The only comment I could think of is, the aztecing on the saucer seems very busy. A tad to much maybe. Other then that, I'm really digging this.
Yeah, I've already noted that myself. Cjohnson1701, unless you intend to address this, the Pike would be open to attacks from the aft. Hell, I don't even see any aft torp launchers!
Heya guys, sorry not responding recently. I was SIGGRAPH in Vancouver for the last two days, So the guy who worked on the 2009 USS Enterprise, I can't recall his name atm, from ILM agrees with you JES. I do intend to fix this little problem, by adding a photon torpedo launcher to the aft portion of the secondary hull. As well fixing the shuttle bay doors, and the hoods that cover the nacells. I'm also going to be "reshading/texturing" the ship using a new rendering engine I got a hold of... So, before I head off too do what ever I need to do, I'll leave you guys with some of the screenshots I showed the guys at SIGGRAPH. Sooo I'll be getting onto the whole restructing nowwww, toodles!
Those images with the transparent backgrounds are nice, but you're just asking people to hijack your work. Don't be surprised to see your ship popping up in different places on the internet unattributed.
While you're at it, I'd also add some phaser banks too if I were you. Phasers are easier to aim than torp launchers, and they fire faster too. Maybe a single phaser bank in the ventral fantail (in the area similar to where the Excelsior class has her aft torpedo launchers), and another two single phaser banks perhaps on top of the pylons connecting the torpedo pod to the catamaran hull. That, combined with a torpedo tube or two should deter any Klinks from thinking that trying to sneak on behind will give them an easy kill.
Ask and you may recieve, maybe. Depending on the request, like aft weapons....I'll you guys see them for yourselves. I've added 4 phaser banks, and one aft torpedo launcher
Was wondering that myself, until I remembered that some rendering engines use invisible "negative objects" to easily cut holes in other visible "positive objects". A much easier way than manually modeling holes in the positive objects. These windows "sticking out" should be set to to negative and they should look correct then. Then again, I could be totally wrong and it's simply just a mistake.
Or it could be some trick he learned in school to get better lighting effects in this type of situation.
Holy cow, I'm gone for not even a day... Whelp, those portholes are sticking out, no denying it. It's no trick, the geometry is definitely extruded. I chose to do this as a design choice. Why, for several reasons. 1701: I realllly wanted rounded windows sooooo.... I cant just extrude inwards. So the only other method is..... A: Booleans. I fucking hate booleans, HAAAAATE!!!!!! Plus, it fucks up the saucer when I'm tessellating, and UV'ing. B: It adds a little "oomph" to the saucer, breaks up the space a little. C: I always thought that windows were a structural weakness, Legion confirmed it. So I added "thickness" D: Allows me to play with parallax mapping. E: I'm lazy... To Kaiser: Sure I could win it, I would love to have 500 dollars in my pocket. Just two things; My ship is not from the Prime Universe, and I'm not certain if I want to give up my rights to my Design. Since I would like to keep it for my website/Demo reel. Anyhoo, I leave you with a "teaser" image to you all. See ya soon!
Why is extruding inwards not a possibility? Just stencil (or however the program you use calls it) the shapes into the saucer rim, select the newly created polygons and extrude. It should be relatively simple. What you have now does not add "oomph". It looks rather silly, especially the lower row of windows, which floats above the rest of the geometry.
Boolean cuts can be difficult and mess up a nice clean mesh. If he hadn't shown us the clay renders of the model you'd never have seen that the windows are modeled out and not cut in, so what's the diff?
Yes, a boolean-operation can turn into an unholy mess, which is why I didn't suggest one. Using a more "manual" approach to stencil the shapes of the portholes into the hull (select only the polygons you are going to modify, or detach them from the main-mesh and re-merge them later on) and inwards-extruding them can be tricky and takes a bit longer, but the model will look the better for it. And, believe it or not, but I did see that the windows on the saucer-rim were sticking out before the latest renders were posted.
Again if I was going to do square windows on the saucer rim, I would do it exactly like you said. Except I wouldn't go an extract the polygon I'd just extrude them and build from there. This is evident by the fact any other porthole on the ship is done exactly like that. With a rounded window it really would mess up the saucer just because of all the extra geo it takes to make a square into a circle, hence why I said "fudge it" back then. I did however recently fix the bottom portholes so that they are no longer floating, and added a little surprise I'll be showing off later this week. Other then that minor fix to the portholes, I can't really touch them anymore. I have given my self a deadline, and I would like to finish this ship so I can move on to other projects. So I thank you for your critique and opinion, but if your going to continue on the topic of inverted windows, please don't. In the end it's a design choice I made back then, and it's one I'm sticking to. If you have anything to say about the texture's or the lighting now's the time, since this is what Im working on atm. To Sojourner: I don't know whether to thank you, or not. But I will anyways. So thanks for having my back there.