I'll be taking a break from the project as soon as I finish the Refit Enterprise exterior model, for about a week. I'll need it!
The Franklin Mint was just down the road from where I live. Way back, a friend of mine went dumpster diving there and came away with a bunch of very slightly damaged pieces, including one of these. (I remember seeing one in their museum/showroom.) Sadly, the state police barracks were right next door - and they did notice - so he didn't make it out with much, save for a nice bag of gold Scrabble tiles.
No new shots yet, but finished up the nacelle pylons and got a good start on the nacelles, however they're taking longer to model than I originally thought they would. Those TMP-era nacelles are actually pretty complex, and it doesn't help that Jim Slade's construction blueprints I'm using as a general guide contain a few inaccuracies. I think they'll probably take a couple more days of work. I've got the general shapes nailed down, but have yet to detail them.
I've been working on TMP nacelles the last few days, and it hurts a little when I find little issues as my respect for Big Jim's work is enormous. But yes, they are much more complex then I realized, especially after just wrapping up work on the TOS and TNG nacelles that are satisfyingly straightforward. And despite the seemingly minor stylistic differences from the Phase 2 nacelles, those are MUCH easier as well.
Pro -level modeling work there, Donny! I'm particularly loving what appears to be some really nice procedural textures here? Am I far off with my guess? Brian
I' Thanks! Yep, that’s just a standard procedural texture that comes stock with Substance Painter, just temporary for now. As soon as I finish modeling the nacelles, I’ll be building my own custom texture, with some procedural properties, for the final material to be applied to the hull. Can’t wait to start getting the Aztec pattern applied. Hopefully I’ll be ready to start that process this weekend.
I also really like the look of it. I feel like there should be a spot in the rec room where there's just a big metal model of the ship on display. I know it's not canon, but it would look cool.
I’m definitely considering having a small model of this “Pewterprise” somewhere in the interior sets. Perhaps in a TWOK version of the rec deck or VIP lounge?
Getting there: I took a much needed night off last night, and continued tonight at a more leisurely pace. Still more detailing to do. One more night and the nacelle should be done!
I've tried making a Constitution refit nacelle before, and know it's a deceptuvely tough thing to model. It looks very clean, hardly any pinching in the tight spots. This is going to be a great mesh when finished. I know you're aiming for a mid resoution mesh; how many polys do you think the complete model will weigh in at?
I should clarify: The images I've posted so far of the Refit Exterior with the temporary steel texture (that everyone seems to love) are my mid-poly meshes with high-poly details baked into the textures, whereas the images without textures (like the nacelle image above) are of my high-poly models My high-poly model will be used to bake details onto my mid-poly textures, and will only be used for that purpose, as it is inefficient to use in a game-engine and will not be optimized to be used in traditional CG rendering, nor will I take the time to texture it. FYI, this is my standard practice for most all of my interior meshes as well. My final mesh will be entirely mid-poly with high-poly details baked into the textures. I'm aiming for the final model to be around 100k triangles (my TOS Enterprise model was around 30k triangles, in comparison, but i still consider it mid-poly. It's just a far-less detailed ship). Parts of the Refit Enterprise will also LOD out at a distance. I will probably have even higher-poly LODs of the hangar bay and docking ports that will appear when close to those parts of the ship, but these will be explored/constructed later.
Wow, so those silvery coloured meshes had me totally fooled; I wouldn't have guessed that the finer details were from normal maps.
Well, what I consider an acceptable range for mid poly triangle count is relative to the size of the mesh in the game word. Since this is a museum piece exterior model (not used for a intensive gameplay like piloting on- screen with many other ships during space battles), it needs enough geometry to be belieavable while fairly close to the model. And with LODs, the triangle count is even lower at a distance. I think 100k triangles for such a large object is acceptable, given that most game-engine character models are usually 20k or more with several on screen at a time. For interior meshes, for instance, I’d consider a mid poly model to be more in the 1k - 5k range, again depending on its relative size or amount of detail required. For hero props like first-person weapons I shoot for 5k-15k. If I were making this for a space battle type game, where getting up close to the ship isn’t necessary and FPS is paramount (like my ship work on STO), I’d shoot for a considerable lower triangle count than 100k. Lately on STO, we’ve been shooting for 30k or less with LODs. High poly CG meshes for television and movies or for baking normal maps are usually near 500k to millions of polygons, again depending on the model Does that make sense?