Yes, another TOS Constitution reboot

[Hunter-G]

Thanks for the complements! I'm hoping I can keep the same quality with the textures. Often models can look great, but the textures end up looking really CG or flat.

I've been trying to figure out how to reduce render times. Right now even at 4000 samples and almost 4K the images are too noisy so I have to use a denoiser. Unfortunately it smudges a lot of the smaller details, as well as textures. I might have to use a cloud rendering service, or find a new renderer that's faster if I have any hope of doing animations.

Any suggestions?

 

[blssdwlf]

Thanks for the complements! I'm hoping I can keep the same quality with the textures. Often models can look great, but the textures end up looking really CG or flat.

I've been trying to figure out how to reduce render times. Right now even at 4000 samples and almost 4K the images are too noisy so I have to use a denoiser. Unfortunately it smudges a lot of the smaller details, as well as textures. I might have to use a cloud rendering service, or find a new renderer that's faster if I have any hope of doing animations.

Any suggestions?

Are you using your GPU with Blender to speed up the rendering or is it all CPU?

 

[Professor Moriarty]

*cough* Octane *cough*

 

[Hunter-G]

Are you using your GPU with Blender to speed up the rendering or is it all CPU?

I am in fact using my 2 GPUs. To be fair the model has almost 3 million polys

*cough* Octane *cough*

That's one I want to look at. Unfortunately outside of my price point right now

 

[blssdwlf]

I am in fact using my 2 GPUs. To be fair the model has almost 3 million polys


That's one I want to look at. Unfortunately outside of my price point right now

I think @Professor Moriarty 's Enterprise is in that poly range and he's rendering with Octane.

Regarding price point - did you look at a OctaneRender Studio Monthly Subscription? It supports up to 2 GPUs on same computer and at $22 it might be worth using on and off. You can see if will improve your times with a free trial on 1 GPU. But I do feel for you. Long render times is no fun

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Yup, the monthly subscription is what I used, although now that LightWave+Octane is all but officially dead I’m in the process of switching over to Blender+Octane (one of the reasons you guys haven’t seen anything from me for several months).

p.s. The LW Enterprise was 3.25 million polys. The LW Galileo shuttle was just over 1 million. I could usually render one frame of the Enterprise at 4K with motion blur and depth of field with the ship taking up most of the field of view in about 2-3 minutes at worst, using two 2080Ti GPU cards.

 

[Hunter-G]

Bro, I might be blind, I totally missed that Octane has a monthly subscription! I'll have to do that then. Thanks guys haha!

 

[Professor Moriarty]

If you’re going to switch to Octane, now is the time to do it. Since you haven’t textured your model yet, it’ll be less of a shock when you find out that you can’t use native materials/textures… only Octane materials and textures.

 

[Hunter-G]

Yeah, I think I will be switching to Octane.

For now I started experimenting with methods of creating textures and applying them. I'm trying to figure out the right color combinations for each kind of map to get the look that I want, which is mostly universal. Here is the first test:

I'm liking the more subtle look, but there's quite a bit that's still off that I need to figure out.

 

[Santaman]

Great start, subtle isn't bad

 

[JJohnson]

Yeah, I think I will be switching to Octane.

For now I started experimenting with methods of creating textures and applying them. I'm trying to figure out the right color combinations for each kind of map to get the look that I want, which is mostly universal. Here is the first test:

I'm liking the more subtle look, but there's quite a bit that's still off that I need to figure out.

Great model! I love the textures. The only thing I'd change would be adding the three phaser banks on top of the saucer. Keep up the good work!

 

[Hunter-G]

Texturing is a chore, I am not enjoying this at all. I don't want to have the panels be "random" where there are weird cuts and angles that wouldn't work in a real life build of a starship, but I also don't want to waste all my time planning out every single panel. I'll figure it out but boy it's frustrating.

In the meantime I think I like this new delfector:

I also planned out the self illumination. Already it brings more life to the ship:

 

[Hunter-G]

Great model! I love the textures. The only thing I'd change would be adding the three phaser banks on top of the saucer. Keep up the good work!

Thanks! The phasers will actually be hidden behind panels

 

[JJohnson]

Thanks! The phasers will actually be hidden behind panels

That's what got me about the original ship, it only ever had those two phasers and forward torpedoes. To kid me, I wondered if a ship came up behind them if the Enterprise could ever fire aft because there were no phaser banks there until TMP.

 

[Vale]

That's what got me about the original ship, it only ever had those two phasers and forward torpedoes. To kid me, I wondered if a ship came up behind them if the Enterprise could ever fire aft because there were no phaser banks there until TMP.

We see the Defiant firing phasers aft from somewhere around the shuttlebay in ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly":

*Edited to fix the GIF because the original source broke.

 

[blssdwlf]

@Hunter-G - The self-illumination looks great. I'm surprised no else is doing self-lighting lettering as that looks slick!

That's what got me about the original ship, it only ever had those two phasers and forward torpedoes. To kid me, I wondered if a ship came up behind them if the Enterprise could ever fire aft because there were no phaser banks there until TMP.

Kirk's Enterprise had dialogue that indicated she had weapons on the sides, midships and aft so she was pretty well covered. But generally the Enterprise was maneuverable enough to engage primarily with her forward weapons (and because they only made stock video of firing forward ).

 

[Professor Moriarty]

Hmmm. TBH I'm not a fan of the luminous registry characters. They remind me too much of the little glow-in-the-dark stars that I plastered my bedroom ceiling with as a child.

 

[Hunter-G]

Sweet illuminations!
Texturing sounds like the, 'tedious adding dozens of tiny decals' of CGI modeling. lol I totally get it.

That's basically what I'm doing haha! I think it's easier and more accurate than doing it in Photoshop

@Hunter-G - The self-illumination looks great. I'm surprised no else is doing self-lighting lettering as that looks slick!

Hmmm. TBH I'm not a fan of the luminous registry characters. They remind me too much of the little glow-in-the-dark stars that I plastered my bedroom ceiling with as a child.

Funny enough, I'm torn between these two opinions myself. I want to try having the letters with a glowing outline instead to see how that looks. I'm also trying to figure out how to get them to only light up the parts that are in the dark.

If I don't end up going for the backlit registries, I'm not going to worry about trying to light them up with spotlights, I'll just reason that the spotlights are just illuminating some of the hull not the registry.
I say that because trying to get a spot light to illuminate the entire registry (especially on the top of the saucer) is physically impossible without having them on streetlamp type poles sticking out of the ship, and I'm trying to keep it as realistic as possible without looking goofy

 

[blssdwlf]

Funny enough, I'm torn between these two opinions myself. I want to try having the letters with a glowing outline instead to see how that looks. I'm also trying to figure out how to get them to only light up the parts that are in the dark.

If I don't end up going for the backlit registries, I'm not going to worry about trying to light them up with spotlights, I'll just reason that the spotlights are just illuminating some of the hull not the registry.
I say that because trying to get a spot light to illuminate the entire registry (especially on the top of the saucer) is physically impossible without having them on streetlamp type poles sticking out of the ship, and I'm trying to keep it as realistic as possible without looking goofy

I can see what @Professor Moriarty is saying but it does look pretty neat. Other options to trace the lighting like a led strip around the letters or maybe a light projector near the hull?

 

[Professor Moriarty]

@Hunter-G (did you change your screen name?) I love the idea of the registry characters being outlined with lights… it’s a very US Navy thing to do, but the relatively teeny tiny pinpricks of light cast by the projectors will also have the welcome side-effect of adding a subtle hint of scale to your model.

(Edited to add example of an attempt that I made to do this a while back...)