Learning Lightwave

[Rekkert]

Looking good as ever.
In my opinion, Casimiro's plans are much better than those of Sinclair, I've used them a lot for references on TOS ships.

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks. I like both sets. Though, I'm currently more of a fan of Casimiro's because of the fact that the views match better. I also like that he has sheets for the pilot versions of the ship and his extra sheet highlighting some of those hard to make out details and other goodies is very nice. I've been using that for years, even when I used Sinclair's blueprints to model the ship.

[Pagrin]

Welcome to LW. I think you'll have a blast with it as you become more comfortable with the controls.

[Tralfaz]

Great work so far Chris. Looking forward to seeing more.

Al

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks.

[uniderth]

Nice work. I remember your old NCC-1701 tutorial. You had to split the saucer into two parts to texture it properly.

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks. Though, that was scifieric who did the tutorial, I just followed it. Yeah, trueSpace is a pain in the butt like that. I like the Lightwave way of uv mapping texturing a lot better. The UV mapping is done the same way it is in Blender.

[evil_genius_180]

OK, people who know me aren't really going to be surprised by this. I'm not happy with the upper saucer curve in my Casimiro-built saucer section. I frequently watch TOS episodes before bed to wind down and this doesn't look like what's on screen. (the original episodes, not the “remastered” ones)



The transition from the curve to the smooth surface is much less severe. So, I needed to fix that. I also like my B-C deck teardrop shape I originally made using Sinclair's plans better. That was easy to fix, I just made a new one off of Sinclair's plans and moved it slightly to line up with the Casimiro plans.




The saucer was a bit more interesting. Obviously, I could just make one off of Sinclair's plans and put it on the shp. However, Sinclair's plans not only don't line up with Casimiro's plans (big surprise there) but the saucer is also smaller than on the Casimiro plans. So, it won't work. Of course, the good thing about being an artist is that you don't have to take what they give you. I took the upper curve from Sinclair's plans and blended it into Casimiro's plans. The result was a bit messy, so I took that into Inkscape and redrew it to make a nice, clean spline line.



The result is a nice, smooth curve and a saucer I can be happy with.





I know, some of you are probably wondering why I'm going to all this trouble on a ship I'm building for a tutorial. Well, simply put, it took me years and several tries to get a very close (about 99%) TOS Connie in trueSpace. I don't want to spend that time on the ship in LW, I want to get it done in one shot. I have several years' worth of ships to rebuild or convert in LW and probably a few new things to do, so no redoing ships that I've already done in LW until that's all done.

The Engineering hull is forthcoming. I've just about ran out of excuses to not start work on it, though don't expect a speedy update. There are a lot of steps, it's likely to take a few days, and I'm not going to stop to render everything as I go.

[Tralfaz]

The upper hull is looking much better now. Keep up the good work.

Al

[evil_genius_180]

Thanks a lot.