construction on new Galactica begins - Page 4

wjaspers · August 25th, 2005, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Santee

I was thinking about that in the shower the other day . . .

Thought I was the only one going mad, thinking about modeling under the shower

Quote:

Originally Posted by Santee

and i am going to do full details inside the hanger deck

Santee

I was afraid to ask

gpdesigner · August 25th, 2005, 07:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wjaspers

Thought I was the only one going mad, thinking about modeling under the shower

All true 3d artists think about spinning quads in the shower . . .
your one of us wjaspers . . . Bwa ha ha ha ha

Santee

mikala · August 25th, 2005, 07:33 PM

I think about "slip and fall" statistics!

gpdesigner · August 25th, 2005, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikala

I think about "slip and fall" statistics!

Dude, you need to loosen up a bit . . . live life on the edge, throw caution to the wind and " run around the house with scissors . . .

Santee

Titon · August 26th, 2005, 05:22 AM

Quote:

Seems this section of the ship isn't that intense on the details as the reverse side.

You are correct. When Fabio modeled the engine section he made quite a bit of details on that part.

Santee lightwave 8+ upped the limits when it comes to both poly's and points. Before a single poly could only have somewhere in the neighborhood of 1600 points. It used to be that way with poly's as well but a significant upgrade to that came with lightwave 8.3.

When it comes to rendering in layers that option has always been there. You can tell lightwave's layout to only render what you wish the camera to see. The render engine then ignores the layer's you have turned off.

Great work by the way.

Cinnamon · August 26th, 2005, 02:10 PM

Lord, this thing is bloody *gorgeous*

Just watching the progress here makes my paws itch.

Beautiful work, Santee!

-jaime
(who hopes to learn enough to make *intelligent* comments soon)

gpdesigner · August 28th, 2005, 10:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Titon

Santee lightwave 8+ upped the limits when it comes to both poly's and points.

A friend of mine was talking about that the other day, he has LW8, and he says it is awesome . . . he is thinking of getting 9 in the near future. I on the other hand am locked into 7.0 until I get a G5 then it will be upgrade time . . .
I pm'ed Fabio over at LWG told I was appriciating both of you guys modeling skills alot . . . Also that I am learning a great deal working on this project. He said he would see if he could organize some detail renders of the engine section later on.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cinnamon

Lord, this thing is bloody *gorgeous*

Just watching the progress here makes my paws itch.

Thanks for the compliment and support Cinnamon, I am definately putting in way too much time on this project but at the moment I have tons of time to spare.

I started in on the sublight engines today, ribbed out the hull section and started to add the micro hull plating on the sides. adding this detail is going to be time- consuming at best, but I am sure it will be worth it . . .

The rear end is comming along nicely I think, the larger hull plates here need to be rounded out a bit better, but this I can do anytime. for those who don't know, this model is being built in halves. The thing about symetrical objects is you only need to do one side then mirror it into a complete object, so everything I am doing here is done once . . . . ( saves a lot of time )

Santee

mikala · August 28th, 2005, 11:07 AM

Set your WIP on stun next time okay? I just woke up with a bump on my head. Looking excellent!

gpdesigner · September 7th, 2005, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikala

Set your WIP on stun next time okay? I just woke up with a bump on my head. Looking excellent!

. . . D'oh !

So I am back at it . . . I took apart the entire sub light cell today and rebuilt it.
I just didn't like the look of the last one. The main hull plating wasn't shaped to fit the ribs and the plating was as round as it should have been. if you look at the images prior you will see what I am talking about.
I deleted everything and started from scratch changing my methodology of how the construction should happen. The result is the images below . . . .

I was thinking hard about this BattleStar when I was doing the Viper and I decided to do something Titon mentioned earlier in this construction. he said "each model has to take on a life, a path of it's own" . . well not those exact words but that is the message I got from it.
Anyway I have decided to make changes to this ship as I go along. . . .

Mind you they won't be major changes (maybe . . well see ) but they will be different from what is expected. The reason for this is:
1. I can't replicate (accurately duplicate) all the details that make this ship, . .
2. I want to put a bit of me in it . . . It's the Achilles, not the Galactica.

Ok so with that said here are the new updates to the sub light cell, the gun inplacements will have to be adjusted as i am not used to that curved angle yet.
I think I am just going to align the base plates with the hull out cropping and call it a day . . .

Santee

mikala · September 7th, 2005, 06:01 PM

Now thats a lot o guns!
Different is good too...

neilfsmith · September 8th, 2005, 05:32 AM

Santee,

You are doing some incredible work here. Nice job.

neilfsmith

TwoBrainedCylon · September 8th, 2005, 09:21 AM

Amazing job. Very, very nice work so far.

Sandy

gpdesigner · September 9th, 2005, 06:33 AM

AAARRRRRGGGGGGG !!!

just thought I would chime in and let you know that I am embroiled in mortal combat with this ship at the moment. WE (lightwave and I ) have been at it for 2 days now trying to square away this tail section of the sub-light engines.

I have tried absolutely everything I could think of to build these (ridges) as efficiently as possible. I tried booleaning, rail extrusion, Cloning, Stenciling, even the stanby method of copy paste, but nothing worked.

SO . . . sometimes you just have to reach right in and do it by hand, piece by piece . . . the old fashion way . . . one by freakin' one: scale it to size then fit it into place.

What you see below is about 2 and a half hours of work and 4 cups of coffee.
not that it's difficult, just teadious . . . . .

and it can still go wrong . .

Santee

mikala · September 9th, 2005, 06:37 AM

I see what you mean....and I second the arghhh. But it does look very good.

Gald you've stuck with it.
You've got more patience than I .

neilfsmith · September 9th, 2005, 06:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Santee

AAARRRRRGGGGGGG !!!

just thought I would chime in and let you know that I am embroiled in mortal combat with this ship at the moment. WE (lightwave and I ) have been at it for 2 days now trying to square away this tail section of the sub-light engines.

I have tried absolutely everything I could think of to build these (ridges) as efficiently as possible. I tried booleaning, rail extrusion, Cloning, Stenciling, even the stanby method of copy paste, but nothing worked.

SO . . . sometimes you just have to reach right in and do it by hand, piece by piece . . . the old fashion way . . . one by freakin' one: scale it to size then fit it into place.

What you see below is about 2 and a half hours of work and 4 cups of coffee.
not that it's difficult, just teadious . . . . .

and it can still go wrong . .

Santee

Dude, take a breather. Rome wasn't built in a day you know. On the other hand, Rome didn't look anywhere as awesome as what you've built... Never mind. Don't listen to me. Go get some more coffee.
neilfsmith

gpdesigner · September 9th, 2005, 07:05 AM

Thanks gentelmen, . . . I think the only reason I am at this constantly is if I let up for too long, I will drop the ball on this project. I have done it before. There are 3 massive projects out there I need to finish, One is the U.S. Capitol that I started 4 years ago,

another is a landscape shot of Rivendel from LOTR, and the 3rd is a period piece of a medeveil castel . . . So with that track record in mind, I just need to stay fixed.

Anyway thanks for the support everybody . . . everyone here at CF has been extremely cool about this project and I appreciate that . . especially if you can put up with my spelling . . . .

Santee

gpdesigner · September 9th, 2005, 05:26 PM

Well . . today was an eventfull day, I rode out onto the field of battle, it me and Lightwave against the corrigated rear tail section of the sub-light engines . . . .
I am sorry to say, They won.

I regrouped and threw it all in the trash, I then went to reenergize and come up with some alternative ideas. While I was in my garden picking grapes . . . .

I decided to expose the core of the engines and show some detail inside.
I thought this may look cool as most of the ship looks this way anyway . . . why make the tail section any different. I came up with the renders below.
The concept is nice I think but I may hav to work on the way I am doing it . . . .
any sugestions feel free to post them . . .

Santee

Oh! . . and i worked on the spacing and layout of the 1st gun placements

rjandron · September 9th, 2005, 09:27 PM

Santee, on the issue of the ridges, since the design that you're doing is pretty much a rectangular ridge, why not try the following approach.

1. Create the substructure where the ridges will be placed. I'd personally use splines to loft a structure between the two profiles of the substructure, but pretty much any method to get a structure as is will work.

Splining it out:

2. When you create the substructure, make sure that you have twice as many polygons as you will need ridges. Select every other polygon.

The Substructure lofted and every second polygon selected:

3. Smooth shift the selected polygons to the height of the ridge.

4. Mirror, if necessary...

Hope this helps...

RJ

gpdesigner · September 10th, 2005, 03:59 AM

Thanks rj that was an interesting method, never thought of doing it that way.
I actually finished a ridge section like that yesturday, but gave up on it because it didn't fit well, the ends didn't match up. I will revisit that section I made to see if I can salvage it, but maybe a new design is needed . . who nows I will give it a shot. I will also check this method you showed me and see if the ends match up any better, . . . . Thanks dude

Santee

gpdesigner · September 10th, 2005, 03:24 PM

OK . . tired and weary I went back out into the field of battle, this time I was determind not to be defeated.
I locked and loaded my lightwave and met the "Tail Section" head on . . .
this time . . . I won . .

this is all i have . . it will have to look like this.

Santee

gpdesigner · September 15th, 2005, 06:52 AM

Been working on trying to finish the sub_light engines . . I added some more details this week but I don't think I am happy with what came out . .
If I have to change certain things you know I will but for now I am going to let it be . .

Santee

mikala · September 15th, 2005, 06:54 AM

Glad you went back into battle!
Hard to see that you are having trouble as this is looking better each post.

gpdesigner · September 15th, 2005, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikala

Hard to see that you are having trouble as this is looking better each post.

thanks mikala . . . . but if you look at the image above, the inside hull. That section right after the rippled engine covering is curvy, so much so that the detail in the cut outs are not level . . I have to try and flatten that section out so that I can make those 2 detail pieces fit properly.

not a big deal, just something I have to plan an attack for.
hey . . . . how's the squid coming?

Santee

infinityloop · September 16th, 2005, 02:36 AM

perfect work!

Cinnamon · September 16th, 2005, 01:42 PM

The level of detail work you're doing on this is abslutely breathtaking.

I know you've been tearing your hair out over parts of this model - but from where I sit, you make it look so damned easy. Between this and your Viper, they just come to life. It's really a joy to watch.

Tell me, can you recommend any good references to lightwave, or to three dee modelling in general that would be appropriate for a rank beginner?

Watching you build this makes me want to play too!

Thanks!

-jaime

gpdesigner · September 16th, 2005, 02:30 PM

Hi jamie, thanks for the kuddo's . . .

The galactica is quite a project no doubt, just trying to do it bit by bit. Don't know if I will be able to contribute as much time as I have for too much longer but i will keep at it until it is done.

3d Software:

I have a few links here for you to check out . . If you use a PC then you will be fine, as most of this 3d software is free. I can't say which prog is the best out of this bunch, they all seem to have their own strong points. However I am sure that you can use anyone of them to learn on and then judging wheather you like 3d or not it may be worth while to go out and perchase a good program.

Right now seeing how Lightwave just lowered it's prices dramatically, you can pick up their lastest version for about $800 or so dollars . . but here is the free stuff first. . . . in no particular order:

http://www.blender.org/cms/Home.2.0.html

http://www.anim8or.com/

http://www.povray.org/download/

http://www.wings3d.com/

These are just a few progs out there and they are free, if you want to drop a few dollars on some software you can try these

http://www.nevercenter.com/purchase/ (cheap)

http://www.caligari.com/store/trueSp...te=STtrueSpace

http://www.strata.com/default.asp

this is just a few things . . hope it helps you . .

"come Jamie . . come to the dark side . . . )

Santee

Titon · September 18th, 2005, 06:20 AM

Santee, may i suggest if you don't have it to check out this plugin.

http://www.skstudios.com/VertiBevel.htm

If you don't have it i suggest saving for it because i couldn't live without it. I used it constantly when i model. It would have save you a TON of time on those engines.

Great work still.

TwoBrainedCylon · September 18th, 2005, 06:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Titon

Santee, may i suggest if you don't have it to check out this plugin.

http://www.skstudios.com/VertiBevel.htm

If you don't have it i suggest saving for it because i couldn't live without it. I used it constantly when i model. It would have save you a TON of time on those engines.

Great work still.

I second that. Its invaluable!

Sandy

gmd3d · September 18th, 2005, 02:09 PM

awesome update´s Santee. its really getting there.

gpdesigner · September 18th, 2005, 04:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Titon

Santee, may i suggest if you don't have it to check out this plugin.

Oh! Titon you don't know brother . . . . how I wish I could use that plug in.
Thanks for the heads up guys, but I am on OS 9.2 Vertibevel is for OSX and better. plus I don't think they made it for LW.7.0.

I found a tute a while back and the guy was using Vertibevel . . when I went to get the plug in, I was terribly disapointed.

I am going to get it one day . . . try to save up all my pennies and upgrade all the way round, but for now it's going to have to be "bevel by hand"

Santee