Lightsabers, Jedi and Freighters, Oh My!

[evil_genius_180]

OK, so it's just lightsabers right now. The Freighter is still in the design phase. (unless I go with a previously established design, I haven't decided yet.) And I'm still looking for some good Jedi models. (aside from what's over at Sci-Fi 3D.)

Anywho, I decided to redo some of my lightsaber models I made last year. I made them all with primitives the first time around and I didn't optimize my poly usage, it was a mess. Some of them have mesh errors that I didn't know at the time how to change and they all had edges that were too sharp.

I call these my Swords of the Masters series. Though these were all pretty much generic designs, each has been identified with a specific Jedi Master. I just made the Kit Fisto hilt early this morning.




These hilts show how they re-used the same molds to make more 'sabers. With a different control layout, the Ki-Adi-Mundi and Adi Gallia hilts become two new 'sabers. The one modeled after Ki-Adi-Mundi's hilt was used by Anakin in the Battle of Geonosis and the one modeled after Adi Gallia's 'saber was used by Obi-Wan and later Anakin in that same battle.



This one is something I designed myself. It was actually what got me started on making these again. I pulled up some of my old hilts to get the chrome settings for this one and that was when I saw they needed redone. This one is carried by a Jedi from after Palpatine and Vader's Jedi Purge, a character I'm working on for a possible novel or fan fiction.



And some shots of some of the hilts with the blades activated.



I still have one or two more "Masters" series hilts and some other lightsabers to build but I might start on that freighter of which I spoke pretty soon. I'm leaning towards building a YT-1210 freighter (see attached schematic.)

[evil_genius_180]

I did some work with my materials because I wasn't happy with any of them except the chrome one. Plus, I found a nice easy tut. for making a brushed metal texture in Gimp. So, these are the new material and settings for all the hilts, except the chrome one. And they're on a new hilt that I built last night.

[Lee]

well, you know I like em..

[mikala]

I wish TS had radiosity. A nice rad shot to show of all that beautiful chrome!
Wait does TS have the abiltiy to add an image in the reflection channel? If so blur an image and add it to that to fake rad a bit.

[evil_genius_180]

Originally Posted by mikala

I wish TS had radiosity. A nice rad shot to show of all that beautiful chrome!

trueSpace has radiosity, it just takes forever to run a radiosity simulation and looks like garbage when it's done.

Originally Posted by mikala

Wait does TS have the abiltiy to add an image in the reflection channel? If so blur an image and add it to that to fake rad a bit.

I have no idea what you're talking about.


A little something I did just for kicks.

[Kai]

I wish TS had radiosity. A nice rad shot to show of all that beautiful chrome!

erm ts4+ does have Radiosity you know...

Wait does TS have the abiltiy to add an image in the reflection channel? If so blur an image and add it to that to fake rad a bit.

yup it does.

Enviroment Map.. I'd use the Layered Reflectances, then layer Enviroment Map over the Metal Shader.

[Lee]

Nice collection EG.

[evil_genius_180]

Originally Posted by Kai

erm ts4+ does have Radiosity you know...

Yeah, but it sucks. The last time I ran a radiosity simulation in tS 4 I waited a long time for a whole lot of nothing. (maybe I did it wrong?) I've seen other tS users turn out some funky looking images using radiosity in tS. (so, it's not just me. )

Originally Posted by Kai

yup it does.

Enviroment Map.. I'd use the Layered Reflectances, then layer Enviroment Map over the Metal Shader.

Ah, thanks for the suggestion. I don't know a whole lot about environment maps. I might have to try that on my next hilt. I've slowly been improving my materials from one hilt to the next as people have given me suggestions.

[evil_genius_180]

Here's my latest one. It took a bit longer than expected but it was fun building an original one again.

[mikala]

Love the details.

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks.

[Lee]

Yep, very nice detailling. so wheres the freighter...

[evil_genius_180]

It's on backorder.

[evil_genius_180]

Fine, here you go.

It may not look like much, but this is the official start of the freighter. I could've gotten more stuff blocked out but I was jonesing to do some paneling, which took a while to do because I drew the lines for the panels by drawing vertices by hand and then beveled the panels up a few faces at a time. I couldn't do too many at at time or I'd risk panels that were next to each other becoming one panel. Plus, this way, I got some different heights, like they tend to have on SW ships.



BTW, the figure holding the improvised lightsaber (it's about 20 polgyons) is 1.8 meters tall.

[evil_genius_180]

OK, we're ignoring the segmentation and the crappy low-quality texture here. (I was just testing an idea and was too lazy to remove it. :p)

Anywho, I didn't get a lot done today because I spent some time at Wookiepedia getting every decent Falcon pic they had (for the greebles and interiors.) But, I did manage to roughly block out how the engines, cockpit and miscellaneous stuff will look. Of course, that will all be replaced by higher poly stuff and there might be some changes to the configuration (nothing big, though) but you get the idea.

[Lee]

Looks Interesting. The engines look like PVC pipe conectors abit.... Looking forward to see where this goes..