Jump to content

RoboTech/Macross Zentraedi: Ship Weaponary


Recommended Posts

Posted

I've finished the lower engine piece and added some further details(the last 7 thrusters are on). Next up is the black areas and small indent that the lower engine has above it. Hopefully then I can finally begin the surface detailing! <_<

post-5-1106916690_thumb.jpg

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Old News:

Level 1: Major panel lines

Status: cleaning up errors and finalizing

That's right Level 1. Altogether their are 4 total levels of addtional detail.

Level 1 Major panel lines

Level 2 Minor panel lines

Level 3 Weapons intergration

Level 4 Trench details

New News:

Current Status

Level 1: Complete

Level 2: 70% finished with pass 1(out of 6)

I got tired of building panel details(and the repeated crashs) and did some material testing. Ignore the errors on the right side of the ship, they are mirroring light artifacts caused by the engines materials. The hull material I'm not exactly happy with but it's fairly close to what I want.

Also I finally bought a new 3D program so I can finally fix some of the annoying errors on this ship. It also means that all of the other ships(or nearly anything else for that matter) will be built in that program.

ZenPicketupdate21205a.jpg

Posted

YOU hate to ask! How do you think I feel! :lol:

I almost never work at the full polycount. Mainly because I only have a low-end video card.

The current count is roughly 619K. I plan on subtracting about 100k, or so, but I'm gonna be adding that and more right back in various other details. :blink::ph34r:

Posted

Oh and just to give you an idea of my real insanity....

I've scaled the ship up and the major panel lines are ONE meter wide. The current panels are inbetween 7-10 centimeters wide. :D

Posted (edited)

>EXO<, thanks! ';)'

Well after a MASSIVE program clusterF^CK and 8 hours of redoing everything that I had lost I've finished laying in the minor panel lines. I also found a VERY quick way of applying the next 5 greeble passes(Thank you Geometery Paint!), so I should have the Level 2 details finished by Wednesday and maybe earlier if things go well!

Anyways here's a Level 2 detail scale VS distance test. The large image is about 50 meters away from the hull and the small image is roughly 350.

ZenPicketupdate21305.jpg

Edited by chrono
Posted

Oh...my...gawd! I can't wait for this ship to be complete. This is the most exciting 3D fan model I've seen in years. A very, VERY welcome change from all the tired Trek designs plauging the net and a nice break from the Star Wars and Babylon 5 stuff as well.

Can I beg for 1600x1200 beauty shots of this lovely, ugly behemoth? Cause I will :)

Posted

Status

Level 2 Detail is 90% complete

Most of the ships hull is finished detail-wise except for the larger bits, the trench sensors, and some greebles for the large black areas on the upper hull. Those will be tricky and take time to do right. I'll probably not do anymore large renders until it's finished, modeling-wise, because all of that new detail has pushed the poly count to 936,000 faces and is making large renders time consuming! <_<

Now I'm gonna work on correcting several errors that have popped up on the hull's mesh and finalizing the Level 2 details. Level 3 details come next.

ZenPicketupdate21605.jpg

Posted

WOWOWOW!

Chrono, you kick major but!

See now I just need a way to transform this polygon cloud into a nurbs solid so I can scale it down and cut it out of a block of resin on a 5-axis cnc router.

What scale would everyone like?

:)

hehe!

-THOR

BTW, I think the world of Macross could take the world of Star Wars, Star Trek or Babylon 5.

Posted (edited)

*rubs chin ponderingly*

Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllly.............

*has a few friends with Rhino* B))

The ideal scale would be somewhere in the 25-35 centimeter range. I'll let you do the math.

Ok before I sign off for the next few days, I'm gonna need trench detail information/screen captures before I even attempt any work on the trench! All I have is one example of such detail and it shows none of the weapons!

Edited by chrono
Posted

Hmm,

I'm sure a couple of my friends have Rhino. I have some time on this machine:

post-5-1108735948_thumb.jpg

Posted (edited)

Hello,

The perfect world would be that I'd get a solid model from someone and I'd make dust on the router. My computer modeling skills/experience and time are limited. I'd be more than willing to cut something out for someone.

;)

-THOR

Edited by THOR
Posted

Awesome

Scale.

I think about 1/1450 should be around the early 30s in cms...

Would be awesome. Of course, I'd take a 1/1250 (exactly 40 cm), or at least I would, if I had the money...

Posted
Ok before I sign off for the next few days, I'm gonna need trench detail information/screen captures before I even attempt any work on the trench! All I have is one example of such detail and it shows none of the weapons!

chrono, amazingly beautiful work!

I checked all of my books and materials (including the TIAS books) for any sort of trench detail to scan, but can find nothing of relevance. Your 'fabricated' trench looks good enough to suffice though. Please don't hesitate to ask if you need any other visual samples - I'm sure that we would all be more than happy to help.

Keep up the excellent work!

Posted

Thanks Hiriyu!

It's a labor of love, so I'm doing the best I can with what I have. :)

After reviewing my research imagery, and hearing you say that it's pretty rare, I've figured that the trench I designed will work out well with some adjustments and additions without becomes largely different from offical material.

Posted

Well I've been in a lovely little place called vertex editing hell. I've fixed all of the known errors and have have started work on weapon placement(soooooo don't ask for a weapons exposed shot until the end) and trench greebling. Also I've kicked that stupid phong shader to the street and it's back to white/gray for awhile. Besides it was killing the render times. :/

Ok now with the imagery I've gotten the trench missile silo's (built to be animatable) and their greebles done and am working on the under nose and areas around the white area. This image was a test render to see if the new greebles blended with the reat of the details. Oh and how they do!!!

Now on to the rest of the work.

ZenPicketupdate22605a.jpg

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

*dances in a happy circle*

It's DONE!

Well at least model building-wise that is. I've decided after lots of viewing and weighing of various factors that I'll not build in the hull weapons. I decided this mainly after seeing the final non-weaponed face count. Which is just a touch over 1.35 million and still thier is faceting on the model! <_< If I dealt with the faceting and added the weapons then the final count would be over 3.28 million. A totally unacceptable number given my computers capicity. I won't be texturing it anytime soon and may revisit the mesh later and build it in NURBS instead of polys.

Soooo enjoy the following final images. And please don't complain about the links, all of these images are over 190kb and are 2400*1800 in size so there is no way I'll be posting them in image tags here.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v648/chr...TopFINISHED.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v648/chr...PerFINISHED.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v648/chr...PerFINISHED.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v648/chr...earFINISHED.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v648/chr...ideFINISHED.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v648/chr...ontFINISHED.jpg

.

..

...

....

......

...

*begins pondering just which Zen to build next* :ph34r:

Posted

You wouldn't believe how happy that statement makes me feel Phyrox!! :D

That was on of the largest worry's I had when I started building this ship. I'm very glad that it came through! :)

To answer your question:

Scale can be brought out by simply working downwards, by using few large details and as you get smaller with your details you increase their amount. The key is to limit yourself since it's very easy to get crazy with the small details and to make those smaller details fade into the whole with distance. That means smaller and swallower panels(from 3D and Real Life models) or thinner and more same toned paint as the models base color.

However my style of detailing is borne thru MANY comic book influences.

Posted

This is great! It's everything I'd hoped it would be. THe detail is amazing and really gives the ship a grand sense of scale. I can't wait for some huge space scene pictures of this ship.

ANy plans to make some big tiffs of this fella. Always hate the compression loss of jpgs.

  • 2 months later...
Posted

Wow, looking good Chrono.

I think there's a few things. It's too bad you can't really control the width of the beam. It would be great to start it smaller in the recess, and have it expand later. I think the energy particles prior to firing need to be a little longer, and more random perhaps? It's kind of lightning-like in the show.

But I don't know how easy particle effects are to get to look right, so, don't take it to heart if it's beyond possible.

Keep it up. Your work is awesome.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...