W40k Lunar Class Imperial Cruiser [Mesh complete](finally!)

[RCgothic]

Thread resurrection!

This of course means that I now have some proper work to do, and I'm evading it. I also had to repair my Lunar class miniature, which was damaged by forgetting that I'd brought it home and leaving it in a pocket.

Anyway, have re-acquainted myself with the model, done some clean-up around the intersections between all the different sub-models (count is 8 at the moment.) and added the ventral sail.

So not a huge visual change from the last update, but progress is being made. Each sub-model contains a 'base' shape that needs to interlock properly with those around it before I'm comfortable adding too much detail. The ventral sections are almost done in that respect, but the dorsal areas need more work before I can finally finish all the details off.

Current poly count: 17.7k polys. Finished Estimate: 30-35k polys.

Having seen Executioner_de's omega class destroyer, it is fully possible that this could be ported into BC.

[Legacy]

Great to see you back at this one RC.
If you want me to try to put it ingame, you know where to find me.
I'll be probably messing with exe's omega too.

[blaXXer]

sweet mother of jeebus! 'tis genius.

[RCgothic]

New update.
Have added the beacons to the edge of the wings, and detailed the underside.
I'm going to gradually work my way down with the detailing until I've finished the bottom of the ship, then build upwards.
This was made harder than it should have been by trying to keep track of an MSN conversation with my girlfriend.

I've just hit 19k polys, but have realised that I have more than 150 very large >4 point polygons, which will probably increase that by another thousand or so. when they're dealt with. I've been ignoring these outsized polygons because they're easier to work with whilst I'm still adding details.

I'm revising my finished estimate upwards to >40k polys.

[RCgothic]

Another update:
Added pipes, finished detailing the top of the wings.
Added detail to underside of wings.
Added point defence turrets
Added more connecting material between the rear hull to the forward hull.

In progress:
Working on the ventral sail.

Thinking about:
Doing the main engines. Fun Fun.

[RCgothic]

Gah! Crashed and lost about an hour's work. Hate it when that happens.

[RCgothic]

Have almost finished the underside. It should only take me another hour to round this part off. I wish I could get better lighting on this, it's very difficult to show off all the detail that's going on.

I wonder if I should move this thread into BC modding, now that the end-goal is to see if we can get it in there?

[RCgothic]

And final update for today. Probably won't do any more for a few days. This is clearly a real-work evasion tactic, and I need to actually get some real work done.

Engines.
Poly count is in the region of 24k with more than 500 >4 point polys to deal with. Gah, have let them stack up rather too much.

[RCgothic]

A butt-load of tripling and merging 500+ >4 polygons later, Poly count is 25k3 polys. A lot of effort for zero visual effect.
I'd estimate about 70% done.

I've also discovered some mesh errors, where I've connected a few polys the wrong way round and not noticed and papered over the gap, making the offending polies very hard to spot. The result is if I press 'align' it flips a portion of the model the wrong way out.

[RCgothic]

Yay for a volumetric search. Errors found and eliminated.

[Jay Crimson]

Warhammer (at least the 40K one) is totally not my thing, but I still like that model alot.

[RCgothic]

Cheers!

Have finally finished modelling the underside.
Poly count is 27k.

[JimmyB76]

it is coming along nicely RC!!!   keep it goin!

[DJ Curtis]

Wow.  That's really impressive. And at 27K, you could still run it in BC, one at a time of course.

[Billz]

Looks mean.

Excellent!

[Legacy]

Wow.  That's really impressive. And at 27K, you could still run it in BC, one at a time of course.

You know, you can run 3x 49k in bc with tiny maps (been doing that with exe omega), trouble is that the game will crash if you try to make a vox file for it.
Aside that, it runs quite smoothly if you consider 3x 49k.

[RCgothic]

I don't see this going over 40k. The hope is to have four of them. Imperial tactical doctrine is to field them in pairs. Individually they don't have enough firepower to knock down each other's shields except at very close range, so they need to team up. 2 vs 2 is the goal.

Either that, or I'm going to have to do the escort ships.

I'd been hoping to get more progress done tonight on the dorsal sections, but a previously unknown type of mesh error has been manifesting, and I've been having the devil of a time tracking them down. I estimate there are about 4 polygons out of the 27k so far that aren't quite where they're supposed to be, and they're screwing things up. Why they're messing things up now and not earlier, I don't know. I've been doing some volumetric searches, and have found a few of them, but it's really hard going.

Edit1: Ok, think I've got most of them, though I suspect there may be others that haven't manifested yet.
Edit2: Good grief, smacking these errors is like whack-a-mole, you get one and three more spring up in its place.
Edit3: 3 hours later... finally, finally got all of them. maybe tomorrow I can make some actual progress on teh superstructure...

[cpthooker]

looks great, I love the W40k universe

[Legacy]

Looks amazing.

[RCgothic]

Now that the mesh errors are out of the way, I've laid the bones of the superstructure. All that's left is detailing and the bridge.