chrono Posted November 16, 2004 Author Share Posted November 16, 2004 Oh lookie an update. *scoffs* *yeah right* I've been tweaking the mesh and seem to have gotten the engines correct, more or less, along with the launch bay and as you can see I've started working on the larger details. Still lots of work to do yet. TS is really starting to show how badly it's missing some tools though. :/ In addition to these I've started breaking down the design of the next ship the Thuverl Salan. I know it maybe premature but frankly it's better to get the research outta the way now then wait till I've started the model. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted November 16, 2004 Author Share Posted November 16, 2004 And a side shot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted November 22, 2004 Author Share Posted November 22, 2004 (edited) I've been working on a small, but important piece of the ships design. One that will carry-over to other designs so I won't have to continously re-design. Pretty tough to decide what version best suits the overall design style though. That piece is the maneuvering thrusters! A. has offical pieces because it was taken from the fighter design. B-D. the outside area is what I'm going with, but each different interior is pretty close to the inherent Zen style. Personally I'm leaning towards 'D' because it nearly matchs the ships main engines and it a good hybrid between versions B & C. But tell me what you think! Edited November 22, 2004 by chrono Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lestat Posted November 22, 2004 Share Posted November 22, 2004 Looking great. I can't wait to see this finished. I think B looks the best. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VF19 Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 Nah, D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlphaHX Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 D for me too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knight26 Posted November 23, 2004 Share Posted November 23, 2004 I like it, go D. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted November 26, 2004 Author Share Posted November 26, 2004 Anyways thanks for the feedback on the design styles. I did some more modifing(flattened the outer area to make a smoother and more integrated look. After placing them and rendering a few images to see how things looked, hey I got a low-level factory video card!, and found out that the style really didn't matter much because of the size involved and becomes pretty damned illrelevant at larger sizes. This will be the final model for the design. *see image* I'll post more tomorrow, if I can.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goth Kitty 22 Posted November 26, 2004 Share Posted November 26, 2004 (edited) I think B creates a better transition to A and has a slightly more organic look to it than D while also appearing structurally stronger than C and D. Edited November 26, 2004 by Goth Kitty 22 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lestat Posted November 26, 2004 Share Posted November 26, 2004 Looking good! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted December 1, 2004 Author Share Posted December 1, 2004 Due to a nasty combination of holidays, work, mouse death, and a sudden attack of StarOcean addiction I've gotten little work done. Well except for a final version of the interior parts of the main engines which took a-hella-lot tweaking to get where I wanted it. Totally worth it though! Until I can get some decent lighting made up you'll have to settle with this crappy render. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr March Posted December 4, 2004 Share Posted December 4, 2004 Progress is looking great. This is gonna be a fantastic model when it's finished. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted December 5, 2004 Author Share Posted December 5, 2004 Just trying to visualize what the 'trench' or the black divider would look like with it's various details. This set-up is 70 meters wide by 20 meters tall with the depth being irrelevant. The round piece in the center is the anti-capital ship/bombardment missile launcher, 8 meters in diameter with a 2 meter armor collar and a 3.78 meter opening(not shown). All the designs used are offical except for the missile launcher(which I don't have an image for). Any suggestions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lestat Posted December 8, 2004 Share Posted December 8, 2004 I'm fairly certain that the Zjentohlauedy missile launchers are very similar in appearance to the beam turrets. Certainly the base is the same. I think even the turret housing is the same. I don't personally like the blocky turret housing you have, but I think that will change as you flesh it out more. There's a couple of sources I can recomend, however, unfortunately, cannot offer myself as of yet - my TIA books are back in Australia. The TIA books have the turret pictures you're looking for. If you're desperate, I think some of the palladium books RPGs also do, most likely "the Zentraedi" sourcebook. They're direct knock offs (sometimes merely scans) of the japanese originals. Secondly, Macross: Remember Me (the NEC PC Games) has a few action screens showing what a zjentohlauedy trench, with turrets looks like. I really wish I still had a screenshot, but I can't seem to find it. Keep it up though, this is looking awesome. Have you scaled it against other zjentohlauedy mecha? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted December 8, 2004 Author Share Posted December 8, 2004 Rats! Your the second person to point that out, about the trench shots. The only trench shots I have are the ones in RT when the flagship does a flyby, but they don't show very much at all, other then slightly detailed boxs. The reason why the launcher is like that is because it's described as a 'silo' type, but I can see how it would work if it was a mere copy of the turrent design. It would certaintly fit with the design! I'll try a quick & dirty prototype to see who it'll look. I'll probably keep the simple repeating divider and the overlapping bars and triangular parts mainly because they are straight forward low polygon details. I can add the launcher and other randomizing details later to further give it depth. I guess I'll just have to do some more research on that area before I take another stab at it. Google here I come! lol And as for scaling vs mecha, not yet. I'm betting my scaling efforts, in the end, will be only 'somewhat' close. And 'no where near close enough' for many ULTRA purists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lestat Posted December 10, 2004 Share Posted December 10, 2004 I tried to screen capture Remember Me for the hull detail, but it's no good. IT's not high enough quality to work off. Plus the emulator absolutely flies on my computer... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted December 10, 2004 Author Share Posted December 10, 2004 (edited) Oh you'd be surprised what a little adjustment can do to bring out the details in an image! If you can get a capture that would be great, if you can't.... don't sweat it. ***Written Update:*** *more of a whine/rant though* Ya know sometimes it's better to be totally ignorant about model flaws....... I've got to rebuild the entire bottom rear of the main hull just because I missed the fact that the thrusters that go there exhaust around the bottoms belly bulge. Ggrrrrrrr...... And I was making good progress on the Macro-details too. Edited December 10, 2004 by chrono Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lestat Posted December 10, 2004 Share Posted December 10, 2004 Nah, it's an ancient image, not a picture from a show, but a graphic created by japanese artists. Adjusting the brightness isn't going to do anything. The picture probably only has 8 colours and is 320x200 pixels or something equally useless like that. I couldn't get it anyway. Too fast. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted December 18, 2004 Author Share Posted December 18, 2004 New bottom rear hull and some of the dorsal & ventral details. Also I did a little comparasion between my ship and stated 'offical' scale numbers. Length: 498 Height: 355 (155 in purple) Width: 178 The blue background it the scale sized to length. While the width is pretty close the height figure is WAY off. So I resized the height downwards to 155 which is really a far more exceptable number and one that works with screen captured imagery. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lestat Posted December 21, 2004 Share Posted December 21, 2004 sweeet! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted December 28, 2004 Author Share Posted December 28, 2004 (edited) More work, but more importantly the Hull has reached it's milestone. Meaning I'm not changing poo after this! So after viewing the QT .mov file below tell me ANY concerns, complaints, and critisms that you have about the hulls shape. Be brutal and honest. * NOTE: I am aware of the squared off nose. This will not be there in the final mesh extraction.* Edited December 29, 2004 by chrono Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lestat Posted December 29, 2004 Share Posted December 29, 2004 "The page you are attempting to access has been removed because it violated Angelfire's Terms of Service." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted December 29, 2004 Author Share Posted December 29, 2004 Oh well. Can't win them all. Info Update: Well I couldn't wait for feedback and went ahead extracted all of the final surfaces and booleaned all, but the lower nacelle(i've gotten to edit that area before I do that). So this places the current poly count at 189,042 and 236,930 with the lower nacelle, sans weapons. Now the real fun begins! Surface detailing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted January 2, 2005 Author Share Posted January 2, 2005 Just abit of a general question about surface detailing for the Zentraedi. I've already made several small detail items, and plan to make several more, to add extra surface detail and visual depth, but since this is a 'small' ship should I give the hull a rough bumpy look by modeling those irregular areas OR should I just have a 'smooth' hull with some bumpmaps to give it a slightly rough surface? All the reference I have is pretty long distance shots of low resolution, but with today's technology I can easly render this ship at high resolutions(8k*8k). So I'm in a bind. I've been modeling at a multi-purpose level(600k-1.5m) so I can do both close and distance imagery, and animate if I wished too. It's a pain because I've done some prelim testing on both ideas and with the idea merged together and it works out well enough, but I'm concerned about the scale issue and whether it actually fits the design. I can easly see using this method for the larger ships like the Thuverl Salan because if applied to them those areas would look small. I just dunno..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lestat Posted January 2, 2005 Share Posted January 2, 2005 Well, I reckon that factory sattelites, which would manufacture such ships, would be capable of creating massive amounts of moulded sheet metal... I think a scout ship would be more tooled than a thuverl salan for example... Meaning there is probably less randomness in the hull. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted January 2, 2005 Author Share Posted January 2, 2005 Hmmm.... That's a good point, but it only really applies to human ways of thinking. It also doesn't take into consideration the size of the ship itself. 495 meters is alot of smooth surface! Which is just fine for some visual shots, but becomes lacking at other distances. It also doesn't take into consideration the design age of the ships, any lack of upkeep, and the fact that the designs were made by aliens. *sighs* I'll have to do somemore detail testing to find an equalibrium for the overall design. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted January 21, 2005 Author Share Posted January 21, 2005 Well after a lengthy lack of an update here's what happened. Basically I had gotten to near this point in the models build about 3 weeks ago when I started getting errors with the mesh. Well after a week of trying to work with it I figured out just what was going on. The model had some how developed boolean stress and was corrupted. This really hurt because I then had to re-think how I was going to model the various details. Sadly the ONLY approach I had left was to hand draw/add everything and leave the large pieces simply in a heiarchial state(glued). So it's taken me awhile to get much done on her and I'm finally nearing where I was before the mesh got corrupted. The current mesh is now 559k and renders in about nine minutes under a fake GI light dome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted January 21, 2005 Author Share Posted January 21, 2005 ...... and image number 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
broadshore Posted January 21, 2005 Share Posted January 21, 2005 (edited) O_O Beautiful! Edited January 21, 2005 by broadshore Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Major Posted January 22, 2005 Share Posted January 22, 2005 OMG! that is soo cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr March Posted January 22, 2005 Share Posted January 22, 2005 Very sorry to hear about the file being corrupted. I'm not sure I fully understand how that happens, but I'm unfamiliar with 3D programs in general. I am very thankful the model at least survived and you're able to continue work, albiet slowly. The results look fantastic! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lestat Posted January 22, 2005 Share Posted January 22, 2005 That is awesome! Does the ship have any turrets? Can we see closeups of hull detail, or did you mean there's a lack of progress in that area? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrono Posted January 22, 2005 Author Share Posted January 22, 2005 ALL, thanks! Mr March, Generally boolean stress is simply caused by too much usage of the boolean tool on a single model/mesh. Just think of it as hitting a single nail several dozen times. You know it's going to bend it's just when will it happen. Or just think of how poorly a fragmented harddrive performs. To be honest I was going to build most of the details into the wireframe before I extracted the final model, but frankly it would've take far more effort with little return. Lestat, No turrents or weaponary have been placed beyond the planning stages. I still need to dig-up information on the trench details. The same goes for the surface detail, which is already planned out and only needs to be added. The only real surface detail right now is the nacelles thrusters. --------------------------- My next steps are to clean-up the trenchs and add the detail greebles for them. After that I'll finish the bow thrusters and finalize the lower engine nacelle. Then I'll add the surface detail, surface greebles and weaponary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr March Posted January 22, 2005 Share Posted January 22, 2005 ALL, thanks! Mr March, Generally boolean stress is simply caused by too much usage of the boolean tool on a single model/mesh. Just think of it as hitting a single nail several dozen times. You know it's going to bend it's just when will it happen. Or just think of how poorly a fragmented harddrive performs. To be honest I was going to build most of the details into the wireframe before I extracted the final model, but frankly it would've take far more effort with little return. Lestat, No turrents or weaponary have been placed beyond the planning stages. I still need to dig-up information on the trench details. The same goes for the surface detail, which is already planned out and only needs to be added. The only real surface detail right now is the nacelles thrusters. --------------------------- My next steps are to clean-up the trenchs and add the detail greebles for them. After that I'll finish the bow thrusters and finalize the lower engine nacelle. Then I'll add the surface detail, surface greebles and weaponary. Oh, I understand now. That's interesting. I've always wanted to give some 3D programs a try. I even downloaded the free version of Maya last year, but never got around to playing with it. I'm going to devote some time to that soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lestat Posted January 23, 2005 Share Posted January 23, 2005 maya has a weird interface... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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