mclea1mm - Intrepid Class

[mclea1mm]

Sorry all, I started a new job last week, which derailed my progress quite a bit. But I did have a little time for work on the pylons and some general mesh cleanup.

http://bit.ly/U8tBBp

The nacelles and their part of the pylon, and the hinge, are separate pieces, with the remaining pylon built directly into the engineering hull. Hopefully this will allow me to easily rotate the nacelles for renders and animation, but I think it might make my texture bake a little janky. We'll see.

[Tiberius]

Really starting to look good!

[publiusr]

I'd like to see a refit saucer on that secondary hull once

[mclea1mm]

Some detailing progress; also spent some time rebuilding the bottom of the saucer for a smoother result.

http://bitly.com/U8tBBp

http://bit.ly/SOAdFr

[mclea1mm]

First link was the wrong link... here ya go, bottom view

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2...Intrepid13.jpg

[Starship]

Looks very good. Keep the updates coming.

[mclea1mm]

I'm now at the point where I've had to make some decisions about how much further detail I should model. You may recall at the beginning of this thread that I plan to paint a good deal of the very fine detail into the color and normal maps. Not only that, but my rig isn't so good that I can keep modeling past 1.5 million polys (current smoothed model is at about 1 mil).

So, the next step in my game asset process is to copy the model, remove smoothing, and simplify it into the low-poly model that would be used in a game. Then, I can bake the high poly into a texture to be applied to the low poly. I will paint more detail into that bake as needed (sensor greebles, panel lines, small windows, escape hatches, phaser detail, etc).

For those interested, a normal map is akin to a bump map, but it stores a lot more directional information into RGB values. Many games use normal mapping to give a more convincing depth while keeping the assets as light as possible.

Here's where the model is now, before I start tearing into it to make the low-poly version!

Forward 3/4:
http://bit.ly/ShD5x8

Forward Above:
http://bit.ly/S2EoP8

Below 3/4:
http://bit.ly/UkOo8p

Rear 3/4:
http://bit.ly/Ydhp9b

[mclea1mm]

The model is now about 6500 polys, and I completed the bake this week. I haven't done a clean-up pass on the normal map or the lighting map yet, so you will likely be able to see some of the warping and artifacts.

Instead I wanted to prototype the gridlines on the normal map, and see if it would come out as I'd hoped. Figuring this out is important since I plan to use the same method to paint in the small windows and other details.

I'm reasonably happy with the result of the gridlines in the normal map, though it needs some tweaking.

http://bit.ly/UmM903

[Tiberius]

Very impressive work!

[mclea1mm]

Thank you!

Some incremental progress. Decent results putting windows and escape pod hatches into the normal map. Things will definitely pop more once I start in with the colors.

http://bit.ly/SZjv82

[mclea1mm]

Made a lot of progress on textures over the holidays, but I didn't have access to 3dsmax, so I wasn't able to check the results until now. As such there's still quite a bit of wonkiness to some areas, and some of the colors might look weird. But you can see the direction it's going.

http://bit.ly/S9eRaK

http://bit.ly/VIpBsv

http://bit.ly/138ffYh

[jpch]

OMG!!! i love it nice work

[mclea1mm]

Thanks for the encouragement! There are a lot of little annoying problems I'm dealing with at the moment, mostly of my own doing, due to the way I chose to unwrap the model. For example, I mirrored a lot of the surfaces to save space in the texture, but there are a number of asymmetrical details. But I should have another update in a day or two. I'm also dragging my feet on some of the final stuff (missing decals, sensor platforms, etc...)

[mclea1mm]

Lighting test. I'm pretty happy with how the rooms behind the large windows turned out! There's always more work to do of course... but getting close to the end now.

http://bit.ly/UMqxOf

[Klaus]

...very impressive!