I'm taking an overdue break from my warbird and decided to work on a Federation ship from the same time period. I love the idea behind the Journeyman/Obama/NX design on filefront, but 29,000 polygons is too prohibitive for the game I'm going to work these ships into.
So, I need a bit of expert guidance on how to begin a model totally from scratch. I've worked my way through the tutorials and can create a circular saucer as demonstrated in the tutorial section, but this particular ship has more of a triangular saucer. Unfortunately, I'm having a lot of trouble finding tutorials for 3ds max online that I can use for creating this type of shape. Basically, I want to avoid what I did with the warbird, which was to begin with a box or capsule and literally sculpt the shape I wanted out of the original. I've seen a tutorial where someone created a Galaxy-class, starting with a cylinder and extruding/beveling/scaling to achieve the right curvature of the saucer, but that didn't work all too well due to the tear-drop shape I'm working with. It could be that I just don't know some of the details to make it work, but that's why I've come here.
I'm hoping someone might have a more efficient and accurate method for creating saucers. No need to go into a huge amount of detail; I'm just looking for some ideas or a link if necessary. I've attached the concept design so you can see what I'm trying to replicate. Thanks!
Topic: Help with saucer modeling (Read 520 times)
