Update 9-19-12. Hi all! Nice to here from everyone again. Been busy making a guitar last year, and now that it's done...
Another 10 fun-filled hours of work and another greeble/nurnie is done. I can see why not many people have attempted to model this beast! Every nurnie/greeble is a 3D model in its own right! And there are 1000's of them on the big-G.
After working on this Battlestar over many hours, I can see patterns where the model maker re-used the same plastic kit parts over and over. This makes 3D modelling enormously easier rather than trying to make meshes from scratch each time. I made 3 grill meshes just once at the beginning, and modify them in various ways and reuse them over and over, just like the physical modellers did on the studio scale model.
For example here is a pic of the top engine greeble/nurnie
And this is the bottom engine version:
The top version can be made by modifying the bottom version by cutting away the top and sticking a bunch of polys in the hole plus a few other shapes changed out here and there. And engine section looks fantastically detailed to the casual eye, but in reality, just a few number of parts reused and modified over and over.
This piece is 206,000 polys, not bad by itself, but clone it 10times to cover both sides and it becomes 2,060,000 polys! The previous mesh was 194,000 polys, but cloned 26 times for both sides!
Just 4 big nurnies make up 40 percent of the engine section after cloning them many times. The poly count is unbelievable. This section is subject to close animation renders so that's where I put the polys. The top and bottom of the ship is rarely filmed close up, so I have to rethink my modelling strategy in those areas or this could easily end being a 40 million poly project.
