Anim8or Community
Artwork => Finished Works and Works in Progress => Topic started by: Olias on February 12, 2010, 12:47:43 pm
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Hello again Anim8or community. It's been awhile since I posted here.
Back in the distant swirling mists of time (The 80's) there existed a tabletop roleplaying game by a company called FASA. Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game and Star Trek: Starship Combat Simulator covered gameplay on the ground or in space in the Star Trek universe.
ST:SCS was quite good, and supplemental manuals such as the Federation Ship Recognition Guide listed specifications for both "canon" ships and originals created by FASA. "Flavor Text" was provided for all ships, and it made for an interesting read.
At the time, there was also a magazine called Stardate which primarily dealt with the FASA game in much the same way that Dragon Magazine covered Dungeons & Dragons. There was a section called "Jaynz Ships of the Galaxy" in each magazine where they would detail a new ship class which could be used with the game.
The one that caught my eye in those days was a design by Josh W. Spencer, the Indomitable-class battleship.
Here's the original blueprint:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/indomitable_STARDATE_original.jpg)
As you can see, it's a "kitbash". Looks like an Excelsior Saucer slapped onto an elongated Enterprise secondary hull with Enterprise warp nacelles.
I'd like to also credit Bernd Schneider and his Ex Astris Scientia (www.ex-astris-scientia.org) website for the awesome ship database contained therein, and a contributor to that site named GUS for his awesome Excelsior reference images.
More to follow...
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The Challenge...
About a year ago I threw together a low-poly set of Star Trek ships with the intention of modding a game. These were Original Series era ships, and according to the FASA lore the Indomitable wasn't created until the movie-era, but I figured just for giggles I'd take some artistic license and throw together a TOS Indomitable, just to see how it would look in 3D. Here's the result:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/Indomitable2.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set9.jpg)
As you can see, it looks rather strange. It's one of those things that looked great on paper, but in 3D there are very few angles you can view it from where it doesn't look way too long and just rather silly.
I'll be taking some artistic license with it again, and the challenge is to keep it true to the design, but modify it enough to make it look good.
So with all that said, here's some initial renders of my progress on the saucer section so far:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/one-2.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/two-2.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/four-1.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/five-1.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/six-1.jpg)
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Olias, it's good to see you back! You always come out with some great ships. So far this is looking very sharp and clean, I'm looking forward to what you come up with.
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nice
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Thanks guys. :)
Hiho, good to be back, and nice to see that you're still around as well.
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I don't know if this was a studio model, but based off of this reference image, I added some details to the impulse engine area. I'm going to redo those two "wings", as I think they could look better. Also still trying to figure out what those two little thingies are in front of the two dome structures, they're rather hard to make out.
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/impulsearea.jpg)
Reference Image
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/Impulseengine3.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/Impulseengine2.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/Impulseengine1.jpg)
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Every time I do a Star Trek ship, I debate with myself whether or not I want to do the hull plating as part of the actual model, or work it in later with a bumpmap. To date, every time I've done it with a bumpmap I seem to run into issues with Anim8or. It seems to work fine when first applied, then sections of it seems to become reversed (i.e. sunk where it should bump, bump where it should sink.)
So this time, I just modeled the plates in.
Also rebuilt the "wings" and added the dorsal phaser banks.
Here's two ART renders:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/HullPlatingART2.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/HullPlatingART.jpg)
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woah, the added detail is simply amazing!
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Thanks Davdud. :)
Here's a Kerkythea render:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/kerkytheaone.jpg)
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Very nice so far. Its good to see the ART renders look just as good as the Kerkythea render
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Very nice detailing so far! Can't wait to see more updates.. maybe you can show a wireframe of some details? Good luck modeling.
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Great stuff Olias. Nice to see you back on board.
I finally found your avis!
cheers
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My H.L. Hunley will destroy your U.S.S. Indomitable!
(http://i810.photobucket.com/albums/zz28/TheRetroZombie/HunleyPic1.jpg)
though it the Hunley will sink after it's attack
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Very nice work Olias. Lot of detail there, cant wait to see it finished!
@TheRetroZombie: please keep your posts on-topic
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Olias, I just saw your Serenity flyby from some time ago. I just started watching that show, love it!
The current model is of course looking fantastic. I agree with your idea to simply model the panels this time. I remember the trouble you went through before, and I don't think it was worth it. Anyways, with all the detail you put into your models, you might as well have a few more polys ;)
Very smooth modeling though, it looks great so far.
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Wow... The detail you've put into that amazes me, I love the little plates and shapes, the way they all seem to be formed around each other (if you know what I mean)
Awesome ship, can't wait to see it finished!
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I love the model (it makes me jelous! :D). I can't wait till its textured!
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i think that what ever you do film wise for the ship. you need 2 make a seperate video to show off your modeling skills. i bet it will be hard to see all the details u put in with a 20 second fly by, or what ever your doing with it. either way though i think it will look great.
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Very clean work indeed Olias, glad you're still around and in action :) Of course, I agree to any decision to model details rather than texturing them, and so far it looks great. Looking forward to your stellar interpretation (get it? stellar? :P)
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Thanks everyone. :)
Well, after much tinkering around with it I think I've settled on a concept that I am happy with. It's a pretty significant departure from the blueprint, but like I mentioned before, if you go with the blueprint you get a crazy long looking thing.
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/secondary1.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/secondary2.jpg)
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Here's a few more shots, after completing more of the secondary hull.
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/front.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/45.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/side-1.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/135.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/180.jpg)
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How did you get the glow in the rocket thing?
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How did you get the glow in the rocket thing?
Anything glowing is just an emissive texture. Later, it will be a combination of emissive maps and lights.
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One word.
How?
(actually, that's three words)
(which makes this seven words)
(but actually this is eighteen words)
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To do the emissive texture on the sensor dish (the big round blue thing), I did the following:
1. Select all the faces of the dish.
2. Detach faces. (You don't have to do this, but by making it a separate mesh, it allows you to use Anim8or's Texture Generation options which will snap the messh perfectly onto the dish.
3. Create the image with Photoshop, Gimp, or whatever you prefer:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/crystal.jpg)
Since we're dealing with a circle, this was an easy one. Just open up a new project, select a gradient, configure it to be circular, and fill the canvas with it. I then added a sunburst effect for those radiating lines.
4. Then just create a new material, load your image to the emissive field, set emissive to something other than zero (1 in this case).
5. Go to Object/Edit mode, select the mesh, press the UV button, select yes for "Enable Texture Generation", double click the mesh, make sure "planar projection is selected (should be, it's default)", click reset to default once, and it will snap right on there.
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Added hull plating to the secondary hull, closed and finished the aft torpedo bay, and closed the open hole above the shuttlebay.
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/Hullplating3.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/afttorpedo.jpg)
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Looking good. Liking the detail on the saucer section.
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:o It's comming along nicely. LOVE IT ;D
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But... howdo you get all the detail? I thought my leopard was good until i saw this.
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nice high quality machine model ,i like how that plasma core texture looks motion active in the render
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Thanks guys. :)
@MeepII: I guess the short answer to your question is: model everything. This comes at a pretty heavy price in terms of poly count, and is definately something to consider when you begin a project. This model, for example, would be totally unsuitable for a game. Of course, that wasn't the objective and would call for a different approach.
I've also been using the bevel tool more on this model than I ever have before, to sweeten up the edges. There's very few things in the real world that have a totally sharp and uniform edge, and those sharp edges are often one of the biggest factors in something looking artificial.
I have to make a confession: this model is probably 95% built in Anim8or, 5% in Blender. In certain situations, Anim8or extrudes better than Blender, and bevels better than Blender. In others, the reverse is true.
To do the hull plating on the secondary hull, for example, I selected the edges that would outline the plates and beveled. In Anim8or, the vertical edges would inset much further than the horizontal edges. So, I exported the model to Blender and did the bevel there (which was uniform), then imported back to anim8or for the extrude. Back to Blender for the edge bevel, and back to Anim8or to continue on.
Here's some wires:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/wire5.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/wire4.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/wire3.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/wire2.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/wire1.jpg)
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Here's an illustration of what I was talking about with the bevelling, as I'm sure my description didn't make a lot of sense:
Anim8or:
Selecting the outline of two hull panels:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/an8bevel2.jpg)
The bevel. Note how horizontal/vertical is not uniform:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/an8bevel1.jpg)
Result of doing the same thing in Blender. Uniform bevel, and the look I wanted here:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/blendbevel1.jpg)
Maybe there is a way to get Anim8or to do this, but if there is, I don't know it.
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I'm afraid there is no remedy for that in anim8or Olias.. I usually go to 3ds max to do the beveling. You can do it a little bit with cutting the edges where you want it, but that takes a lot of tweaking.
Your model is looking really good though, keep it up!
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I'm afraid there is no remedy for that in anim8or Olias.. I usually go to 3ds max to do the beveling. You can do it a little bit with cutting the edges where you want it, but that takes a lot of tweaking.
Your model is looking really good though, keep it up!
Well that's a comfort. If there was a way to do it in Anim8or and I'd somehow managed to miss it all these years, I'd feel like a flaming idiot. :p
And thanks. :)
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Is all the detail part of a single mesh? Or is it like.... stuck on?
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This is coming along awesomely. I appreciate much your sharing of pointers and techniques.
At first I was a bit skeptical about the look of crafts in the new Star Trek movie (before seeing it on screen), but as I watched the beginning, with the ship commanded by Pike (I forget the ship's name) I immediately changed my mind. I think this "Indomitable" style would really look great modified that way, and given the warp nacelles from the new movie's Enterprise. I have always been partial to the look of the glowing orange-red energy at the front of the original series ship nacelles.
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Thanks guys. :)
Arik: I remember seeing some stills of the re-imagined Enterprise before the 2009 movie came out and thinking, "God, that looks awful." They certainly didn't do it justice, it looked amazing in the movie. That may well be my next project.
What I liked about the Original Series Enterprise, the movie refit and "1701-A", and the 2009 reimagined Enterprise is they don't go hog wild with glowy crap, as they started to do from The Next Generation on. They seem more believable somehow, the style was distinctly different.
Meep: In most cases, they are "stuck on" - separate meshes intersecting each other to look connected.
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Nice one. Also try some photorealistic renders. That would look even better then the movie. ;)
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And if you need textures, I can make some pretty good greebly-looking diffuse/bump/specular maps. But they'd probably fit better for a Star Destroyer or the Death Star than the Indomitable.
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what you want is the aztec pattern. This the way they do it wth photoshop and maya. there maybe way to do it with some other programs. like anim8or and psp http://www.meshweaver.com/frames/tutorials/aztec.htm
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This is what I meant. Square textures in this post, disk textures in the next.
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And now the disk textures.
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Thanks very much, and I certainly appreciate the work you did to contribute to the project.
I've been screwing around with aztec textures for quite a while, trying to get them to look right. As it happens, the method for creating them you guys pointed out here is more or less what I had come up with as well on my older Enterprise project.
I'm not a huge fan of the Polar Coordinates function in Paint Shop Pro 8. The farther out you get from the center, the more your edges get extremely blurry or jaggy. I had managed to comepensate for this somewhat by creating the aztec pattern on a 128 x 128 canvas, then resizing it to 128 x 2048 and saving it as a pattern swatch. Then I used that to flood fill a 2048 x 2048, then applied Polar Coordinates.
One aztec layer honestly doesn't look that great, so what I did then was set the swatch size to 50%, flood filled another layer on top of the first with it, applied PC to that, then set the transparency to about 50%. On top of that I put a steel texture with some blemishing and came up with this for my enterprise model:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/21.jpg)
I was reasonably happy with it, and for at least a couple of renders, the bump map seemed to work properly on the hull lines.
And that brings me to bump maps, and why there will be none on this model. I've had no luck with them on any Star Trek ship I've done. They seem to work for a render or two, then like over half of the bump map seems to reverse on render, bumping up where it's supposed to go down, etc. I thought this was something to do with Anim8or, but it did it on Blender as well. I'm not sure why, I tried everything I could think of to fix it. Maybe it's to do with the saucer shape. No idea, but there won't be bump mapping on this model.
With that in mind, I was experimenting around with actually modelling the aztec texture:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/aztec1.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/aztec2.jpg)
Very high in poly, but lines up perfectly with the existing hull lines, something else you're not going to get with Polar Coordinates.
I think where I will go from here is eliminating the aztec modelling, but rendering it into an image that I will base a texture off of. Should look almost as good, with much cleaner lines than PC.
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This are textures done with two layers of elongated aztec and a layer of patina as described above:
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/aztectexture1.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/azteclayeredtexture1.jpg)
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Here, finally, are some new updates.
1. New "Neck". I totally replaced the section between the primary and secondary hulls. I wanted to distinguish this ship further from the Enterprise, which has a similar setup...torpedo bay mounted in the neck.
This new "neck" is also shorter, giving the ship an overall lower profile and making it slightly more similar to the original design.
2. Torpedo Tubes. These are now arranged around the deflector dish forward, and along the sides aft.
3. Deflector Dish. Detailed this, making it look somewhat similar to the 2009 Enterprise.
4. Warp Nacelles. This is what took me so long between updates. I wanted to create original nacelles for this ship, for a number of reasons. First, to differentiate it from the Enterprise.
Secondly, according to the specs, this ship is almost twice as long as Enterprise-A. I suppose it's possible that they would make the exact same nacelle on a much larger scale, but that seems kind of unlikely.
So basically, here's what I have come up with. They need a lot more detailing, which is to follow. I created several different nacelles, but wasn't happy with any of them until this one.
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/31-1.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/31-2.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/31-3.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/31-4.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/31-5.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/31-6.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/31-7.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/USS%20Indomitable/31-8.jpg)
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Looking fantastic so far, keep on track. :)
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/*head falls on keyboard*/dhsfkljashfuivnewhuifvaniwuenoafnvfihvmawiuha The detail blows my mind. Excellent work! :o
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Looking really good! I do especially like how the aztec work has developed.
The nacelle design is intriguing. I especially like the front end "glow". I would be tempted to create some sort of raised effect, and of course the aztecing detail will have to carry over, eh? workworkwork! (just kidding)