Ael'hatham Class Warbird

[aaron067]

I've been lurking about the forum for quite some time, admiring (and sometimes drooling) over some of the fantastic work that's been done for this game.  For quite a few weeks now I've been at work on a class of Romulan Warbird that descends from the Norexan lineage and finally decided to ask for some help.  I originally started out with the Valdore model in the open mesh section on FileFront thinking I would just adjust a few things and get my Valdore-ish type ship and be done...boy, was I wrong!

As I began working I recreated one small part of the ship to fit my liking, then another, then I did the nacelles, then the head, and it kept going until a good porting of the ship was from scratch or highly adjusted from the original model.  I was using original concept sketches of the Valdore as I worked, so in that regard it has turned out well, but it seems just a bit too much like the Valdore, I think.  Anyway, I've attached some images of what I have so far.

I'm wanting the ship to look like it's 5-10 years down the road from the Valdore, but I'm stuck because I keep going in circles with the same ideas for evolution that just don't seem to work.  Any thoughts on the design are welcome and I would LOVE some advice on modeling.

I'm still a little ways away from texturing at this point, but I'm curious as to how some of the masters around here do this part.  DJ Curtis, for example.  I've worked with textures for other models quite a bit, but I'm just interested in any good tutorials some of you might have found or any tips you might have picked up over the years.

Oh, and one last thing.  The name is a tip of the hat to the design that inspired this concept (by Atolm I think).  The upswept wings on his Ael Hatham struck me as being a very imposing design when I first saw it, and I wanted to do something similar but in a more canonesque type design.

[Centurus]

Now she looks mean.  I like it.

[bankruptstudios]

wow, this is great so far. Good job. I'd like the here your ideas that you say you keep comeing around to.

As for texturing you need to have you model finshed and unified/ welded and smoothed. THen come my havered part ( ) UV mapping.
http://bc-central.net/forums/index.php/topic,4183.0.html
The above link will take to to a tut that i learned from, it's compleat and in video fomat so you can see whats going on if you use 3ds max.

http://bc-central.net/forums/index.php/board,44.0.html
And aging the above like is to the tutorial section here that has lodes of helpful tuts. Personaly i uv it and apply the uv targa file to the section of the model and then export it with the Nif exporter plug in. From there i open the nif in Nif Scope to see the model and i open the targa files with photoshop and then start the long texture process. But this is the way i do it, and i'm no DJ, but i think he does the same but will it's still in Max befor he exports it.

Have a cookie for the great work you have done and i'm looking forward to seeing more and if there is anything the Star Fleet R&D team can do to help jest ask. ;)

[aaron067]

Thanks for the kind replies! 

My big issue at the moment is with the two "vent" structures on each primary wing just off of the main hull.  They're a carbon copy of those found on the Norexan.  My first thought was to incorporate the whole vent and deflector-type glow structures into the wing itself, but that makes the wing look bloated and thoroughly un-fierce.  My second thought was to just round off the whole thing so that it's more like a large bump, but I couldn't come up with a way to do that without it looking like a couple of giant pimples.  I like that it's a definite design element on the wing at the moment, but it screams 2385 design instead of 2395. 

Another thought I had was to somehow incorporate the nacelles into the wing tips and make them just a bit sleeker.  As it stands, I think the current set-up harkens back to the 22nd century BoP seen on Enterprise, and I kind of like seeing that relationship. 

While I'm at it, the head is a very close replica of the original concept design of the Valdore.  With that said, I'll be using it on my Norexan model when I redo that, and, despite the fact that I spent several weeks on that alone, I'd be willing to entertain thoughts for making it more predatory. 

[pepperman]

The ship is looking great!

As far as texturing goes Raven Night posted up a Klingon Texturing Tutorial over at Dynaverse that might have some TTPs you might employ.

http://www.dynaverse.net/forum/index.php/topic,163388875.0.html


Achilles has a texturing tutorial over at A2 files
http://armada2.filefront.com/file/Texture_Tutorial_by_Wrath_of_Achilles;33431

Demon has one for Kligon panels and weathering on his site
http://drs.battleclinic.com/index2.htm

I am sure there are others out there but hopefully there is a little something in them that will be useful to your endeavors