Highly Detailed Galactica model (CGI)

[gmd3d]

Hi mates ... for the last few months I and other members of Foundation3d (a cgi website) Have been stunned to watch the member "folkrm" build a fantastic model in Lightwave3d of the Galactica.

I ask him the other day if he would drop over here and show of his work to the members here... or if I could on his behave,

He said go ahead... I hope he will drop in and post further work here for all to see.
Its an awesome piece of work

[Folkrm]

Hi all; I will post new renders as soon as I get enough posts to enable adding attachments. Aparently you can't do it right off the bat.

Folkrm

[ernie90125]

Wow...those are jolly spiffing images. The level of detail is stunning......

Do you also do animations or just modelling ?

Welcome to Colonial Fleets Folkrm......

[David Kerin]

That is absolutely beautiful. The fine detail in the model is fantastic.

[Folkrm]

I do some animations, but right now I'm concentrating on finishing the BSG mesh. I do most of my work in Lightwave, but do use CorelDraw and Photoshop as well.

Folkrm

[ernie90125]

I'd love to see some of your animations.

Even better would be if they could be edited together into a short film, I'd love to showcase your BSG work on my site - www.battlestarfanfilms.com

As and when the Battlestar model is completed, perhaps you will allow it to be on my site's Resources Page ?

[Stevew]

Folkrm

Most excellent model. The best I have seen
S:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Folkrm]

Still not enough posts to allow attachments yet, but soon, I hope...

Folkrm

[Stevew]

Just keep posting. Did you use sone textures or are they all polygons?

[Folkrm]

No Textures yet, just Polys, so far...


Thanks

Folkrm

[Stevew]

Excellent. That has always been my thing. Texes should be a garnish

[gmd3d]

Awesome .. your here mate .. First welcome aboard :)

I am looking forward to seen more here :)

Folkrm sent me one of the landing bays.. Very nicely detailed and gives a great start for a landing bay when I am read to start on it

[Stevew]

Folkrm
I forgot welcome to CF
:)

[gmd3d]

steve you where just stunned ..yes:)

[Stevew]

No I just appreciate great modeling. Like I keep telling you, your work is getting better every day.
This makes me want to find a way to get my new "G" rendered so people can see it
:)

[peter noble]

Folkrm,

That's fantastic!

With all the reference material that's been posted at Resin Illuminati over the months it's possible to build a Big G that's a lot more accurate than what we've been seeing so far.

[Folkrm]

I am using many of the Resin Illuminati pics for referenc.

Thanks

Folkrm

[Stevew]

Peter
Resin Illuminati where is that?
Steve

[Folkrm]

The Pics are here:
http://resinilluminati.com/showthread.php?t=1143


Folkrm

[Stevew]

Thanks
I used the piks of the Jim Creveling model

[gmd3d]

Resin Illuminati is a great ref site .. only discoved it a while ago . some one here posted a comment about it.. (It could have been Peter Nobel . if so thanks, mate:) )

I want to do the Galactica Shuttle sometime .. and I found some great pictures there :)

I am looking forward to Folkrms next update ... can you imagine the art that could be done with that mesh :)

as to Textures .. I thing a generic hull colour would do the detail is there in buckets ..:)

[earendil77]

wow, they're amazing

[Folkrm]

Thanks Taranis...

SteveW;

I did find some subtle differences between Jim Creveling's model and the reference pics at Resin Illuminati. And since the ref pics are of the actual Studio Model used, I went that route, but Jim's model is still incredibly acurate and extremely well detailed.

That's just me.

Attached are some rescent renders of the Old Girl.
Folkrm

[gmd3d]

Fantastic ..... In my mind I can hear the BSG musical score.. in fact I am playing it now :)

[gmd3d]

Folkrm can you give use an idea of the stats .. how big is she now :)

even in MB ..

I found that your landing bay module was 8.39 MB

[Stevew]

Folkrm

Most excellent. I did my "G" about 5 years ago and Jim's model was the only thing I had to work with. I did a major upgrade with my own touches but it was too large in poly's for my renderer to render. I hope to find a way to get some piks to post but I may have to wait til my pgm goes to 64 bit. It is currently 1.8M poly's and exceeds what TS can render
:(

[Titon]

It is currently 1.8M poly's and exceeds what TS can render


Steve Steve Steve......LIGHTWAVE!

:D

[Stevew]

Ha Ha :D I have all I can handle learning Solidworks
;)

[Folkrm]

Hi all;

Here are the latest test renders. These will probably be the last ones until it is finished.

It's close right now, but I still have some things to finishup on the old girl.

Enjoy.

Folkrm

[gmd3d]

Don't I know you :) :)

magnificent work mate.

or Should I say "Brilliant"!!

[peter noble]

The detail is fantastic but the landing bays look out of proportion.

If there was a straight side on view I'd be able to tell instantly.

[Folkrm]

Yes they are slightly taller than they should be, and maybe even in other areas, but I'm too far past being able to correct them, without starting over on them.

Here are some makeshift schematic views to get the feel for it.

Thanks

Folkrm

[peter noble]

Don't get me wrong, this is fantastic.

The number of people who have really seriously tried to attempt the Big G at this level you can probably count on the fingers of one and a half hands. Even the one in the FMVs of the video game is incorrect!

Surely the Big G and a Star Destroyer must be the hardest SF ships to model in cg.

[gmd3d]

Don't get me wrong, this is fantastic.

The number of people who have really seriously tried to attempt the Big G at this level you can probably count on the fingers of one and a half hands. Even the one in the FMVs of the video game is incorrect!

Surely the Big G and a Star Destroyer must be the hardest SF ships to model in cg.
What??!! I thought the Borg Cube was the hardest SF ships to model in cg:P::P:

[peter noble]

What??!! I thought the Borg Cube was the hardest SF ships to model in cg:P::P:


I'll take your word for it. :LOL:

[Titon]

The number of people who have really seriously tried to attempt the Big G at this level you can probably count on the fingers of one and a half hands. Even the one in the FMVs of the video game is incorrect!

Surely the Big G and a Star Destroyer must be the hardest SF ships to model in cg.


Ah yes you are correct my friend.

As the highlander say's, "There can only be one"

Wait till you see the next update.

Tee hee!

:D

[peter noble]

Wait till you see the next update.

Tee hee!

:D

ARGH!

You big tease! :D

[dilbertman]

Ah yes you are correct my friend.

As the highlander say's, "There can only be one"

Wait till you see the next update.

Tee hee!

:D

Any ETA on that "update" there Titon??? BTW, how is the TD stuff coming along???

Jim:?:;)

[Titon]

Any ETA on that "update" there Titon???

Hopefully in the next few weeks. I'd like to make sure on a few things. I'm wrestling with the landing bay interior at the moment. Don't want to hijack this thread though which has an outstanding piece of work by Folkrm. Modeling this thing isn't the easiest thing in the world. Believe me i have more than one attempt on my hard drives.

BTW, how is the TD stuff coming along???


Haven't touched much of anything else but the big G for month's to be honest.

:)

[Folkrm]

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen;

I Think It's done? But I would really like a few fresh new sets of eyes looking at it to see if I may have missed a few things. After all the work on it, I can't be sure I'm looking at it objectively.

Please feel free to go over it with a magnifying glass and tell me if there are things that need to be added or removed or changed.

Thanks again for all the help and instructions along the way.

Time to move on to the next project!!! I hope....

Folkrm

[today]

Fantastic! What's the final poly count if I may ask?

[Folkrm]

Final Count info:

Ray

[Stevew]

Wow 2.4M polys. Mine was only 1.8 :)

Well back to the drawing boards
:D

[gmd3d]

wow . 2.4 woff

[Titon]

Wow 2.4M polys. Mine was only 1.8

That's a pretty tame count actually. I'll probably push upwards of 3 million when i'm done.

:)

[CBSG4ever]

Hello Folkrm,
Awesome work you have done! Sure wish I could do something like what you've accomplished. Very impressive indeed.
Please feel free to go over it with a magnifying glass and tell me if there are things that need to be added or removed or changed.
If I may nit-pick on only a few things, I did notice some areas that you might want to change or add. I've helped illustrate below what I found.

1) This one could be more of an aesthetic point. I kinda thought the panel above the indented area on either side of the Forward Section (yellow circle) seems a tad too tall. Not the location, just the height of the structure. Maybe 25-30% shorter? Could be it's just me though.
2) The "running/formation light" on the Forward Section (green circle) is unlit and the one in the aft on the Engine Section seems to be missing.
3) The 5 colored panels on both sides of the Engine Section (red circle) seem to be an orange color. I do believe they were the same red color as the other markings.

Apologies if I come across as too picky, but those were the only things to me that I noticed and stood out. Again, a very fine job. Well done! :thumbsup: :salute: Looking forward to seeing your other endeavors. Would like to know what else you have on the drawing board? :D Also, welcome to Fleets Folkrm. Best to you.

[Folkrm]

Actually I agree with you about the item above the forward indented section, and I probably should fix that as well. As far as the color of the Engine parts, I did not have any good "color" photos to work with, but the ones that I have seen seem to show it lighter than the other red highlights. I'm not really sure. And for the lighted box, I haven't added any lights to her yet.

But I sure don't mind the extra eyes helping out.

Thanks

Ray

[Folkrm]

CBSG4ever;

I went ahead and shortend the hight a little more to my liking.

Here is a new render to compare it to.

Ray
Folkrm

[gmd3d]

Looks Great ... better too .. I have to check my refs again .. but its awesome as it stands

[ernie90125]

This model is stunning.

[CBSG4ever]

Looks much, much better on that forward section. Didn't mean to sound like a wet blanket on your very awesome work.
I rustled up some picks that might be useful to you. With credit going to Starship Trooper (Nathan) over at Battlestar Galactica Club. Found these screen grabs from his site. I hope they can help out in some way.

The first 2 are of the aft formation light. Your fine work is on the left, screen grab on the right. Not sure if you wanted to add that.

The last 2 are of the color scheme of the 5 panels. Both are screen grabs. In these shots the panels appear to be a bit darker red. Wish I could find a better pic for you. What are your thoughts?

Again, very impressive and excellent work. :salute:

[Stevew]

Hey Don
How well does your new computer handle 3M polys?

[Titon]

Hey Don
How well does your new computer handle 3M polys?

Piece of cake actually. But i also am running 12 gigs of Ram plus XP 64 bit. Without the bottle kneck that comes with a 32 bit os it's amazing. Lightwave 64 bit is a huge improvement when handleing complex high poly models but the modelor side of it still needs a huge upgrade. Especially the opengl and the editing of a simple point. Becomes time consuming waiting for lightwave to calculate the movement if you get above a million poly's or so. It's not the power of the machine that's for sure. I'm running 2 quad core xeon's which give the machine 8 total execution cores to use. I'm barely scratching the surface of what the machine can do. It's all based in the software. I love lightwave but they better improve it with the next upgrade or i might have to jump ship.

As far as the rendering of the ship's it does it rather quickly. Plus i use radiosity quite a bit so that's a resource hog to begin with. Normal lighting is pretty fast.

:)

[Stevew]

I just put together mine. An E8500 core duo, 8G RAM, XP64 of course, Palit 1G 8800GT and a Raptor X HD. Solidworks told me that Quad cores don't work well but there will be a dramatic improvement in 09. I am thinking of being a beta tester. I did an STL conversion of my new G but it was 4.6M polys. TS loaded it but does not do memory managent well enough to to any poly reduction, Polytrans even ran out of memory even though I was only useing a little over 6 G of ram. I will have to wait til TS goes 64bit this year, it seems to suffer the same thing as XP32 as far as memory goes. I even did an IGES conversion but the file was 2.3G LOL I was able to make a 3D PDF so I can at least show people. It is not the original, I just used it as a guide. I made it longer and more streamlined then just went crazy LOL

[Folkrm]

I did add the Rear section Formation light array, because I thought it needed it, but as far as the color of the Engine details, haven't seen anything definative yet, so not going to change for now.

Thanks All, and Enjoy.

Ray

[Darrell Lawrence]

Don, may be a dumb question, but are you loading the entire mesh when you're working on it?

I would think that you could save each layer as a separate object, and then load 'em all together when you're done.

[gmd3d]

I did add the Rear section Formation light array, because I thought it needed it, but as far as the color of the Engine details, haven't seen anything definative yet, so not going to change for now.

Thanks All, and Enjoy.

Ray

The colour is a minor point .. overall the look is amazing ..

now sit back and enjoy it .. I have :)

[CBSG4ever]

The colour is a minor point .. overall the look is amazing ..

now sit back and enjoy it .. I have :)
Well said T. ;)
The color is minor indeed. This is beautiful work, simply stunning. :salute:
Folkrm, I am a bit curious. About how long has it taken you to do this project?

[Titon]

Don, may be a dumb question, but are you loading the entire mesh when you're working on it?

I would think that you could save each layer as a separate object, and then load 'em all together when you're done

Each section has it's own layers.

Engine
Body
Landing Bays
Head

Loads in layers which are getting quite large at the moment :)

but as far as the color of the Engine details, haven't seen anything definative yet, so not going to change for now.


It's red. All the colored stripes are red.

:)

[Darrell Lawrence]

Ah. Ok. So each section is saved as a separate object already.

What's the stats on each section/object?

[Titon]

What's the stats on each section/object?


I'll have to check into that when i get back home. Right now it's actually progressing nicely but i've learned a great deal over the years about poly reduction during my modeling. If ya don't need it get rid of it. Merge points, delete poly's as you go. Means for a much nicer end result.

The model sit's at about 975,000 poly's presently.

I'll post some renders soon.

:)

[G_Starkiller]

My favourite scifi ship. :) Some REALLY impressive versions of the TOS battlestars
are appearing. I love the reimaged battlestars, and the new highly detailed TOS
models are their equal. Good job indeed! ^_-

Greywolf

[Folkrm]

Hi All, I'm back for another go around.
Well I think I have done all I can do to fix her...

I have temporarily abandonded the texturing idea, because I wasn't getting the results I wanted, and I couldn't make them look better than the poly-plating.

So I believe that I fixed the sizing problems with the Engine, Mid-Section and the Landing Bays, so everything looks more acurate in proportion.

I am pretty happy with the results, still not on par with Titon's effort, but I'm happy with it now.

As always, critiques welcome...


Folkrm

[gmd3d]

Folkrm it looks incredible .. It holds up great .. whats the polycount now ..

[Titon]

Folkrm, what version of lightwave are you running?

It's truely a wonderful accomplishment what you've done but i'd like to see a true perspective of it.

If you running lightwave 9 and above you can switch the camera to perspective. That will give you a true look of the model. Maybe you already set it that way but i'd like to know.

[Folkrm]

I am running Lightwave 7.5. And now it seems I can't use the "i" key anymore to get poly info. I'm pretty sure that is how I've done it in the past, but all it does now is try to eliminate points. I'll have to look more into it, but for now the Poly Count unofficially stands at: 2494361 polys.

[peter noble]

That's looking really nice. You can tell you've made improvements. The shape looks a lot better.

How about a side view?

[Titon]

If you have the cap's lock on and touch the "i" it will try to elimanate points. Look into that.

If your running 7.5 you will not be able to give a true perspective unless you move the camera out to about 2 kilometers....

This is the way we used to do texturing. It elimanated the distortion around the model when you moved the camera out and then zoomed in close to the model

[ulimann644]

Unbelievable - This is the best GALACTICA-Mesh I have ever seen... How many hours ( if you know ) did you need for a mesh like this ?

[Folkrm]

To make an educated guess, approx 6 Months @approx 8-10 hours a week, on and off = ~240 hours, give or take.

[Folkrm]

I almost forgot.... Here is your side-view and a front-on view with lights.

Enjoy

Folkrm

[ernie90125]

Boy oh Boy...do I want to see her kicking Cylon a$$ in an animation.....

[gmd3d]

Come's alive with the lights on ..

[ulimann644]

To make an educated guess, approx 6 Months @approx 8-10 hours a week, on and off = ~240 hours, give or take.

Many thanks for this info. :)

Boy oh Boy...do I want to see her kicking Cylon a$$ in an animation.....

YES...! With her sister PEGASUS side by side...?? :salute:

[Folkrm]

Still trying to put together a really nice Space Scene to photograph her in, but for now, this is one of my favorite shots. If anyone has already created, or has a good tutorial for creating a Realistic Space Environment, please let me know. Idon't want to have to re-invent the wheel here.

Thanks All;

Folk

[Folkrm]

Well it is finnaly finished and home among the Stars....

Folkrm

[Darrell Lawrence]

That, sir, is a DAMN fine job!

Love to see my Viper and Cobra ripping out of those launch tubes ;)

[ernie90125]

Stunning.

[Stevew]

Sweet really Sweet
:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

[G_Starkiller]

Heh, I think I'll stick with small ships until I'm more familiar with modeling.
Right now, that beautiful monster you've modeled is rather intimidating.
When I saw it, my reaction was: :yikes:

Hope I can equal that skill someday. :salute:

Eric

[gmd3d]

Its a massive modelled and masterly done by fulkrm

[Unimatrix]

I'm itching to see if I can crash blender on a conversion. I can load Steve's mesh into Blender 3D and work with it, but it does slow down in certain views with a 128MB video card, Core 2 Duo machine.

Excellent work, any shots of the landing bay available by chance?

[Folkrm]

No real plans to do anything with the Landing Bay interiors yet because, I beleive Titon, has already done a beautiful one. The itch may get to me enough to pursuade me to do one, but not until I finish my other projects.

Thanks for asking though.

Folkrm

[Darrell Lawrence]

Taranis is the one that did a Landing Bay that's available.

[CBSG4ever]

Apologies for being so slow to comment on this thread. RL was crazy and I missed this.
Folkrm, all I can say is...WOW! You have done a very fine job. The detail is quite remarkable. The lights do bring her alive. I do hope someday you might tackle the landing bay interior. BTW, do you have plans to mount the landing bay turrets you were working on here in another thread? (Haven't been following that thread for a while also...:( )
As ernie90125 stated, I would also love to see this in an animation. Again, a stunningly beautiful and accurate model you have created. My hat's off to you. Very well done. :salute: :warrior:

[SeanP]

Your Galactica looks awesome dude!
I can't wait until mine gets finished.

[BCazzell]

That came out really well. Now it just needs to be animated and rendered. :)

[gmd3d]

Its ear marked for use in the this fan film where I have played a small part in building a few models .. :)

http://www.battlestarfanfilm.org/site/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1