Recently named cruise ship: Olympic

[Meph]

Long time no thread-starting, especially since the forum crash but I decided to dust of some old WIP's and slowly try to finish them as my free time allows. It's been a while since I've had the time done some personal 3D work. :(

this one is first in the pipe line, it's a concept for space-opera style cruise ship, no weapons, no fighters or torpedo tubes but rest and relaxation for the wickedly rich :D

I changed the engine housings to be a bit more elegant and light compared to the original 'sketch' but I guess I have been staring at it too long so I could use some suggestions and thoughts to the general shape and layout of the ship.

It's roughly divided into 3 sections; The front bow section the passenger section, the black dome is to become an arboretum, the front black section will be an open promenade with multiple floors, and the black gothic window will hopefully be a big concert/opera hall.
the Middle section is the crew section as well as the bridge on top and the docking or landing bays.
The rear section is the engineering section with the engines standing apart from the hull and as rearward as possible for safety concerns (ejecteable engine pods perhaps?)

I'm pretty happy with the bow section but I'm a bit troubled with the bridge and rear sections. I'm pretty satisfied with the general layout and shape but something is bothering me and I can't put my finger on it.

So I'm throwing this WIP to the wolves ;)

Any crits and comments are welcome but do take into account that is just a rough concept shape/sketch to get a good feel of the shape and look


[EDIT] I removed the oldest pics to be able to update the thumbnail, all renders are still on my HDD so don't hesitate if you have a request

[SandmanNinja]

hi...

I like it. It has an almost organic feel to it, yet...not. I am not a fan of organic ships. I guess I'm a near-future kinda person.

I like the angles on the engines. Like how the Bridge comes up.

:thumb:

[Meph]

Cheers mate.

Well, the plan is to have it finished like it's a clean and streamlined cruiser. The organics is just a fluidity in shape, I intend to model plates so it's clearly identifiable as human-built. The idea is that it's a pretty big ship (500m+)

[Ozylot]

Cool! It almost looks like it could float. :D

Good start... looking forward to more. :thumb:

[Beowulf]

hmmmmmmmm . looks like it would fit in the BG universe...

[Prime_8]

looks like a battle axe head .

nice

[Meph]

Progress! Woohoo!

I did some work on the bow section, flesjhing out the shape etc etc. the original plan was to refine the rough shape, progressively getting more detailed.
Somehow I started doing some rough detailing but then zoned out for a while.
Here's what I found after regaining consciousness.

The speaker-like array above the viewing deck are intended to be articulated floodlights for lighting while docking and investigating suspiscious derelict spacecraft :O

[Meph]

One more

[Meph]

Couldn't resist... :devil:

[Darth Malice]

Nice Meph, beautiful work...:flippy:

[Mechmaster]

Looks good so far. I like the docking tube below the viewing deck, they will have to be careful not to attempt to dock with anything too big though or they are going to bend that antenna.

[Meph]

:lol: Good point!

Well, the antenna is tapered as it is, I can easily have it retract far enough for the docking tube to extend beyond it :thumb:

[Meph]

Sore more detailing on the docking tube. I spend some time devising a good functioning male-female connection that funtions both ways. A hermaphrodite connecton?:confused:

[Darth Malice]

lol, nice work...

[Trooper]

Whoah!!!

I jsut got floored. that's cool!

[Prime_8]

great docking tube .. realy spiffy

[Ozylot]

Nice work... Looks really good. :thumb:

[Meph]

Some more updates, I didn't have much free time today sadly so it's just some minor detailing.

The front bow sections seems almost finished right now but here and I don't want to overdo it but i feel like it could do with just a few more smaller add-ons.
If you guys have any suggestion on a type of antenna, sensor, pipe connector etc etc that I might add, I'd appreciate any suggestions.

Right now the layout is as follows.
-Underneath the observation deck there's the docking tube
-Next to it I have a fuel/other liquid pipe connector, consisting of a vaguely resembling in-air refueling nozzle to guide the connection and a 4-lidded cover that would slide open to reveal the main pipe (dunno if I'm going to model that).
-The large lens below that I imagined to be some visual receptors with the smaller ones to be in whole different wavelengths.
-The dish below a strong directional antenna.
Behind the grill will come a sort of trekkish deflector-like.
-The protruding antennae (large and small) are for communication.
-The bottom lid/hatch I haven't figured out yet completely but I imagined it to be some sort of extendable cylindre that can slide out for direct access to some of the sensor system as a backup or in case of emergency. :confused:

[Meph]

Hmmm I just noticed that I made the viewing deck and docking tube just a bit too big for the intended size of the ship, the scale idea was that the front windows would be around 2m in height so I'll have to rescale them down 25-50%

[A_Heretic]

Don't forget emergency pods and a VIP's yaght-dock.

Nice docking tube.
Is it an auxiliary dock for crew only or the main-ingress/egress for passengers?
If the latter, you could resolve the too big issue with a floor halfway, so that passengers can enter and exit at the same time without bumping into each other.

[Meph]

Good point A_Heretic, the front docking tube is meant to be a maintenance/auxiliary docking tube for the crew, I intend to model a bigger, wider version for the side of the hull that has a less industrial look for welcoming the passengers.

A VIP yaghts dock is a splendid idea! I could model an extendable docking arm, but where to put it, the best spot would be on the rear end of the front section, perhaps near the top so that any docked VIP have a nice view on the arboretum :D

[Meph]

Some small adjustments, not much time to do a lot today :-/

just some resizing of the small observation decka nd the docking tube, I made them somewhat smaller to emphasize the size of the vessel.
In the free space next to the docking tube I made an emergency airlock for EVA access to the sensor suite and docking tube

[Darth Malice]

Nice work, looking good...:thumb:

[Meph]

Small update.

Minor detailing on the main hull and the star of the horrifying paneling process.
the best way so far i've found is using beveling on polygons but I'm not always 100% satisfied the result but it seems the least time consuming process. I'm finding it very tricky to find the righ depth and with. Since it's a big ship I don't want the lines to be too big but if they're too small they're hardly noticable. the whole process so far only gave me a few segmentations but since there are no vertexes there it's very hard to solve, perhaps with some creative mapping or detaling :D

Somehow the AA in mental ray is not always 100% either. Does anyone have an idea how to solve this?

[2cvbloke]

Is it me or does that antenna assembly look like a Mobile (Cell) Phone mast? :lol:

On the other hand, it's a very nice model, especially as I'm usually only interested in Trekverse starships... :D

I like the what looks like a Prime focus satellite dish just above it too... :D

[Meph]

Well, rich people do like their commodities while traveling in luxury :D

[Darth Malice]

Ouch! some vert errors showing up, or worse. Some of them look like they`re gonna be a prick to fix too. Good luck...:thumb:

[Meph]

many hours and mesh correcting later... :confused: :confused: :confused:

i had to completely rebuils certaion polygons, other errors were correctable by slicing and adding vertexes...

the lesson is all this chaos, never remove seemingly useles vertexes after slicing on complex shapes...

[Darth Malice]

Much better, I hate it when that happens... I can see what looks like a smoothing error on the panel around the little rectangular box just under the second row of windows. Otherwise its looking sweet...:thumb:

[Meph]

Yar Har Har Triumph!
Damn that was a tricky poly!
Now I just have to clean up that front grill and I can finally continue with the rest of the vessel, The think is that they must be render errors, i've examined that grill throurougly but can't find any mesh errors and since i'm not working woth smoothing, just box modeling, there must be something else going on. I think i'll just chuck it and build a new one, maybe a bit more rounded at the corners...

[Meph]

New grill

[Meph]

Update; Slowly finishing the lower bow section. the biggest details are there now on the section. Perhaps I'll add some more smaller detailing later but for now I'll move on to the top section of the hull.

For the bow thrusters I wanted to add some articulation but keep the mechanics as simple and solid as possible so I came up with something similar to the heater of a car, a cylindrical structure for horizontal rotation and movale fanes for vertical rotation. Some small extra detailing is needed arpund the circumference of the rotatable pod. A loooot of time went into editing the triangualtions of the pod sections after slicing and beveling the cog teeth, that's still not finished but I'm seriously considering outsourcing that crap to some indians :confused:

There some small verteces to fix around the housing of the engine pod as some points got miraculously misplaced

[Darth Malice]

lol. yeah I hate that too... I like the thrusters, form as well as function. They look good...:thumb:

[Meph]

Some progress, finally a day without any major mesh errors :)

Just done the paneling of the upper section of the bow. Next up is the raised rim, the top secioon and the cutting of all windows/hatches on those sections. But that's for another day I fear

[Tovette]

I like the narrowness of the front and the details there.

[Prime_8]

Nice

[Darth Malice]

Looking good Meph. I asume the shpere in the middle of the ship is gonna be a big recreational area with a glass dome roof?.. If so what will you put in there?.. Pool, lake, gardens all of the above?.. Looks like it`ll be a nice area of the ship to design.

[Meph]

@ Prime_8 & Tovette: Cheers mates :)

@Darth Malice: All of the above :D I intend it to be an arboretum, some big trees, a pond etc etc, covered by a geodesic dome.

But first this...

My God... this is a nightmare... I compeltely fixed all the errors with any major problems really (the only errors were on the lower bow section), I can boolean the shape perfectly, every vertex is clean and neat but imagine my horror when I saw this....

EVERY face of the lower section is suddenly messed up, I don't get it how this happened, I really don't. I need a miracle now or salvage an older saved .max and do a looooooooooooooooot of work anew.

Any idea if this is salvagable?

[Darth Malice]

Hmm, could just be that the mesh has lost its smoothing groups... Do you know how to fix that? It shouldn`t be to hard. If its not smoothing groups, it could be much worse...

[Meph]

Hmmm, this is wat the smooth modifier did to it, the render errors are gone bet the AA seems to have problems with it... up close it looks ok but from this distance it's a bit dodgy. Coudl that jaggedness come from the raytraced shadows then?

[Meph]

Woops, forgot the attachment.

With the Smooth modifier's results being acceptable, I decided to move along to get at least some sense of progress and victory of human over polygon...

These are some quickies for the dome and arboretum, to see the size of the arboretum and location withing the vessel

[Meph]

Small update, Spent a lot of time, literally crawling around the dome, making sure teh fit is seamless and no more mesh errors in the glass

[Darth Malice]

Hmmm, this is wat the smooth modifier did to it, the render errors are gone bet the AA seems to have problems with it... up close it looks ok but from this distance it's a bit dodgy. Coudl that jaggedness come from the raytraced shadows then?
Jagged edges can be caused by a number of things, lighting being one of them. Low quality bitmap textures too can cause this. In this case the jaggedness would most likely be caused by an anti-aliasing issue in your render out-put. But dont quote me on that. :shiner:

Personally I`d crawl around the mesh just to make sure that smooth modifier hasnt caused any additional errors in the smoothing groups. But it does look quite acceptable from this distance.:thumb:

The dome is looking good. But I think the floor of the arboretum could be set a little shallower. I think its too deep as it is now. Just my 2 cents...

[Meph]

Yeah, i'm guessing it's the AA too... I'm rendering with mental ray so it doesn't have any true AA settings but I can increase the samples per pixel, that should do it I think..

And I agree on the arboretum, it's too deep as it is, It has to be a lot more shallow to create that open feeling of being in space when standing there :D

In the mean-time, here a quickie render of more detailing on the bow section. I found the rear end to be a bit bare (har di har har) so I decided to put two landing pads there for VIP arrivals and medical evacuations etc etc. But I'm doubting a bit on how to do the doors, my choices are: static doors as the shape is now and it'd be a matter of walking to your shuttle in a space suit. Or I can make it a bit more elaborate and do something more in the style of an airliner boarding ramp. Y'know with an articulated, movable section.
personally I'm leaning towards the latter.

[Darth Malice]

Sounds good... Dont know if you mentioned it, but how big is this thing? Say in meters...

[Meph]

Good question :) I initially wanted it to be around 500m, but when I started modeling the details I just sort of guessed the size for the airlock door so that it 'looked right'.
Out of curiosity I just did a calculation, assuming that the front docking door is 2m and I came to a size of, bow-to-stern, 552 metres. Spot on I'd say :D

[Darth Malice]

Cool, quite a bit bigger then I thought...

[Meph]

Wehey, rejoice! Updates! it's such a joy to be working with a fixed and clean mesh again :D

An small afternoon's worth of work, I concentrated onthe landing platforms and docking tubes. I just noticed that the first part of the docking tubes (the ones attached to the little building) can be alittle bit shorther, the tubes are standing just a bit too far onto the platforms

Darth, you were absolutely right about the arboretum being too deep. Since the vessel is about 55 metres, that would the dome around 65m. Now the depth, measured from the shallowest edge, should be around 7-8m, making the arboretum almost 30m in height. Well enough space to plant some oak trees and let some birds fly around ;)

And yup, it's a big ship, I wanted the bow section for the passengers to be at least as big as the larges current seagoing cruiseship, so I added length for the crew and engineering section and engine modules.

Next in the pipeline are all the windows and hatches for the top section of the bow

[Darth Malice]

Haha, glad its all go again. The docking arms and landing platform look cool. Nice work...:thumb:

[Meph]

Finally some updates again. Sadly I was pretty damn sick last week, nasty case of bronchitis so I couldn't do that much. But I'm on the mend and so is my mesh ;) I placed the windows and major hatches on the hull. Some small detailing and error handling is needed here and there but the overall is coming along nicely. i had a few veeeery nast .max file crashes as the maniacal box modeling proved to be too much for 3D max7, attempt after attempt and crash after crash. it suffices to say that I got a few more grey hairs because of it. Finally i switched over to 3Dsmax8 and suddenly.. voila! Success!

The very large windows on the rim (they're easily 4-8 metres on the longest side) are the large suites for the über-rich, the large ones on the side of the hull are for the high-priced rooms/suites, and the smaller ones at the bottom are the medium priced; All the other travelers have to do with bulkheads :D (the tiny ones on the bow section are for crew)

The rectangular hatches are the escape pods. Just like in good naval tradition, I doubt that there's enough room for everyone :flippy:

The large hatch above the gothic window is the hatch for the main passenger docking port. I intend it to be a two-story access tube to allow for fluid embarking/debarking at the same time. The larger hatch near the rear is for cargo delivery for the passenger section. that one needs some more detailing

[Meph]

Another Small update.

Just trying some detailing for the big window...

Waddayathink?

[Dallidas]

looking good! it has a very roman catholic feel to the window.

[Darth Malice]

Wow! Thats gotta be one massive atrium mid-ship. Nice work. The details are looking great...:thumb:

[Meph]

After being gone a while... some updates! I haven't been able to do much because i was out of the country for a while but I'm slowly picking up speed again.
And also the recent server issues prevented me from updating often, but no problem of course ;)
I started work on the engineering section, major detaling, paneling etc etc.. I made an articulated docking tube to be able to extend it a long way without the need for the long tubes to be in the hull.

I was also toying with the idea to make the entire power core/enige assembly detachable so it can be ejected. That way the crew and passenger can remain relatively safe while the back end has a catastrophic failure ;)

[Meph]

And here is some further progress on the paneling of the mid sections.

on the keel of the hull I paneled some large flat areas to build into big cargo doors.

Any comments or suggestions on further detailing for the engineering section? I'm not eager for over-detailing or over-greebling but I'd like to add some funtional looking stuff on the engineering...

[Meph]

No comments? :confused:

yeah, I know, no nacelles, no guns.... but still... :D

[cwest]

Meph, Meph, Meph.....

Good to see you back at it bud, been along time since I've seen you around. Just went combing though the thread, good design work...Noticed the docking clamp, good to see at least something from DV/NS survived...at least thats where I think remember it from...(I'm Cal_TT/Carl if you haven't guessed by now;) )

Anyway, I dig the design, however you've got some funky mesh issues from all that booleaning, and a tab bit of segmentation. You planning on doing the interiors aswell? For the engineering section, I suggest engines are a good start, hehe, along with fuel, reactors, or other power sources. Emergency lifeboats might be useful to if theres space back there.

Anyways, good to see you back, you should pop onto MSN sometime soon so we can chat!

PS, us no nacelles & no guns guys gotta stick together...otherwise all the guys WITH the guns will win :devil:

[Darth Malice]

Looking good Meph, I do have one gripe thats been bugging me for a while. That big stained glass window thing in the side of the hull is ticking me off. I`m not sure if its a scale issue or weather its the segmentation there that bugs me so. I`m loving everything else but this bit has me stumped.

[Dallidas]

looking good!

[Road Warrior]

Superb!!!

[Meph]

@Cwest: hehehe good to hear from you again mate! :-D Yup, I thought that docking tube was a too good thing to let to go to waste :) I did change some minor things to make it a bit more poly-performant, everytime I unhide that sucker eats up my viewport framerate... :-/ But it's worth it.
About the mesh issues: year there are some funky bits, espescially at the windows on the upper rim (the luxury suites). But they're very hard to smoothe and not mess up the mesh. Actually, not that much is booleaned, only the windows, just a cut imprint which is then extruded and/or beveled. For the rest fo the shape, it's box-modeled. The trickiest bit is the ledge where the keel goes into the upper bow secion, you can see it in the shadows. The shape's pretty fluid but there are some 'bumps' here and there but they're not exactly mesh errors, just kinks in the shape due to the poly's making the curve. Somewhere along the line I thought it to be fine and just consider it to bejust how the vessel was constructed. Just like the Gügenheim in Bilbao is make entirely of straight bits. But I'll have to look into it to improve it.
About the detailing, well maybe I never made the clear distinction but just to get you up to speed. With the engineering I actually only mean the middle bit up untill the pistons that hold the engine section on place. So all piping and access ports, reactor, the engine pods themselves are on the aft section. I'm considering perhaps to make a small docking station for 'worker-bees/EVA pods' but I'm a bit unsure of where how and what else?

@Darth: Well, I'm starting to agree with you there mate, it's looking a bit off. Mind you the stained glass bit is actually I modeled seperately and put it there,. It began as a doodle in extruded splines with a cloned and extruded hull bit to make up te window. But the more I look at it, the less I'm liking it. The problem is that the gothic shape is part of the paneling, it will be next to impossible to remove it. Any and all suggestions to replace it, other shapes than the stained glass shape etc etc are more than welcome!

@Dalidas & Road Warrior: Cheers mates :) any crits and comments (or general cheering along) are always welcome

[Darth Malice]

@Darth: Well, I'm starting to agree with you there mate, it's looking a bit off. Mind you the stained gall bit is actually I modeled seperately and put it there,. It began as a doodle in extruded splines with a cloned and extruded hull bit to make up te window. But the more I look at it, the less I'm liking it. The problem is that the gothic shape is part of the paneling, it will be next to impossible to remove it. Any and all suggestions to replace it, other shapes than the stained glass shape etc etc are more than welcome!Hmm, well that would be a problem. I cant really suggest any good fix that wont involve a **** load of work. Perhaps delete the window and simply extrude the hole to build some kind of tower on the side. Not really sure what purpose the tower would serve. Maybe additional communication or sensor array. Sorry, thats the best I got.:shiner:

[Meph]

Hmm, well that would be a problem. I cant really suggest any good fix that wont involve a **** load of work. Perhaps delete the window and simply extrude the hole to build some kind of tower on the side. Not really sure what purpose the tower would serve. Maybe additional communication or sensor array. Sorry, thats the best I got.:shiner:

Hmmm, well, not a bad idea actually... I decided to drop the whole 'gothic-window-with-opera-hall-behind-it' thing. I'm a bit reluctant into turning it into additional sensors or communication since it's the luxurious passenger compartment and I've still got a bridge to build ;)
Buuuut I have been thinking along the lines of making it some sort of EVA platform for the passengers, y'know à la jetski docks on some current cruise ships. Perhaps with a big observation deck for the wives to watch their fat rich husbands go at it on fancy EVA scooters :D hehehe

Whaddayathink?

[Darth Malice]

Hehe, yeah I was gonna suggest some kind of observation platform. But you already had that dome on top so I hesitated. Sounds like a good idea to me...:thumb:

[Meph]

It's been a while but here are some updates. I've been caught by NFS Carbon and Dawn of War: Dark Crusade.

The main work I've done is to get rid of the gothic window and replace it with a recreational EVA bay, where the rich bastards can feel like a kid again on space-scooters of some sort :-D

Let me know what ya think ;)

[Darth Malice]

I like it much better that way...:thumb:

[Meph]

Cheers mate, yeah, I like it a lot better that way too. I even took the little extra effort and make that hatch easily animatable (?!) using a slider and linking the gate and the pistons so I can changit from open/closed easily without any hassle :)

[Meph]

Some slow progress, I haven't had much time to model sadly :-/

The mid-section is coming along, mainly on the big cargo doors and the general internal lay-out. I built a large cargo hold to the front and two smaller ones aft. In the middle added a mlarge girder for a robotic arm to move along on. I still have to come up with some system for the main hold so it can hold cargo too without touching the main hatches. Some smaller robotic arms to hold crates in place against the ceiling and sides perhaps?

I put all hatches so far on several sliders so they're easy to open and close without having to fiddle around with their min and max positions all the time.

[Meph]

Not much progress, I've been having a small nightmare setting up the cargo loading arm for animation. Using a normal Spline IK modifier is no problem for the movement of the arm but integrating the telescopic part is proving to be a nightmare.
Also I'm holding of any major modeling for a few days since beginning next week I'll be screwing together a new PC :D My new beastie is going to be a Core2Duo 2.4 with2GB DDR2, and an nvdidia 7950GT with 512MB. :flippy:

i've also included the max for the cargo arm in case an animatio wizard would happen to drop by and give me some useful tips on how to set it up properly so I can just grab the head of the crane, and have the arms extend/contract accordingly :help:

[Meph]

Out of frustration with the telescopic arms I decided to preceed with the modeling og the cargo grappler. There are still some small details to be added here and there but the main structure is there.

On the grabbers themselves I added magnets to the grappler has several options for grabbing the cargo.

[Meph]

Help needed on some sidetracked problems for animating this crane. Should anyone be interested in offering some help/advice, please refer to the second link of my signatur (HELP! Telescopic madness) But I'd like to ask to post any suggestions here to keep everything focussed on this thread (if anyone is still interested in this thread that is:D ).

For those few who are, modeling will continue soon, I just about finished installing my new comp ;)

[Meph]

Some small updates on the mid section for those of you who still remember this thread. I've been inactive for a while but with 3D Studio Max9 on my new machine I've dusted it of and am continuing :D

Any comments/thoughs/suggestions/constructive profanities are always welcome ;)

[Dallidas]

I dont have anything to say but turn on some AA. other than that its looking mighty fine!

[Roliba]

Dat's a BIG ship. Looks good.

[Darth Malice]

Looking good Meph. Did you manage to sort you animation problems?..

[Meph]

Well... No actually. I just put it on ice. I tried a few times but always something went horribly wrong at the last moment...

Also, i'm thinking of redesigning the cargo grappler. the arm is fine but the 'hand' is too clumsy, It does the job but it's a bit of a tight fit inside the cargo space.


Also, about the AA. I'm using mental ray which has been included in the last few versions of Max but no matter how I adjust the sample rate, I never seem to get a completely crips image. Does anyone have any suggestions for this? Or a good setup that produces crisp, clear images?

[Darth Malice]

Hmmn, I was gonna suggest sliders but it sounds like you`ve already tried it.

[mayito7777]

Awesome work can't wait to see it with the colors.

[Ozylot]

Great updates dude! Good to see.

[Meph]

Moving along...

I spent some time on the bridge, some small mesh errors to fix and there are some small design issues here and there. The radar dome for instance. I like the functional look of it but it looks also like a mushroom.

I made a control room to overlook the landing pads and the actual bridge is near the top of the tower. Don't be fooled by the size of the windows of the control room and bridge, I made them a good 2m tall. For size comparrisson, use the small airlocks on the side and front of the tower.

On the side of tower, in the middle I put two escape vehicles per side (the things with the thin, vertical window)

I also made a large, stoweable antenna array to stay clear of the main sensor during sensitive sweeps.

And the spotlights are movable ;)

[JDR]

Very cool design.

[Ozylot]

I love the angle on that first pic. Great work! :thumb:

[Digital Daydream]

totally cool i like it

[Darth Malice]

Whoa, that`s cool. The renders are a little dark but very cool non the less. Nice to see you back on it...:thumb:

[JustinDixon]

I am usually not a fan of these types of designs but this one catches my eye in the best of ways; awesome design :) Nice bridge too, very modern day warship ish

[Meph]

Here are some more renders. i made them through a remote connection to my machine at home and the quality of graphics is a bit crappy so I can't check 'em untill they're online so I can see them from my work connection

[Ozylot]

Pretty cool!

[Darth Malice]

Nice Meph. I like how the bridge has turned out. I think its cool that you can do this stuff from work. Even though your boss may not think so...:D

[Meph]

Thanks guys :-D A little cheering on is always good for productivity :D
Well, sadly/luckily I can't do serious modeling from work. Generally speaking the upload for residential internet connections is way too limited to allow for fluid, detailed and accurate stuff. But setting up a scene, playing around with the ligts and render setup is doable :flippy:

I did some more detailing (some paneling, the camera pod and nav light on the bridge section and the top of the mid-section. Some small mesh errors to fix here and there but I consider them finished for now so next up is the detachable rear engineering section. The engine pods themselves are left for last. :devil:

[Meph]

And a quick beaty shot of the vessel so far :)

I'm thinking the time is about right to settle on a name for it. I've got a logo in mind in style of some old classy oceanliners.
I'm thinking about either 'Icarus' or 'Pegasus'. What do you guys think? Some alternative suggestions are also always welcome ;)

[Bell'Orso]

How about Olympic? (sistership to the Titannic) Or maybe you could open up the "Royal Caribbean Space Cruiselinse" and go for names like "Freedom of the Stars", "Voyager of the Stars", etc in keeping with the current naming convention of the real Royal Caribbean Cruiselines of today.

[Darth Malice]

Nice Meph, looking forward to that detachable rear section. I think Icarus is a good name. Some definite no no `s. The Titanic of coarse, The Pacific Princess (aka the love boat) and the Poseidon (that went down in flames twice)...

[Prime_8]

great details man .

[Lee80]

Great work so far Meph.. As far as a name.. Glactic Queen, Herra, QE IV,... *puts 2 cents in jar*

[Meph]

Hehehe, anything with 'Princess' in it is definately out of the question! :devil:
Thanks for the suggestions guys, keep 'em coming! :thumb:
Personally I'm leaning towards either 'Icarus' or 'Olympic', I must admit that the Titanic connotation is very appealing, hehe :D
For the logo, I think I'm going to go for a stylized, silhouetted shape. For Icarus it would be an obvious one; proudly arced back, wings spread backwards in a glorious ascent. For Olympus, the thing that pops to mind would be a running javelin thrower that's just about to launch the javelin, y'know one arm stretched forward in aim, the other arm extended backwards to chuck the giant needle to the stars.

I made some small modifications to the bits holding the camera pods, I made then a bit smaller to increase the range of vision for the camera

[Darth Malice]

Nice little unit...:thumb:

[Meph]

Cheers mate!

As for size comparrisson, I was kinda curious and i just couldn't help myself, it reads from left to right ;) :D

[Armondikov]

I was going to say that 'Titanic' was a name best left to large ships, then you posted the shots with the green skeletons and I changed my mind :D. Though, since the name/logo would mostly be textured, you could do all the names suggested and make a small fleet of these things.

Are you intending on modelling the inside of the glass dome?

[Meph]

Well, it's a pretty big one, rough calculations put it at about 500m in length.
As for the logo; so would suggest a pegasus throwing a javelin that's a bout to get burned by the sun, now that should prove to be an interesting logo :devil:

Yup, in the dome I'm going to model an arboretum/park, on the second page there are some pics showing the interior space for it.

I've started the detailing on the reactor section. While staring at it I was thinking on how to cool a very big fusion reactor and then i thought; well, what better way to cool the thing using some very big heat sinks, the hard vacuum of space can be pretty damn cold :D so voila, cooling fins!

[Meph]

Last updates before cerebral Shut-down.

Since the heat sinks seemed a bit vulnerable to small asteroids, space debris or occasional extreme external heat I need to come up with something to protect them when needed. So.. tadaaa a Lid!

Closed and open positions

[Armondikov]

Heat sinks? I thought greebles were supposed to be completely pointless? :D Anyway, fantastic work with the reactor, just keep it up.

[Meph]

Hehehe, well it's always nicer if most things have some plausible purpose as opposed to random extruding and beveling :D

The detailing of the reactor section is practically done. Perhaps I'll put more fine detail on it for later but as far as the main body is concerned, the structural detailing's pretty much there...
on the butt-end of the craft I've made a big hatch/gate so the reactor can be replaced/repaired in one piece.

[Coolhand]

Great details meph, i like the modular reactor idea, keep it up:)

[Jayden]

great stuff. on track for an awsome ship.

[Dallidas]

indeed! keep it up!

[Meph]

Thanks guys, I hope I can keep it up to the end without ending up with brain damage. The Engine pod is the next think to tackle but I'm looking forward to that. the daunting thing will be to map this baby. I intend to put time and effort into it but I'm not looking forward to unwrapping certain bits... i think that for a lot of things I can get away with a planer or box uvw.

Does anyone have any good tips for mapping or unwrapping hulls with extruded plates to be able to make a nice map with weathered panel edges, blackened streaks near exhaust ports etc etc... I could really use some help on that

[vf-1msx]

I like it

[Meph]

Some small updates on the engines... just some low quality WIP shots. I've re-aquired vray and been playing around with that too a bit...
Work is slow going but I'm getting there. The paneling of the pylons needs more detailing and the engine pods themselves still need to be done.

The coloured cylinders are the placeholders for the actual thrusters.

Still a long way to go...

[Meph]

The engine pylons and housings are complete, all that remains are the engine exhausts themselves...


After that I'll go over the model for one last good mesh cleanup (vray is unforgiving towards mesh errors)
and then it's on to photoshop for the texturing


And with the finishing (well, almost) of the modeling, it deserved a name too: Olympic, for the sister ship of the Titanic ;)

[ST-One]

Cool ship :thumb:

[Armondikov]

Very nice, how much are tickets for a week's cruise? :P

[Choo1701]

Very original engines, whats its top speed? ;) :p Great modeling as well Meph. :thumb:

[mouse]

what program do u guys use
im new i only discovered this site a few days ago :)
when i saw those designs i was blown of my chair :D

[Meph]

Pricing? :DSpeed.. ? Well... you got me there boys, I didn't think it out that far...
Well about pricing, let's say it goes from medium expensive for a no window cabin on the interior, to ludicrous expensive for a suite on the top ridges with panoramic roof :D

Speed... well, I imagined it to go pretty damn fast on sublight engines. the main Idea is jumping/gating/warping to a pretty star system and cruise around there for a while before jumping to the next. So it would need a hefty sublight speed so the passengers don't get bored while cruising between planets and nebulae

[Meph]

Well Mouse.
I'm using 3D studio max 9 for modeling. the fancy renders on the end are made with the Vray plugin (orginally designed for architectural and presentational renders)
Textures I make using Photoshop CS2

[Meph]

Some more renders

[Armondikov]

the main Idea is jumping/gating/warping to a pretty star system and cruise around there for a while before jumping to the next.

Seems like your next project should be a view from the inside looking out towards said pretty star systems. Nebluae too? Cruises around massive gas giants with impressive ring systems? Possibilities are endless with this kind of idea.

[JeffrySG]

just wanted to say...

holy crap... I don't know how I missed this one but...

She ROCKS!
Grate job Mate!!!

Jeff

[Meph]

Views from the inside out are definately a possibility although I'm not yet sure as to how high I'm going to detail it. The arboretum itself I intend to do pretty detailed, trees and a pond included. Fot the front promenate and the top curvy section, I'm not too sure yet. My first idea was to make a low-medium poly interior with baked textures. à la some Start Trek interiors through the window, to give an impression of depth and detail but not to model it out fully.
Also, from taking shots from the inside out, they basically turn into a shot of a nebula with a frame around it. In any case I'll have to put some time in trying to make some good nebulae. If any of you have any experiences in this, feel free to share...

@jeff: Well, you're welcome to stick around mate ;)



Slowly getting there...

Here are some orthographic pics I made to check the mesh, obviously there are some errors on the bow to fix and some blob above heat sink (though I have NO idea where that might be coming from)
i've also posted one old pic to show the original block model from which I started. No major parts were replaced during the building process, it's all refinement of 4 cubes basically and some added, minor parts...

[biotech]

I'm loving this ship, it looks very functional.

[Meph]

Cheers mate!

I kinda get a kick out of designing made-up stuff that have at least a plausible functionality. I don't want to 'over-engineer' it but achieve at least a decent level of believability.

Finished the thrusters yesterday...

[fluxfire]

Looks Tits to me man i think you should make a fleet baised on that design :D

[Meph]

Cheers mate, tits is what we do it for! :D

Well, the design IS modular... the entire reactor section can detach and be stuck onto another front. And since I'm already planning to do a militarized version, I'm sure lots of design elements will be recycled in future designs :devil:

And here are some pics trying out the engine exhaust. I'm pretty ok with the general look of it but I find it to be quite a pickle to balance brightness and semi-realistic tranparancy of the bloody thing...

What do you guys think? Be harsh but fair...

[Armondikov]

If it's modular, where does the detatchment begin and end? So far it looks like you have an engine/reactor section, a bridge section and a forward civilian section.

Looking excellent so far. The engines seem like they need more, but I suppose that could be overkill if you do too much to them.

[Meph]

Do you see the three horizontal pistons below the bridge sticking into the aft section. That's the split, those pistons hold the slightly larger aft section in place. Model-wise the reactor bit is completely seperate from the bridge and front section. When back home from work I'll set up a quickie render to show the seperate pieces. Right now it's just the 'seam' without any detailing on the two end bits but I intend to do those at a later stage.

And what do you mean by 'they need more?' More brightness? Size? Width? Girth? Length? Colour?

[Armondikov]

It's the engines themselves, not the pylons or the rest of rear section. They look a little plain with just large blank panels. Perhaps something simple, like the radiator fins you've put on the reactor, but on the engine blocks themselves (they'd probably need some sort of cooling/venting too).

[Knight26]

Looks nice, what tourist spots will it hit, zegama beach anyone?

[Meph]

It's been a while but basically I'm just cleaning up the mesh while pondering some minor changes or detail (fins on the back engines might be a good idea btw).

I've also starting some early exploring into designing a logo for on the bow of the ship. Here's a quickie so far. A discus thrower aiming to the stars, an Evil Eye to ward off bad luck and evil spirits and some stylized waves for the ship to sail on through the stars :D

Tell me what you think, any crits and comments are welcome

[Lee80]

I like it... Like i said on eric's forum... It would be cool to see the ships Name/regestry in the outer blue of the evil eye area..

[Meph]

As requested... Good idea by the way :D

[Meph]

Some early texuring experiments....

On first sight it looks well enough but I'm unsure on how to proceed with the weathering. I've always found that making heavy weathered textures, although quite hard, are a lot easier than making textures for objects that appear in good or new condition. Adding none or too little weathering makes it appear too new to the point of looking fake, add too much and you lose the 'new' look.

Does anyone have any concrete suggestions on how to add subtle weathering? I've been looking around on the net like crazy but I can't seem to find any good, to-the-point tutorials...

[Jayden]

well I cant point you to a specific weathering tutorial, Id like to see one myself actually. but will comment on your modeling: awsome. I love the rear end and the details, would fit nicely on a battleship too :P (hint, hint)

the ship its self is smaller than the real world olympic liner isnt it? well looks that way from the windows. good stuff anyhow.

[Meph]

Small? Au contraire mon ami :devil: This vessel has been ergonomically designed with large panoramic windows all around. the bridge windows for example are meant to be a little over two meters tall. I'll post some size comparison pics :D

As for your hint, I've been playing around with making an up-armoured and armed version of this. there's even been an name floating around too: Argonaut.
But actually I've been thinking to name the class of the ship Argonaut. Since there were around 50 Argonauts it's a great start for cruiser or destroyer class vessel dontchathink?

[Meph]

Some more size comparisons, the tour continues :)
The overall length measures out at about 500 meters.

[Meph]

And another part of the ship

[Jayden]

cool.

the name spurred me to read up on the old Olympic class ships, as I realised i didnt know hardly anything about them exept for of course the Titanic. They had some fairly big design flaws, hence I dont think we will see the names used on ships again. :P There are tons of names for different ships if your looking to re-birth another one.

Britanic was the other of the three Olympic liners. its amazing how many people think Titanic was the only big ship of that day.

[Meph]

yeah, true, that's like saying Elvis was the only good singer in the seventies when he died of hamburger overdose... :D

If I'm not mistaken, I think the Britannic was even converted to a hospital ship during WW1 but she sank after running on a mine

[Nop]

Just stumbled across this beaty and I must say I really like her. Especially the various sections. The bow with all the grace of an old ocean liner and the much more businesslike center and rear section. You can almost see the luxury interiors and the bulkhead with the sign "authorized personnel only beyond this point".

What are those minor towers at the lower side of the bridge?

[scotty73]

wow dude, just spent an hour or so going through the wip on your work and what can I say, amazing......... totally amazing.....
got so many questions but I suppose the first has to be how long you been working on this ship, I get bored after a day or two of everything I do!

anyway its totally brilliant work and i love it, totally original, excellent stuff, keep it up.

[Hobbes]

;) I love the stick figure antics too...are they surfing down the slanted windows?

[Meph]

Thanks for the appreciation and taking the time to read through all our rambling :thumb:

@scotty73: Well, I started near the end of september '06. The work on it slowly ground to a halt over the course of a few weeks and I picked it up again somewhere in december and I've been slowly working on it on a regular basis since then. For a rough guess I think there are somewhere between 100-150 hours in it already and it's nowhere near finished. I guess the trick for long, personal projects is just to dedicate some quiet time to it, put on some chill music, something to drink nearby and just click away the afternoon (and evening).
And if you're curious about something in particular, fire away your questions ;)

@Nop: Hehe, I'm glad you visualize the sections so well, it was indeed my full intention to make clear distinctions between the various sections.
As for the 'towers, they're actually extendable docking tubes. I devised some kind of general male/female connection to be used as a standard on most big ships and stations. The same design comes back on the bow of the ship. The towers I made so they extend comfortably beyond the beam of the both the bow section and engines. All the extendable sections are stored within the main tube so it can swivel up into stowing position. They're not the main passenger embarkation entrances though, I intend those to be behind one of the large hatches on the side of the bow section, also, i envision them to be 'double-wide' to allow easy flow of large quantities of people. I haven't modeled those docking tubes yet but it'll come to that sooner or later.

@Hobbes: lol, yeah, they're scrambling all over the place the little pests!!:D

[Meph]

Damn damn damn! This is giving me grey hair!!!

For the last few days, whenever I render my ship max suddenly decides to 'disappear' after rendering a few frames. Sometimes it renders a few hundred frames, sometimes just two or one... No error mesages, no warnings, just "poof!" gone... I can restart max without any issues, my file opens withour errors and then it happens again when rendereing. It smells like something memory related but I've got an intel Core-2-Duo 2.4 with 2GB and 4096MB set fixed as virtual memory...
Some other interesting numbers: my max file is a whopping 95MB already :O
and while rendering max uses 1.4GB of my physical memory and none of the virtual memory and my system itself uses 2.17GB in paging file size and 100% on both CPU's...

Any thoughts or suggestions guys? I'm also using vray 1.5 for rendering

[Meph]

Righty, Some time later and I still didn't fix the render issue but I did manage to avoid it. Apparently somehow the 'Irradiance map' from vray is crashing max. I suspect it to be a memory issue but it's still strange that it's happening...
I'm using the Light Cache now for GI, a lot less accurate but at least it's rendering...

I've been working on the mapping for the bow section and this is the state so far..
The keel section is just very temporary, I'm working on finishing the top section first and then moving on.

[Meph]

Some more pics. A small error crept into the unwrap so I'll have to do that again.
I'm slowly dirtying the hull section so there will a few more layers into the psd but what do you guys think so far?

[Lee80]

I think its lookin pretty good...

[xjcgi2006]

very good nice........:)

[nhall]

what's that other hatch say? The one that's about as big as the cargo bay, but higher and to the left of the cargo hatch?

Cool work, btw. The engine configuration makes the ship feel like a converted military vessel somehow. Ah, that's why! The engines remind me of the second gen ships seen at the end of starship troopers (I think)

Cheers,
Nick

[Meph]

Cheers guys!

@nhall: Well, that other hatch is the main passenger docking port. It says: "Welcome aboard, Enjoy your stay." :D
You can't have the passengers enter the ship on the engineering section hah, and it's also twice as wide to allow a better crowd flow ;) Just the hatch is modeled though, I didn't do that interior yet. Slowly I'll flesh out the ship more but those hatches are low on the priority list.
About it looking like a military vessel... Well I designed the engine section to be modular (note the big pistons on the side holding the reactor section in place) and I'm also planning to make a militarized version of this ship as well. I'm itching for some gunzzzz but I got to keep true to this concept first.
As for the engine layout, indeed it's similar to the ones from Starship Troopers but that's only that objectively it's a very efficient layout, I've even got enough clearance to the front for reverse thrusters as big as the main engines, this baby has got some breaking power ;)

Which is needed since I'm also planning an ice asteroid encounter :devil: :flippy: :devil:


And I fixed the uvw mapping, w00t w00t

[Armondikov]

Nice paint job, particularly the patches where the blue is rubbed off, but don't you think that a 5 Star cruise ship would keep on top of the weathering? :D :P

[Meph]

True dat :D Welcome to the dilemma of making new-looking models... It was with, pain in my heart that I scratched it... otherwise it just looked too, well, new and fake. Perhaps it happens every cruise that they run into some corrosive nebula that is just too pretty to ignore? :eek: :D

[Meph]

Some more work on the texturing. I began work on the keel section. Right now it's the same colour as the top section but there's still some experimentation needed to find the right layout. I'm not happy with it as it is, it needs a different colour or patter to distinguish it a bit more from the top section.

Any suggestions are welcome

[Starship]

Nice ship !

[Tovette]

WOW. This is a great design. I love this concept for a spaceliner. :D

[Meph]

Thanks guys :D

I could always use a bit more comment on the detailing of the keel section (the bit below the copper waves).

I did some experimentation but I'm not sure if it's the way to go with it...

[Pyrocitor]

Looks cool man :thumb:

the hull plating effect looks really good, is it geometry or bump mapping?

[Meph]

Thanks Pyrocitor :)

Well, all the paneling and hatches are geometry, no bumpmapping or displacements. I'm not planning to do anything with bump except perhaps some small detailing or weathering on the textures.

[Meph]

Some more quickie renders. Ignore the mesh errors, they're on the 'to-fix' list :eek:

[BolianAdmiral]

This is an awesome ship design... I love the sea-ship look, and it looks totally functional. I also love the almost Greek navy look you gave it, with the golden waves and all the blue and white... very nice.

[cliftonm_86]

should be called titanic. ;) (olympics sister ship)

[JeffrySG]

beautiful job! love the texturing and panel work...

[Meph]

Cheers guys!

Wel the thread ain't dead yet. Let's just say I've beens idetracked for a while... some professional assignments and also some new games that well.. ahem... occupied my free time. :-) I hope to put some more work into the vessel soon, simply because i want to see it finished so I can start on the armed version :flippy:

@cliftonm_86: Well, the thought crossed my mind :D but I decided to go for the less obvious choice so it's a bit of a surprise when people find out it's the sister of the Titanic..

And don't worry... I've got an encounter with an ice asteroid in my head that I intend to execute when the model's done :D

[jimi kane]

Real nice ship. I dunno why, but it looks like it fit right in in the Space Truckers universe.

[3Dman]

Very good work. Keep up... :thumb:

[Meph]

This is some early wip on the front of the bow section. I'm trying out blue with a copper rim. The patern and colours themselves seem good but I'm a bit worried about it being a bit too dark against a too dark background. I guess I'll have to play around a bit with the lighting to see if it's always this dark...

[Meph]

Fixed! Apparently it was the GI engine, 'light cache' is clearly inferior to the 'irradiance mapping'...
:-)

[Meph]

Some progress on the detailing of the bow ;)

[Ozylot]

Fantastic build dude, you've come a long way! :thumb:

[The B5 Fan]

Nice colour scheme though I must say the bow reminds me a lot of The Most Baddass Ship In Sci-Fi Period.

http://www.kitsune.addr.com/SF-Conversions/Rifts-B5-Ships/Earth_Omega.jpg

[Meph]

Long way come, long way to go :D

Hehe, yeah, when put together there is a similarity between them. I always liked the design of the human B5 ships

I'm working my up, but this is an afternoon's work of making textures and mapping. I spent quite a lot of time making subtle weathering but after putting everything together I find I need I need to go way further on dirt. especially the extending docking tube.

[Meph]

Last one for tonight...

[Meph]

Here's a little avi I let render while away at work today. the flickering shadows come from very low vray settings and the small size is because of a the divx compressor at 75% quality. You wouldn't believe the render time for this short bit, feel free to take a guess ;)

In case you can't watch it, download this codec pack, very decent, very comprehensive. http://www.free-codecs.com/download_soft.php?d=3614&s=95

[Meph]

Part two and three, up until frame 311 of a total 600 frames to render. Both files took about 9 hours to render, each...

[Meph]

Back from vacation, slowly picking up this project again. Not much progress texture-wise though due to a lack of time but I did manage to render another small avi. The size is a bit warped because I rendered it as a jpg sequence and when putting it together in premiere I was forced to pick only correct video sizes...

[Meph]

Finally, Some updates!
It's been a while but I'm working my way over the ship, the bow's almost finished.
Tell me what ya think ;)

[JustinDixon]

kickass model!

[Hundred]

Nice.

[Meph]

Thanks guys.

I tweaked the light settings a bit. It was way too bright and obscuring most of the weathering on the textures. I also started work on the landing pads.

I made a texture somewhat like a landing pad on a naval frigate or destroyer. For the 'X's I got something in mind that they can light up when there's an incoming shuttle with a concentric pulse going outward through the X. Perhaps even with one X red and the other green to show it's clear to land but I'm a bit unsure how to set it up to have the texture animated. For the material itself I think I'll make on in three 'layers'; one for when it's switched off, one lit up red, one lit up green with pulsating concentric circles. Any suggestion on the animated texture for the concentric pulse? A gif? An avi? Some other concoction?

(disregard the few mesh errors, they're on the to-do-list)

[LC Amaral]

Very cool model, i love the very original idea on it.
Aside some minor smoothing errors the overal model is nice and detailed.

My only glitch is that the textures are a bit low res in parts.

[Meph]

Thanks LC Amaral, I sure put some time and effort into working out the design :D

Hmmm... I could increase the size of the maps but they're already pretty big, the bow section maps are approximately 5000 pixels...

I did some more work on the maps and I'm currently test rendering a short animation for the green 'x'. I made a white circle pulsate outwards to indicate it's clear to land

[Meph]

Some more progress on the landing platform. It's been a while since I had a pretty serious crash with the file. The bipeds went funky and I had piece together the file again using bits and pieces of previous saves and backups but I'm back on track now ;)

[Meph]

And a small animation I rendered as a small tryout for an 'ignition' sequence for the landing markers.

[LC Amaral]

I like it, fits nicely the whole concept.

[dejong]

the engines and the rear in general need a more coherent texture to fit with the front I think. Bring in the elements that are dominant in the front portion, the white and blue and that will add a lot of continuity to the design. nice model and design

[Meph]

@LC Amaral: Thanks, I'm wondering of I should add something similar to the red X, but then again, the red one is supposed to be 'closed' so perhaps not, dunno...
@Dejong: Well, the middle and rear are still 100% unmapped... I'm currently still busy on the bow section, slowly working my way backwards :fishslap:

[dejong]

@Dejong: Well, the middle and rear are still 100% unmapped... I'm currently still busy on the bow section, slowly working my way backwards :fishslap:

Noted :thumb: looking forward to seeing more

[black campbell]

The signature Greek blue on white accents, along with the "sea-wave" curliques is a nice touch.

[Meph]

Thanks guys :D So, without further ado:

Up up and away!

Today's progress on the bow thrusters, all that remains is mapping a more detailed frame for the bow thrusters...
I've spent quite some time setting up the blast from the thrusters, lots of gizmo's in each of them. I've also set them up on two sliders, one for the rotation of the cylinder, one for the up/down movement of the vents, so they're easily posed or and animated. I've also set up the smaller maneuvering thrusters on the engine nacelles so it looks like the Olympic is maneuvering upwards ;D

I also quickly made a keel, the bottom was a bit too bland, there's some tweaking needed here and there but you get the drift ;)

By the way, any ideas on how to better tweak the engine blasts, colour, shape, intensity, the streaks, etc etc... don't be shy now ;D

[aszazeroth]

Tried a warm yellow/orange (golden) style ?!

[Elowan]

It really looks and feels like a cruise ship. Good job.

[LC Amaral]

I like then cold (blueish) as you have, but perhaps make it less firish-gaseous and more consistent plasma as in Starship troopers roger young when it does the emergence evasive action to avoid the asteroid.

[Meph]

She lives gain! Dusted off and back on the drawing board :) First up is finally taking care of the mesh errors on the main front hull and changing the Bump mapping.
I added a more comprehensive bump map to enhance the sense of scale and material. Any thoughts on this are more than welcome :-)



I like then cold (blueish) as you have, but perhaps make it less firish-gaseous and more consistent plasma as in Starship troopers roger young when it does the emergence evasive action to avoid the asteroid.

Indeed, very good point, they should be more intense, I'll have to play around a bit with the phase and stretch of the flames. I've also thought of perhaps adding a particle effect but I fear for the render times then...

[Meph]

The front section is cleaned of up of errors, the bow section's done for now. Next on the list is the middle section, engineering ;)

[Meph]

Some reworking done on the bump mapping of the maps. I find the paneling a bit too rounded right now, I might go with a more edged design.

[Meph]

Final bump map for now. I can continue tweaking this until eternity.
Even with lack of response, critique or comments, I'm moving on to the engineering section :devil:

[Meph]

Quietly marching on with the engineering section...

[DerekDRP]

WOW
JUST
WOW

I really like this ship but it looks liek a Perry rodan type model.

[Meph]

Cheers for the cheer DerekDRP :D

As for Perry Rodan, I tried looking him up but I can't seem to find some concrete examples of models, just some vague little movies on youtube

Well, it has been brought to my attention that the bump map isn't entirey, well, good enough, especially on the bow section it seems from a distance like it's covered in canvas. Ah well, that's what wip's are for ha...

So to settle this matter I'm presenting three pics, high res. One without bump mapping, one with bump mapping as presented on the previous renders and a third one with a changed bump map where I removed the smaller paneling and just kept the home made one.

I need some hardcore feedback on this guys, I need to come up with a decent bump map to enhance the sense of scale.


The two additional pics are different views using the latter bump mapping

[Armondikov]

I like how the textures are going so far. The gold makes it look hand painted with airfix metallic paint (I probably still have that exact pot of colour too).

[Meph]

Hee hee hee Airfix paint, now that brings back memories from days long gone... untill I made the switch from normal modeling to fantasy/sci fi from Games Workshop and thusly switched to acrylic paint... :D

In any case, without further ado, the progress. The engineering section's almost finished, I spent yesterday afternoon maily on the docking arms and some small details here and there. There are some few tweaks needed here and there but tell me what you think ;)

[Elowan]

Applying an Ambient Occlusion shader will help as well turning down the spec a notch.

[Meph]

Splendid idea! I started playing around with ambient occlusion a bit, this is my very first attempt at it. Currently it's only the middle tube that was changed to a full vray material with an ambient occlusion dirt map. Since those settings are quite different from normal max materials and I'm did it remotely using Logmein (crappy visuals) they might need some tweaking...

[Elowan]

On that extension piece - looks as if the texture needs to be rotated 90 degrees

[Meph]

Hehehe, I noticed that too after posting it and checking it from the internet... Actually it's 180° wrong, the darker bits should be under the sleeve of the bigger docking tube (more coverage, more dirt). Working through Logmein is like looking at a HD TV with your eyes squinted, everything's fuzzy and unclear :S

[Meph]

Second try on the near-blinded texturing.. No changes to the ambient occlusion, just rotated the mapping

Edit, lol, the mapping didn't rotate correctly :)

[Meph]

Other angle using blur-o-vision... the map's still not in the right direction, weird, really weird...

[Armondikov]

If the piece is an object that moves with the scene itself, make sure you're rotating it on the right axis as they may change relavtive to the one you're trying to do. Its obvious if you think about it but if you don't it can lead to a lot of confusion that will thow you for twenty or so minutes while you scratch your head.

It also looks like you've lost smoothing on it.

[Meph]

*cough* I found the problem when examining the unwapping.. apparently the mistake is in the texture itself, silly me :runs:, that specific dirt layers are simply upside down, ehehehe. I'll fix that once I'm home.

About the smoothing, Ithink that's the mesh itself, when I started out it was never meant for such closeups but once the mapping's in place I'll modify it a bit (campher any need-be-straight-edges) and sub-d it.

[Elowan]

Still looking good. Better once you get that texture in hand.

[Meph]

Well, i fixed the texture, it were some dirt layers that were just put in the wrong direction. Hehe, well most my psd's have several folders with literally a few dozen layers in them so it can get a bit confusing sometimes even with every layer decently named and sorted :-)


Next up is fixing and smoothing those corners of the docking tubes and remapping the entire ship so far with vray materials and occlusion dirt maps. I've got a feeling that the ambient occlusion dramatically increases render times but the effect is well wort it I feel.

Compare the dirt with the outer, bigger docking tube, that one till has the traditional mapping. I especially like the tiny bits where the copper tubes touch the 'metal' of the tube, on the outer it's a too clean connection, with the vray dirt it has a nice rust ring around it :D

[Meph]

Well, here's some progress on the bridge section. I'm a bit unsure about the lettering on the bridge. I've got a feeling that the sides 'need' something, I'm just not 100% sure this is the right thing. Any thoughts and comments on this are welcome.

[Meph]

Some progress on the bridge, still some detailing that needs to be done and a few mesh errors to fix.

[Meph]

Alrighty the bridge is done. Maybe some minor tweaking is needed here and there. I spent the afternoon unwrapping, making textures and mapping, I also set up the entire antenna on sliders so it can easily extend, anyways, time for a feed and a rest :-S

[Lee80]

This thing is really looking great Meph.. Nice work

[Meph]

Thanks for the cheer ;)

Well, here's the progress on on the Reactor section. She's almost done, just the engine pods, the rear reactor hatch and she's done. Some minor mesh cleaning needed here and there and then i can start on the interior.

[Meph]

Some more

[Meph]

Aaaand some more of the same batch I rendered yesterday.

Some replies and feedback might be nice when you're viewing this thread, that's why I'm posting it here, positive or negative doesn't matter, if you hate it, it's always beneficial to hear why ;)

[Ice-Dragon]

if you hate it, it's always beneficial to hear why ;)

Hate it how could anyone hate it, this is a great ship and your doing some great work so keep it up:thumb:

[Berticus]

It looks like cake. And we all know the cake is a lie. :P

It looks awesome, mate. Would work very well as a medium sized and background ship in a cinema setting (as in it takes up less than half the screen at any given time at cinema resolutions).

-albert

[Meph]

Cheers guys. Slowly but surely the end is getting in sight, I can't even begin to count the man hours that are already put in it... But true, it's not entirely on par for extreme closeups on a cinematic scale but still... she's going to feature in some beauty shots and hopefully some short animations :D


@Berticus: "Stop what you are doing and assume the party escort submission position, or you will miss the party."

[Starship]

She´s looking great, no doubt.
I´ll be waiting for the short movies. ;)

[Meph]

Well, here's a short film that rendered today. 8.5 hours to be exact.
The flickering in the movie is from the low quality render setting on vray, unnoticable on stills but a bit annoying in animations.

A word of warning though, it was NOT set up as an intended animation but it was set up as a very quick path to let some screenshots render at certain intervals while away from the computer but... I'll let the movie explain itself...

Sit down, hold on tight. Do not eat lunch at least an hour before watching and after the first run, if you're still conscious, it's best to put it on pause and use it as an interactive screenshot menu...

The flickering in the movie is from the low quality render setting on vray, unnoticable on stills but a bit annoying in animations.

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__________________

[Lee80]

lookin good to me. Whens that military version coming?

[Meph]

lookin good to me. Whens that military version coming?

Well, hopefully within a few weeks. I just have to map the engines and the rear reactor hatch and then the outre shell is finsihed. After that I intend to make some quick interiors for behind the windows and dome. Then I'll start doing some beauty shots with it but to be honest... my fingers are itching to get started on some gunzzz so probably while doing the beauty shots I'll also start on a militarised version.

Two options then, either make a 'converted' militarised version, or ditch the bow section entrirely, keep the bridge, engineering- and engine section and model a entire new bow. Perhaps both... The circular cutout for the dome is begging for a large landing pad, or even better... a very, very large cannon turret. I've even been thinking about converting the bow in a gigantic ion cannon, Homeworld style.... Any more suggestions and mad thoughts are welcome for the military conversion ;):D

[Elowan]

...
I've even been thinking about converting the bow in a gigantic ion cannon, Homeworld style....

THat would crap it up big time!:nono:

[Nevets]

Cool fly-around video. Dizzy.

Which did you move: the ship, camera or both?

[tobian]

This is a great project, and yes that animation is a little dizzyingly fast! :)

I think your hull textures could use some work.. I';m not that sold on the design.. maybe a larger map, with less tiling, and a more subtle layout, or bite the bullet and model the panels! EEK! :)

Keep up the good work!

[Meph]

@Nevets: well it's actually a camera following a curved path around the ship. As I mentioned earlier it was never meant as a fluid animation, just something to have some screenshots rendered at certain intervals while away from the comp. So basically it's a targeted camera moving along a path and the cam target moves slightly too

@Tobian: You make a very valid point. I'm not 100% happy with them too but it's a dilemma... The ship is supposed to be 500m long, quite large to make it in full detail and since it's intended as a rather well maintained and 'classy' cruise ship I can't go overboard with weathering. So it's a very delicate balance with some plausible weathering without making it look dirty. The maps themselves are very large already, for instance the bow is about 5000 pixels in length, the middle engineer about 5000x6000 etc etc... every large hull part is a psd between 300-600MB, including all the layers for specular and bump.
I have a intel core2duo with 4GB RAM and sadly I HAVE to render using the bitmap proxies downsized to half size or most of the time it won't render due to memory issues. Of course max isn't using the psd's as maps but jpg's that are around 0.5-2MB in size each... there are a few dozen of them now and apparently it's already getting to much to render without proxies.
I have thought about modeling those panels, the bump map was actually an afterthought because I wanted to add a bit more sense of scale. It's basically a small assymmetrical tileable map I made myself in photoshop but I have been fiddling around with finding the right size, which seems to be ok now . Perhaps I should make a bigger one, also tileable so there is more variation in it.

I'm also finding it tough finding the right vray material setting, I can't seem to find a good 'shine' for it, y'know a bit like the battle stars. It's either too shiny like plastic or too matte like now... on the other hand it is supposed to be painted like a current day ocean liner...

If you have any concrete suggestions on material settings, please feel free to give them,


In the mean time... a lower res but version of the same movie rendered on the full frames instead of the every 2nd frame, it's a bit more viewable this way
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[tobian]

Hmm well if you can't model all the panels, then model some of them, and allow mapping to fill areas. In terms of resources, modelled panels take up less than super large bitmapped textures, and they look much crisper If you have panels you can also get more variation in the design, rather than the tell-tale generic repeat effect. the other problem is your map looks a little like crazy paving. If you're going to have odd angles and such, have them as layers, as if they have welded it on top of the last one. Quirky panels look fine on small areas, but over a large area, they look really off, mostly just keep them square.

yeah painted finishes are tough. I'd say add a fresnel gradient to the reflection/spec chanel, but knock it back maybe 50%, and put some reflection blur on there, but only maybe 5-10%, experiment is all I can say. Also while your copper looks cool, drop the reflection map, because it's obvious that it's not reflecting space there! Also lower it's reflection, and raise it's diffuse (diffuse+reflection should equal 100% for metal shaders, if it doesn't do that automatically) Paint is different since it's a BRDF shader :) Make sure you keep your relfection ray depths low too, otherwise you are wasting CPU time!

[Meph]

Thanks for the post mate. It's exactly that kind of constructive critique that pushes the quality of the build forward. Like the say in Futurama; Let's crank it up a notch with another blast of the Spice Weasel! Bam!

:-)

Well, it's back to the drawing board for me then... Personally I'm starting to lean towards modeling more panels... it's just the time needed for it that is... well.. daunting... but since a half-sized proxied bump map looks well, a bit chunky even from a medium distance I guess there's nothing else to do but the hard bitter and ultimately more rewarding modeled panels.

Thanks again for the bump... I was kinda aware of the problem but a bit unsure/lazy/scared to tackle it.

Perhaps when I model the panels I can ditch the bump mat in it's entirety and thusly render the rest of the diffuse and specular maps full res isntead of taking the effort of making highly detailed maps and ending having to use half-res proxies...

[tobian]

A more simple approach would be to create a lot of secondary panels layered over the top of your hull, as it stands, and keep the base with a subtle bump map, but make it more of a regular hull.. maybe make a few versions of that. Hero panels layered over a base map may well create the effect of greater detail. You can also create slight variations on that hull with altered specular and diffuse, to create subtle variations of tone. There's no need to have this be covered in tiny plates, they would probably be fairly large, to make it more air-tight.

[Meph]

Hmmm, good point.. in any case that's more easily tweakable than the remodeling of basically the entire vassel :-S


And in any case the plan is, when all the mapping is finished to simply attach all the non-animated parts together, that will decrease the memory load too .

[Elowan]

I have a intel core2duo with 4GB RAM and sadly I HAVE to render using the bitmap proxies downsized to half size or most of the time it won't render due to memory issues. Of course max isn't using the psd's as maps but jpg's that are around 0.5-2MB in size each... there are a few dozen of them now and apparently it's already getting to much to render without proxies.

Have you tried using png's? I use LW and although png's are bigger on the HD - they are smaller than jpg's within the app whilst rendering.

[tobian]

Yeah I recommend you do NOT use Jpeg's for textures.. File size and memory size have NOTHING to do with each other.. a jpeg file 100x100 pixels takes up just the same amount of memory as a BMP 100x100 in memory, it's just the jpeg aggressively optimises the image, throwing away a lot of information, and introducing artefacts, and those artifacts can spoil images, especially if you are seeing them up close. Depending on how your rendering engine does it though, saving with less colours could save you a lot of memory (saving a black and white image as a greyscale PNG for example) as it only takes up 1/3 as much memory as a 24 bit image.

[Meph]

oh right, did not know that. Alrighty, I know what to do tonight... open up every mega psd and resave the necesarry things as png or bmp. If I could render those textures full res instead of the cursed half-res proxies, I'll be in heaven :-)

[Meph]

I fiddled around with the bump mapping, removed the diagonal lines and empty bits, it's a more uniform paneling now and not so distracting anymore. I think I'll slowly take a look at each ship section in more detail over time to improve it but since it's only really viewable up really up close I'll put it on a lower priority for now. First I'll make sure the entire thing is mapped, then experiment on the shader a bit more. It's not bad right now but it can sure use some tweaking, it's a difficult balance between too matte and too shiny.

[tobian]

Hmm part of the problem is you've mixed hard panelling with soft panelling, which seems to emphasise that that's just bump mapping. You may just need to add some more modelled panelling, unfortunately (or not for the detail hounds hehe)

[Meph]

Yeah, indeed, that's exactly the problem. I originally started out with the idea of just having modeled panels but somewhere along the way I added the bump because it felt like I needed something more to emphasize the size of the ship. It's around 550 meters long so a typical modeled panel is around 8x6 meters (using the little docking ports here and there as a +-2.5m reference). those are big panels... Then again... if you take a 300 meter mammoth tanker or aircraft carrier, those ships are made of pretty damn big sections too. Smaller panels might be more appropriate for a military vessel, as damaged armour is more easily replaced in small section and since this a civilian vessel, larger hull sections means faster construction time :D

Hmmm, perhaps I should ditch those bump panels altogether and just keep some small bumped details here and there. I can add some extra modeled detail later. Since I'm also working with an ambient occlusion dirt map I don't necessarily need to rework all the diffuse maps too, rust will be added automatically.

Right now I'm unwrapping the engine pods, I hope to have that unwrapped and textures this afternoon and perhaps a reworked bump map too.

[Meph]

w00t w00t Engine's done! :D

I removed the paneling from the bump map, just leaving the small impact marks and some detailing. I have to admit that with all the mapping in place that it looks good enough without bump paneling. It looks a lot slicker now.

Whaddayathink?

[Ice-Dragon]

I would have to agree with you that without the bump paneling your ship looks a lot slicker.

Great Job :thumb:

Keep up the excellent work:thumb:

[Meph]

Cheers mate :D
In any case, here are a few more pics :D

[tobian]

Yup, it does look better. Now I'd suggest you go in and add a handful of hero panels where they best add detail: You don't need em everywhere! :)

[Meph]

Some more renders I made.
Hmm good idea on the hero panels, here and there it could use something extra to fill the blanks, sadly I'm at work now so no mapping will be done untill, well a bit later :-)

[Ozylot]

This ship is amazing bro! Keep going! :thumb:

[Elowan]

Are you using reflection maps on the engine section? If you are - I advise losing them.

[Meph]

Thanks guys, no progress on the hero panels, these are just some more renders I made while at work.

@Elowan: I'm not using any reflection maps anywhere bit I see what you mean. For some reason, if the texture is in the shadow it loses saturation too much. take a look at the side pics for example. the blue on the right side is supposed to be blue but for some reason it seems to lose 'colour' too rapidly. The shadowy side doesn't seem thàt dark and there's a gentle skylight.
Same with the back end of the engines, the flame marks around the engines is almost black on the texture itself and on the specular map they're pitch black so they're supposed to be matte. instead, they just 'blend in' with the much lighter grey around it.

The last pic is a slight change in mapping, less depth of the material and every refraction value set to 0. Also, take note that none of the blue ever had a seperate value or 'lightness' on the specular map, just the same as the light grey hull. I was hoping that that would preserve the colour better but apparently not. just take a look at the cargo doors. they're exactly the same blue as the hull around it and exactly the same material settings. Same with the blue rim around the reactor section (where the coppers pistons are)
All in all the effect doesn't look 'bad', it just seems a bit 'off'. What are your (plural) opinions? Does it seem normal? Could it just be because the base colour of the hull is so light that it just looks like this on 'the dark side'? Could it perhaps be some weird (or über physically correct) relfecting effect of the raytraced copper material on the pipes?

Any ideas on how to solve/tweak this?

[Meph]

*cough* Don't panic! Don't panic! :D

After some searching... apparently there wàs some reflection going on.:stupid:
Somehow it seems that by one way or another I might have sort of looked over the global vray overrides :D

Here's a before and after shot of the eureka moment

[Meph]

Lookin' better now. :D

[tobian]

I believe Vray can support very fast soft blurred reflections.. Why not try a little of that on your metal, so it's not quite as gleaming hehe - looking good though, and glad you solved your reflection issues! :D

[Meph]

Yeah, true it still needs some tweaking. About the reflection.. are you perhaps referring to fresnel the reflections? It could be something with the ligting but the reflection highlights should be pretty soft. I put them on 0.6 (check out an example on Material examples (http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150R1/examples_material.htm#reflection_color))
hmm perhaps the specular maps are increasing the highlights too much on soem area's...

Hmm some tweakign needs to be done. Sadly I'm not home now so I'll have to put it on the to do list for when I'm home. Right now I'm rendering a series of test pictures to evaluate the lighting :-) I'll post some pics as they're done.

[Meph]

Some more renders I'm doing to check out the 'new' lighting. Since I'm not home there's not much of real update i can do now :-/