I have started the detail work on my Star Wars (Atolm’s) YTJ-6600 ship. I have a new found sense of appreciation and awe for modellers that cut in there panels. It is tedious and can be fraught (if you don’t know what you are doing) with challenges.
I am on my 5th version (cut in). The first four had various issues I found in render tests. Figured out what I did wrong, regrouped and (think) I solved it. So now I am applying to everything this particular model will need. Image below (V5) took about 2 hours to get the cuts and panel extrusions completed.
Big craze now is AI generated art from text prompting. There are a load of tools out there and they are all mostly beta (and have pay walls). I’m using Disco Diffusion in free mode. It has lots of quirks (is a Google Notebook Lab, little to no documentation, time limited, resource limited, ya know – Google).
I’m also playing with and likely going to pay for Midjourney.
Anyway, not going to offer thoughts on or debate the whole ‘is AI art?’ discussion here but thought I’d share a few things.
Dieselpunk Abandon Train – Disco DiffusionDieselpunk Abandon Train – Midjourney Hobbit Home – Midjourney
Fun stuff and can be done while I’m doing other modeling stuff.
Yes, a Star Wars related project. The last time I did a SW project I had hair on my head. Yeah, that tells you nothing. Suffice it to say, I only did a video using someone else’s mesh for my company (at the time). We had a COMDEX display and had all kinds of 3D software created content streaming and mine was a X-Wing zipping by with a pretty decent (for the time) planet in the background. Another of my small bits of 15 minutes chewed up.
But…. I digress.
Many of you know of Atolm’s various Trek designs. He also does many other works themed from other shows or genres. I’m taking a crack at one of his recent SW designs. I took the perspective drawing and printed it and then dusted off my old drafting tricks to get the dimensions.
It looks close but I may need to practice those tricks some.
This is a couple of hours work with a ton more to do. Studying SW ship details a lot to finish.
Still working on the Albacore but took a little side track trip into Wings3D for a project I have always wanted to do. This will not likely show up anytime soon as a finished model but I wanted to see if I could get close enough to replicating the object to put it into my ‘I’ll get around to it’ queue.
I bet a couple of you out there will know what this is but I’m keeping quiet for now.
Well I returned to work on my TNG precursor Voyager ship. I started drawing the various textures it will require and it’s been fun. They are all based on a 3K sized saucer section which allows for some fun details. I know that a lot of people now do 8K image sizing but I think my computer would literally melt if I tried something like that.
I have also refined the genesis of this ship, this is not a class of ships but just a technology demonstrator. I’ve given it the registration of NX-36000 and the name Albacore. The name is taken from the submarine USS Albacore AGSS-569 which was, in a sense, a naval technology demonstrator and served for 2 decades as a test bed and technology research vessel. (I’ve had the pleasure of visiting her.)
At this point I have the hardest textures done though I may add a few minor details to them before moving on to the final few I’ll need. I have also thought about the scene for this as opposed to just another model shot. I’m thinking of building a specific space station for it but keeping the details quiet since I have not decided for sure yet.
Yep, completely changed lanes again! As I often do, while taking a break from texturing I opened an old project. This was a very basic outline of shapes that I thought would look nice together. After a few hours I had a new ship all done.
Not to waste that effort I decided to knock out a few textures just to see how this look. Well I’ve spent the last few days tinkering with this and I’m pretty much done. It has a complete shuttle deck but I don’t know if I’ll texture that just yet ( so no aft views).
This is a Tellarite ship circa TNG/DS9. Working out scale still but it’s modest in size. It would be part of the Tellarite self defense force.
Traveled east for a fair number of weeks to visit family. No computer (and it is rude to spend time playing). Came back and spent a couple of weeks working on a new Honor Harrington universe ship. Did not turn out so well. I modeled it in WIngs3D and it has lots of details and a fair number of polys, the ship looks very nice. My (very old) computer cannot handle the scene when imported to 3DMax 😦 . It takes literally minutes to do anything in the viewer. So, shelving it.
So, happily, back to Trek stuff. I built a new ship for my ‘seldom seen’ series of Federation ships (below). As yet unnamed class but it is a precursor to the Intrepid (Voyager) class ships. It is a very early TNG era ship design.
This is in the ‘texture queue’ now (we all know what that means!)
I’ve also started to finish one of the Star Fleet Museum ships I have sitting around. One day I’ll get to most or all of them. Here is the Quetzalcoatl class. This started a long time ago as a filler ship for the Museum model I’d built so it was very low poly (better suited for a game). I’ve started the textures on it as I feel pretty good about the model. The textures are all 4K as that’s about the limit I can go without render station fits.
As always, thank you for visiting and taking a glance!
I completed the Aymara class, wow, a model done and in record time for me.
I did this test render to check a few things out because I am using transparent Bussard collection domes. I had to do a few tricks to get this to work on this image. I want to do a scene with it now as opposed to ‘just another model’ image.
This little ship fits in well with my seldom seen / small ships of the Federation theme I have been on.
One more, almost done, ship in my queue and then I am thinking of doing something a little different.
I'm a work'n on it 