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Artwork => Finished Works and Works in Progress => Topic started by: Olias on April 25, 2008, 11:30:13 am

Title: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: Olias on April 25, 2008, 11:30:13 am
This was originally just going to be a low-poly version of the Enterprise I was going to throw into my NCC-1701 thread, but it's turned into a full-blown project for me.  I think I am going to attempt to mod a game with these.

These all go about 2,000 polys or less.

These ships, aside from the Enterprise and the Klingon D-7 are not strictly "canon", in other words, they've never been officially recognized by Paramount as Star Trek ships.  They've all appeared in various games, however.

Clockwise from top left are the "Saladin" class, the "Loknar" class, the "Constitution" class (Enterprise), a pre-refit version of the "Miranda" (Reliant), and at center, a Klingon D-7.

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set4.jpg)

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set2.jpg)

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set1.jpg)

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set3.jpg)
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: spicy on April 27, 2008, 09:23:31 am
Those are really good! I like them loads. I am a star trek fan, they look exactly like the ships off Star Trek. how long did it take to make these?
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: Olias on April 28, 2008, 09:40:52 am
Those are really good! I like them loads. I am a star trek fan, they look exactly like the ships off Star Trek. how long did it take to make these?

Thanks Spicy. :)

The low-poly version of the Enterprise proably took me about two hours.  That I could use the same textures from my high-poly version certainly saved tons of time on that.

Because the Federation vessels share a lot of common parts, the rest took anywhere from about 10 minutes to an hour or so.  The Klingon D-7 probably took me two hours, and of course needs some better texture work.

The Federation vessels need some more work on the textures as well, if you look close the saucer sections on all of those have the proper number and name, but the warp nacelles all still say NCC-1701.
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: spicy on April 28, 2008, 09:49:38 am
Thanks for that. I loved the warp nacelles as well
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: Olias on April 28, 2008, 12:08:54 pm
Added: D-10 "Riskadh" Heavy Cruiser

This, like the Loknar, was a FASA design for its "Starship Combat Simulator" about a million years ago..

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set5.jpg)

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set6.jpg)

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set7.jpg)
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: EcoTyler on April 28, 2008, 04:51:51 pm
These are good models,since they are low-poly you could prehaps texture and sell to a video game company.I can't wait to see them all textured :)
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: spicy on April 29, 2008, 11:20:37 am
I presume they are textured, as that is what they look like from Star Tek: The Orignal Series
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: Olias on April 29, 2008, 11:33:17 am
EcoTyler: Thanks.  As to selling them to a game company, I think there would be problems there.  Since Star Trek is a IP owned by Paramount or whoever it is these days, I doubt they'd appreciate me selling them their own stuff. :P

Not to mention there's already a VAST body of Star Trek work out there, the mod community for just about every Star Trek game in recent history has put out a tremendous amount of high-quality work.  In fact, if memory serves and my who's who is correct there's a guy out there that did some tremendous mod work for the game Bridge Commander.  BC'c graphics looked pretty good out of the box, the replacement models/textures this guy modded in made them look near movie quality.  He was then actually employed by whatever company did Star Trek: Legacy.  Again, this is to the best of my knowledge and I THINK it's all the same guy.
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: spicy on April 29, 2008, 11:39:31 am
Wow one guy? He must be really good. I have got the game Bridge Commander it was good, and so are your models. What object did you use to start off with for the Constitution Class Starhip and did you use a reference image?
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: spicy on April 29, 2008, 12:04:35 pm
Also where did you get the textures from. Cheers
-Spicy
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: Olias on April 29, 2008, 12:30:25 pm
Oh yes, definately used reference images.  I found some very good ones, very high resolution, after searching around with Google for awhile.  I've found with modelling stuff like this it's best to have extremely good high-resolution blueprints and some pictures of the real-life prop or model - there's just some places you can't quite get a feel for even with the best blueprints.

I used a vertical cylinder to start off with in front view, messed around with the dimesions until I got it right with the blueprints for the "sides" of the saucer section, then converted it to a mesh.  From there I selected the top and bottom faces, inset them several times until I was close to the middle.

From there, I would select one of the loops and raise it on the Y axis to get the desired shape of the top and bottom.

The textures I made from scratch with Paint Shop Pro 8.
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: kahlua17 on April 29, 2008, 12:43:04 pm
Those look great.  For the saucers, did you convert them to subdivided once you had the proper shape, or did you leave them as a mesh?
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: Blank Studios on April 29, 2008, 02:08:06 pm
Just some constructive criticism...coming from a Star Trek fan... Your loknar class looks pretty good, but the boom section doesn't look like it's in scale with the engineering section... it looks too small in your renders. Very nice 'fat man' (I think that's right, I have a book somewhere) class klingon cruiser! May I say that while the textures for your Federation ships are quite nice, especially where the nacelles are concerned, your klingon textures could use some work... If you see any of the original series where they had a klingon ship, it was actually a smooth, light grey, almost plastic look. The next version had a rusty steel look, and seemed to always look like it was missing some hull plates... Hopefully these comments will help you. Very nice work in any case!
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: EcoTyler on April 29, 2008, 04:04:18 pm
Oh,I thought the texture would be darker(I don't watch Star Trek much)
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: Olias on April 29, 2008, 04:34:54 pm
Kahlua17: I left them as meshes.

Blank Studios: Regarding the Loknar, I think it's just the camera perspective, but I'll recheck it to the schematic.  Regarding the Klingon textures, I totally agree with you.  The textures on those ships are just placeholders at the moment - it's just the plain Federation texture set darker.  Because those ships are a lot more "irregular" than the Federation ships, I think I'm going to have to do an unwrap on those.
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: spicy on May 01, 2008, 12:36:58 pm
How did you creat the glow for the warp nacelles?
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: Olias on May 01, 2008, 03:05:11 pm
Spicy: I just created a gradient in Paint Shop and then applied it to a material as an emissive map, value 1.

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/GrilleJPG.jpg)
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: spicy on May 01, 2008, 03:49:03 pm
Thanks Olias!
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: adamsbullock on May 02, 2008, 07:25:54 pm
They're really good - liking the way you've done it with economical poly count, and the texturing looks subtle but still quite solid.

Ad
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: Olias on May 03, 2008, 08:09:16 am
Added the Indomitable Class.

This is an interesting one.  Around the time the FASA game was in its heyday, there was a magazine called Stardate that was sort of a supplement to the game in much the same way that Dragon Magazine was to Dungeons & Dragons.

At the back of Stardate was "Jaynz Ships of the Galaxy" in which they would create original ships to be used with the game.

The one that caught my eye was the Indomitable.  It was clearly just a kitbash, combining the Excelsior saucer section with an elongated Enterprise engineering section and warp nacelles, but I thought it looked sweet, long and sleek:

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/indomitable_bow.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/indomitable_dorsal.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/indomitable_port.jpg)

Despite the fact that the "flavor text" describes the ship class as having been built around the same time as the Excelsior, I decided to give it a go - and to make a Original Series era version of the ship.  I built it according to the blueprints, tossed it into the scene...and it looked Godawful.  Even though the blueprints always looked cool to me, in 3D this ship looked bizarre at best.

So, after making a few modifications, most notably making the saucer section much larger than in the blueprint, I finally got it so it looks pretty good to me.

One other note, in the flavr-text blurb the registry numbers of this class were supposed to be 2010-2020.  Since I went with an original-series era version of the class, this wouldn't have made sense, so I changed it to 1970.

Anyway, here she is:

(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set7-1.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set8.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set9.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set10.jpg)
(http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/olias7/set11.jpg)
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: spicy on May 03, 2008, 12:42:15 pm
These are excellent renders! Even though I am a star trek fan, I have nver heard of the Indomitable Class. I learn't something, it looks good though. Are you going to add some lights to it though?
Title: Re: Star Trek TOS Low-Poly Set
Post by: startrekfan001 on May 08, 2008, 07:59:46 am
Hey Olias, i have kind of a crude question: could you send me one of these models to check it out? I never really tried to make an image with a low-poly mesh, and i can't make low-poly meshes either. i always end up in high-poly. it would be interesting to see how an image would turn out with lower polys. ofcourse i'd give you all credits if i make an image with it.