Saying hello, and needing help with my WIP

[Gr1mRe4pEr]

Hi people.

Just popping in to say hello and show you what im doing. Could also do with a little help too if possible please.

Basically, im starting to get into lightwave and after trialling the software and learning bits of it quite quickly (I think), I decided to buy the package and give it a full out go.

I mainly play about with layout, just doing my boyhood dreams of making my own space battles, never really completing one so far just maiking a segment here or there.

I thought id give it a go with the re-image BSG and decided I would make a battle between the galactica and a basestar, and add in some vipers and raiders later. So far I have managed to do this. This is obviously nowhere near a finished render with some issues like the missing missile, and some cheap missile movements, but I just wanted to share with you what I have done.

This all being good so far, the scene still lacks something very important, like a basestar! Having scouted around, I havn't really been able to find a re-imaged basestar for lw3d so I thought id have a dab at modeling. Not knowning where to begin I was scouting round for different modeling techniques and descovered the spline method. After about 24hrs spread over 2 days I managed to learn basic splines and make this. I was quite chuffed with myself, i'd managed to make a start on my basestar having not modeled before. When I got back to it yesterday, I thought I would have a quick bash at the textures and some other settings. All was going great untill I turned on Shadow Ray-Tracing . What should look similar to this has turned into this with shadow ray-tracing turned on.

From what I have been able to see, all polygons have either 3 or 4 points and are linke to eachother with merged/welded points. I havn't been able to find a corner with 2 points that need welding.

I have a wireframe render here just to show you what the polygons look like. If anyone could help please, that would be fantastic.

Regards

James

*edit*

Before I forget, the BSG model is the wjaspers re-imaged BSG converted to LW by Warrior. Love you guys!

[Darrell Lawrence]

Looks like you might have some flipped polygons. At the same time, open up your Modeler Statistics, look at the polygons and see if you have any 2 point polys. If so, click the plus mark (highlighting those 2 point polys) and delete them.

[Gr1mRe4pEr]

Thanks for the quick reply warrior. I tried what you said and i did find some 2 point polygons. I also found some 2vert polys too and removed thoes, but the problem is still there unchanged.

One thing I did notice, if I turn the ship to a different angle, the glitch is no longer in the same place, but moves to whevever there is shadow. Any mre ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again

[Darrell Lawrence]

Try tripling all polygons.

If that doesn't work, then send me the model so I can look at it myself and see what's up.

[Darrell Lawrence]

The current version, I mean. I wouldn't want the tripled version

[Gr1mRe4pEr]

That hasn't worked either. Neither did sub-d. Just makes the edges of the glitch look neater.

Where can I send the model to for you to look at? Thats would be great if you could.

[Darrell Lawrence]

Something just occured to me... one last thing to check- Unify the polygons.

If that doesn't do it, then send to warriordl @ 3dgladiators.com (minus the spaces )

[Gr1mRe4pEr]

Says no polys unified.
Sent you the little bit I have done, thanks for this, much appreciated

[Darrell Lawrence]

Check your mail

[Gr1mRe4pEr]

Its a doozie this one. All the polygons are in place, no doubles, no double points, everythings merged/welded. There should be nothing wrong with it.

If worse comes to worse, ill re-build it. I know more about splines now then i did when i made that. Should be able to make the same shape more accurately using less splines.

[Darrell Lawrence]

As I said earlier today, I'll check it out again when I get home from work. When I rotated the light, I saw no problems.