Vortex' WIP's; Lost Era Avenger Class

[Vortex]

Sadly, Blender doesn't have a lathe modifier, so I'll have to figure out a different way of adding polies to the rim.

[Vortex]

Haven't given in, just been busy with other stuff.

Something I've noticed in the orthographic's that I'm working from is that even the the saucer outline matches up, other parts of the ship don't. The secondary hull isn't so bad, it's just a bit higher up in the front view than the side, but the ventral saucer is an odd one.

The rim fits fine, but the sensor area is bigger on the bottom ortho than on the front or side view.

After a bit of a play, I've found that it's a similar thing with the NX Intrepid:









The side view seems to be way off.

[Vortex]

Well, I couldn't resist doing this one. xD

I've always liked this ship, there's always been something about it that I could never quite put my finger on, but it was nice. The only thing I object to is how far forward the nacelles are.







Since Ent is a relatively untouched era until recently, and this is one of those "minor" ships, I wanted to take a shot at it. I'm still going on the Constitution, but since the last two or three years has seen at least three or four versions a year (About 90% of those probably being Baz and Wiley. :p ) I may finish this one off first.

I'm actually a little more proud of this little bit than I was the Constitution saucer.

[Vortex]

I've spent the last three hours or so rebuilding. Liking this much better.

[moed]

Nice dude!  Keep at it!

[TraxZion]

Solid work

[Vortex]

Thankyou guys. Didn't have time to work on it today (Fell asleep and then went fencing.) but should have an update tomorrow.

[TraxZion]

Look forward to the progress, blender is an great tool but is very difficult to master so take pride in what you are doing

[Vortex]

I tried Gmax a few years back but couldn't get in to it. From what very little I've been able to gleam, Blender has more the approach of being a sculpting tool than other software. It's damned good, though.

Annoyingly, not as much progress to show as I'd hoped for. I ended up spending quite a bit of time cleaning up the mesh a bit and trying to figure out how I did the deflector cut out the last time.





After staring at the side view and some pictures on Google, I can see that I've been approaching the "spine" wrong where it drops off the back of the saucer. Rather happily, I stumbled across some rather hi-rez ortho's about half an hour ago, so when I get to rebuilding this after I've finished this one, I'll go off of them. Hopefully they line up a little better.

For anyone that wants them:
http://www.fourmadmen.com/gallery/index.php?cat=10010

I'm hoping to have finished shaping the saucer and have made a start on the "secondary hull" by this time tomorrow.

[Vortex]

Here's a little more progress on the back of the saucer:

[WileyCoyote]

I don't know if it is too late, but the saucer rim could use a few more polies. Everything else looks pretty good. 

[Vortex]

Thanks Wiley. I was thinking about the rim yesterday, need to find out whether I can add more.

[TraxZion]

neat progress 

[Vortex]

Thankyou, Trax.

I ended up getting nothing done on this over the weekend. Saturday; It took about 13 hours to back up my hard drive. Sunday; I needed to recharge, but I did try to rebuild this from scratch using the higher res ortho's. Turned out this afternoon that I forgot to save it. xD Not all a loss though, I found that scaling the side view up seemed to make it fit almost perfectly with the rest. I thought that it would have the opposite effect. Anyway, went into it this afternoon and scaled the side view up in the one I'd been working on. Sure enough, it works a treat and has helped massively to develop the spine.

I've also tweaked the underside of the saucer along the back edges to fit better. Slowly starting to come together now.



Wiley; I don't know how to add polies to the rim. Google was no help. Could you please explain how you do it in 3DS and I'll try to adapt it?

[WileyCoyote]

You select the segments (lines connecting verticies) and click "Connect." An extra line was added, dividing the segment into two parts.

[Vortex]

Thankyou. I believe I've got something similar. Just selected the edges on the rim and used sub-divide.

Does this look better?

[nxadam1701]

Vortex, that looks really smooth and nice.

Adam

[WileyCoyote]

Thank you. I believe I've got something similar. Just selected the edges on the rim and used sub-divide.

That looks much better. Good work so far.

[Vortex]

Thankyou, guys. Good to know that I'm on the right track.  Here are a couple of wire shots:





Hopefully the pictures show, but the first one isn't showing on photobucket itself. All I get is a grey image, starting to think I need to look into other photo-sharing sites.


Currently trying to work out how best to fix up this section. Initially, I had to extrude further down to get the two objects to meet and maintain the right curves. Still needs some tweaking, though.

[Phoenix Bondi]

I so can't wait for this, no offense, but i hope u finish this before the connie