USS Grandeur - Final Version

[SnowCrash]

Even that small fragment really does look damn fine

[Lonewriter]

Interesting ship, I like it.

[Vektor]

Originally Posted by Starship

Question: Are these gray lines placeholders for cutting plates over the mesh, or they will be the beggining of texture maps?

The gray lines are gaps between hull panels. They have already been cut into the mesh and will eventually be recessed to match the ones on the underside. I'm presently working on these kinds of details all over the ship. The next stage after that will probably be windows.

[theCommander]

Well, it looks great! Do you have a texture guy or do you still need my help with that?

PS- I sent you an email twice, did you get that? Please read that. I'm trying to get the bridge CGI started with Elowan and also the Blackfoot needs desperate fixing so Smallworld has agreed to help out.

[Starship]

Originally Posted by Vektor

The gray lines are gaps between hull panels. They have already been cut into the mesh and will eventually be recessed to match the ones on the underside. I'm presently working on these kinds of details all over the ship. The next stage after that will probably be windows.

Already been cut? Man, they´re appears very clean and smoothed.
Ca I ask you a little more? Just curious about the way you do it.
Were they shapemerged or a manual cut? Still in this line: the windows will be shapemerged, cut one by one, or just managing specific pollys with bevel?
kinddest regards!

[Vektor]

Originally Posted by theCommander

Well, it looks great! Do you have a texture guy or do you still need my help with that?

I'm not really sure at this point. I'm building most of the details into the mesh itself so the texturing may wind up to be fairly simple. I'll have a better idea when I get to a later stage.

PS- I sent you an email twice, did you get that? Please read that. I'm trying to get the bridge CGI started with Elowan and also the Blackfoot needs desperate fixing so Smallworld has agreed to help out.

I got CC'd on a couple of your emails to other people. I guess if somebody else needs a copy of the model for the bridge outer shell, let me know.

[theCommander]

Hmmm... could you check again... I emailed you twice and it was relative to the hangerbay that the Blackfoot sits in... I need measurements and a closeup view or two with a scale something sitting in it ...would help out quite a bit if you could swing it. Smallworld and I are working/fine-tuning the Blackfoot for height, armor plating, and other stuff... like a good working model... LOL instead of that other one...

[Vektor]

Originally Posted by Starship

Already been cut? Man, they´re appears very clean and smoothed.
Ca I ask you a little more? Just curious about the way you do it.
Were they shapemerged or a manual cut? Still in this line: the windows will be shapemerged, cut one by one, or just managing specific pollys with bevel?
kinddest regards!

I laid out the panel lines using splines, making sure to use a high enough number of smoothing iterations, then extruded them into 3D shapes. I then boolean subtracted them from the hull objects. The result was a bit messy and required considerable vertex cleanup, but it wasn't as bad as the result you typically get from shapemerging.

I actually agonized over this step in the process for quite a while. One of the reasons this project has been dormant for so long is because I knew what I wanted to do but I had no idea how best to accomplish it. I thought about modeling the hull plates individually using Sub-D's or spline cages or even NURBS, but I kept running up against massive polygon overkill and problems with the curvature and alignment of the plates. In the end, simply cutting the gaps into the existing mesh seemed to be the least objectionable method.

As for windows, I will probably use pretty much the same method, although some further subdivision of the polygons that contain the windows will probably be required to avoid long, skinny triangles and the smoothing distortions they cause. Once they are cut, I will extrude them inward, probably without any additional beveling. I find that beveling window edges on a ship this size just isn't worth the effort unless your doing some very closeup renders, in which case I'd be more likely to build a special-purpose, high-detail model of the hull section in question rather than do the whole ship that way.

Also, I may wind up saving the windows until the very end to better facilitate the process of converting the mesh into a 3D printed physical model. Apparently details like windows are better added by hand after the basic parts have been mastered.

[Vektor]

Originally Posted by theCommander

Hmmm... could you check again... I emailed you twice and it was relative to the hangerbay that the Blackfoot sits in... I need measurements and a closeup view or two with a scale something sitting in it ...would help out quite a bit if you could swing it. Smallworld and I are working/fine-tuning the Blackfoot for height, armor plating, and other stuff... like a good working model... LOL instead of that other one...

When did you send them? I haven't checked my email in a couple of days.

There is no bay as such, just the doors and the surrounding exterior structure. I can tell you what the dimensions of the bay opening are and I can probably give you an idea of its maximum depth once I get home and have a chance to take the measurements off the model.

By the way, what I had in mind for the Blackfoot's docking bay is a bit different from the typical, TNG-era, box-like Federation starship hangar bay. I'm not envisioning a floor as such but rather a kind of alcove surrounded by form-fitting structural ribs. The Blackfoot wouldn't actually "land" in this bay, it would probably be grabbed by a pair of extensible docking arms and retracted into the bay. The Blackfoot is more like a runabout than a shuttle and I just think it needs a more robust connection to the mothership. They don't call it a "docking" bay for nothing.

Just my thinking on the subject. Your milage may vary.

[theCommander]

Okay, well please give me clearance numbers so that we don't scrape the top of the ship when she gets pulled in. Brian wants to add some thickness to the front of the BF so that we can actually have thew bridge that NS designed so graciously for us... so we'll need those dimensions, please sir.

Also, FYI - the BF is about three-four times the size of a runabout as she stands right now.