blast.

[evil_genius_180]

I didn’t feel the need to put the rest of the ship in just to show the grills I made for the pylon cut-outs. Besides, the nacelles just cast shadows on them.

[Darrell Lawrence]

Those are some very original looking nacelles there. Me likey!

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks. It was just a crazy idea I had. (wait until I do the impulse engines )

[evil_genius_180]

This is something I’ve been working on for a while now. It’s a Federation ship from the late 24th century, but the original inspiration came from a John Eaves concept drawing for the Enterprise episode The Expanse. This is the drawing I’m talking about:


The ship on the left, ignore the funky looking doughnut thing.

My original intent was to do the ship as John has it drawn, in the Enterprise era, maybe something from the Romulan War. However, after starting it, I decided I instead wanted to do something from a couple centuries later, around the time of the Dominion War. So, I started on a second saucer with a raised center. I was going to do a “normal” secondary hull and a more Enterprise-esque layout. I messed up the saucer and had to start over, which was when I got the idea to combine my idea with the John Eaves design. So, this is what I’ve come up with so far:









Obviously, I’m taking a fair amount of creative license here and making the ship as much my own as I am basing it on John’s sketch, but the basic layout is the same. I’m calling the ship the USS Apollo and it’s a light cruiser. It’s around 300 meters long, 160 meters wide, 41 meters tall and it has 12 decks. The dimensions will likely change a bit, but the 12 decks will remain constant. So, that’s what I have so far. Needless to say, there was quite a bit of work involved in getting that shape to flow the way it does and look like it does. (everything except the warp pylons and nacelles is one piece) Note: the colors are temporary. Everything will get new colors and materials later, these are just for WIP purposes.

[Auditor]

I don't know I kinda like the funky one on the right in a way.

The one on the left is frickin' awesome. I love the NX-01 design. I think this design is really cool.

Love what your doing. The more modern sleek version.

Coming along nicely.

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks dude.

I just don't like Doughnut saucers. John Eaves does, though. However, I've actually thought of doing the ship on the right as an NX-era ship, but sans the gaping hole in the saucer. I do like everything else about it.

[Auditor]

I don't like the doughnut ships either, but that one kinda works. I really like the one on the left more I look at it. Wish I had the modeling skills and time to build it it.

[evil_genius_180]

This is about as far as I made it before I decided to switch to doing a 24th century ship.

(I'd really love to know why the forum compressed that image from 1600X900 to 1280X720 and 1/6 the quality )

[evil_genius_180]

Man, it’s been a crazy week. Busy, busy, busy. And I’m somebody who usually has too much free time.

Anywho, I finally had some time to work on the Apollo. The lack of response to the previous configuration told me it’s not all that popular. A few people commented, most that did said that it looked similar to the Akira-class. While that’s true, I don’t see why it’s an issue. It seems reasonable to me that Starfleet would build more than one ship with a similar layout. After all, there are several canon classes that are the same basic layout as the TOS Enterprise. However, some people seem to have a prejudice when it comes to the Akira and a certain two century older look-alike. If they built a ship that’s in that configuration in the 2150s and another 200 years later, it seems to me that there would be other ships of similar configurations. But, I digress. It’s not like that design was that near and dear to my heart, I just thought it was kind of cool. Though, I sort of lost interest in it, especially since it would have been a nightmare to UV map. However, the effort was not wasted because I was able to try out some different techniques that will be useful in future projects.

So, that ship is gone. I’ve redesigned it:









The only thing I saved from the previous configuration is the nacelles, those didn’t need to be redone. Everything else did. I decided to make the ship a bit more compact and less spindly. The ship is a bit smaller, but should actually have more internal mass due to the configuration. Also, I’m thinking this ship needs a pod, even though I normally don’t do those. I’ll probably install a small weapons pod mid-back-top.

The original idea came from a picture I found on 3D Gladiators of a ship I built years ago. It was a truly dreadful model that I was overly pleased with at the time, but it gave me ideas:





I toyed with the idea of having the nacelles angled upwards like that, but I decided instead to angle them downward, like they were on the first Apollo configuration. I think it looks better that way, with the way the secondary hull is designed.

[Auditor]

Bummer. I really liked the other version, but this design looks good too. Front has a Voyager look.

I dunno there just wasn,'t a lot of posting at all lately.

Haven't heard from a lot of the regulars. Haven't seen a lost from Taranis in a while.