I’ve given the blog a small facelift with some rotating banners and a gallery of my previous work, so you can access it in one place without having to trawl through blog posts.
Future projects: I’d like to explore some new territories – NURBs modeling (application of choice not yet decided) and volumetic rendering (probably with the new Blender 2.5). If anyone has some good pointers to suggest, let me know!
Taking a break from the Eaves Class 3D mesh, which I still feel needs a little more work, I thought I’d try my hand at making a triptych (A picture split into three pieces) of the Insignia Class starship for my home. I’ve been wanting to do this for some time and have had blank empty walls in the house ever since we moved in because of it.
I did the picture below a couple of weeks ago with this in mind, which was a combination of cloud effects and radial blur in photoshop:
I then split the above image into three, rescaling the ship so that it fit within the third section. Originally the ship spilled over into the second, but I thought this might look a little disjointed.
I then went over to canvas101 and ordered three prints on foam board. This was cheaper than printing them off on canvas, and as this was the first time I’d done this I was wary of them turning out badly. However, I was quite pleased with the results. Here they are on my wall:
Overall, I was quite pleased – I hope they don’t look too geeky for “normal” people visiting!
Next, I’m turning my thoughts to the end of our hallway. I’ve put together this rough concept image to give you (and my understanding wife) a taste for what I’m planning:
So, what do people think? Would you have something in your lounge like this?
After last week’s comments I’ve added some improvements to the mesh, namely:
Thoughts?
P.S. The “Falcon” namesake is – what else? – a Star Wars reference
Some renders of the finished* ship:
What do people think?
* Things like this are never finished…
I’ve found time to start texturing John Eaves’ starship now, but it’s not quite ready for the world yet – hence it’s a little shrouded in darkness here. The nacelle detail isn’t quite right and I’m scratching my head a little about the panelling effect on the surface, but here it is for you to see it take shape.
If you have any suggestions for the texturing, let me know!
I’ve pretty much finished the actual modelling stage of John Eaves’ ship now, so I’ve started to turn my mind to painting it…I wanted it to look a little different to my previous ships. Here’s my first attempt and putting some basic colours on it. For those interested, I’ve used mental ray materials to create the glossy effects. If anyone has any tips on mental ray (it’s my first time!), please let me know.
I’m undecided on the colour of elements like the deflector still, so any suggestions would be appreciated.
Oh, and I’m aware that some of you have sent emails that I am meaning to reply to. I shall drop you a line shortly! I also haven’t forgotten about some of the tutorials I’ve promised. Finally, when I’m done with the eaves class, I will definitely put it up for download.
I haven’t had much time to devote to this lately, but I managed to steal a few hours tonight to work on it; the model now has some escape pods and a few more lights.
I also spent a fair bit of time re-modelling the front saucer’s deflector to better reflect John’s sketches.
Not too far to go and I’ll be texturing it…
Due to the recent praise I received from the man himself, I’ve resumed modeling work on John Eaves’ starship design. This is the design that will separate its inner saucer section whilst maintaining the shape. Here’s John’s sketch again (The “B”):
The main work today was adding the windows. Boy, adding windows is not my favorite pass time. In 3DS Max, I use the shapemerge tool mainly and then clean up the result using the Edit Poly modifier earlier. See this tutorial from SciFi-meshes.com. On the whole the technique works well, but it takes such a long time and is very repetitive. If anyone has any quicker ways of working on this sort of thing, let me know!
John sketched elongated horizontal window shapes on the ship, rather than the usual vertical windows you see on mid-24th century ships like the Enterprise-D. If you look on the future Enterprise J you could almost imagine there is a horizontal slant to the windows there as well. Almost. So you could argue that it was the start of a trend in the late 24th century which was continued on through to the Enterprise J era. Maybe. Sort of.
I am imaginatively calling the ship the “Eaves Class” for now – there were a few ideas about the name from posts on John’s blog but I don’t think it got resolved…I shall leave this one to the public!
Some more animations of the Hawking and Insignia class starships using the Star Trek warp effect I used earlier.
I have had a few requests to make a tutorial on this effect, so I’ll plan on putting something together.
In the meantime, here’s the Hawking class:
Another Insignia Class:
…and then one more of the Hawking again:
