I freely admit that mostly what I do is I take avalable free models online and do kitbashes. Then I cram them with shields, phaser and photon with a fetish for gold highlights for my Terran Empire ships.
I use 20 year old programs. I use Cinema4D for modeling, Bryce5 for renders and a free UVmapper from 2001. My Photoshop version is almost as old.
"Why don't you use Blender? It's free and easy". Yes and no. Yes it's free but I don't have a lot of time to learn it. I'm stubborn that way. When it comes to MOST tutorials, they expect you know where everything is already in the menu before they jump in. I've only learned programs by having someone sitting with me and walking through it. I've had Cinema4D since 2004 and I barely know 5% of what it can do. But I still know how to use it better than Blender.
So, I don't have the greatest programs, and my technique is rusty but I can still fake some good pictures.
This is my gallery on Deviantart
My most recent is a fairly simple Mars class Battleship. I had done one a year ago but it was really ugly and slapped together. I tried to hard adding greebles to make it look interesting. This version is much cleaner. The only thing I really did was make the Saucer and engineering hull more interesting, starting from completely smooth models.
The Ulysses is something I'm actually proud of. One of the designs I really wanted to paint up, but I had no model. So I made one from scratch using the schematic on the right. The adobe colored parts are things I didn't make myself.
And this is it finished.
Shame I don't have my previous WIP pictures shared online, otherwise I'd link them. Those windows are cutouts, not textures. Always a horrendous pain both to copy and paste them all over, but also the Boolean operations don't always work.
Now, everyone here should be able to recognize the Chariot class from Atolm. It took me a long time to be able to actually find a model of it from Alex3d's page. But since I don't work in TNG, I had to change it to suite my TMP style. I used his model as a base to trace the proportions and shape. The only thing I kept from the original model was the engine pylons. I'm pretty proud of the work I did from the ground up. Making it burned me out for the next 2 weeks.
I made 2 texture versions. Since this was a Flagship, I reserved it for Fleet Admirals and the Emperor only. Imperial One has actual reflective gold all over it. The Admiral's version has to settle for yellow paint.
This is an older picture from a year ago where I took a low-poly model and beefed up the facet count. I still couldn't fix the deflector shape. Ark Royal class carrier.
Just to add a little perspective. This is my 1st kitbashed ship from 1-21-2021. I tried to cram as much photons as possible on a too little hull. Never try to do too much.
And my 1st attempt at modeling a Star Trek ship was 11 years ago. A friend of mine was doing a contest on Star Trek Online for the next Enterprise-F. Since he's a soldier, he didn't have a lot of time so he sent me a rough model. It was a huge Thru-deck Cruiser. The thing I was most proud of was how smooth I made the warp pylons.
Rough
Finished
I've also made a shit-ton of stations using DS9 parts
https://www.deviantart.com/1wyrmshadow1/gallery/84177171/stations
I can't hold a candle to a lot of the modelers out there. But I try.
I use 20 year old programs. I use Cinema4D for modeling, Bryce5 for renders and a free UVmapper from 2001. My Photoshop version is almost as old.
"Why don't you use Blender? It's free and easy". Yes and no. Yes it's free but I don't have a lot of time to learn it. I'm stubborn that way. When it comes to MOST tutorials, they expect you know where everything is already in the menu before they jump in. I've only learned programs by having someone sitting with me and walking through it. I've had Cinema4D since 2004 and I barely know 5% of what it can do. But I still know how to use it better than Blender.
So, I don't have the greatest programs, and my technique is rusty but I can still fake some good pictures.
This is my gallery on Deviantart
My most recent is a fairly simple Mars class Battleship. I had done one a year ago but it was really ugly and slapped together. I tried to hard adding greebles to make it look interesting. This version is much cleaner. The only thing I really did was make the Saucer and engineering hull more interesting, starting from completely smooth models.
The Ulysses is something I'm actually proud of. One of the designs I really wanted to paint up, but I had no model. So I made one from scratch using the schematic on the right. The adobe colored parts are things I didn't make myself.
And this is it finished.
Shame I don't have my previous WIP pictures shared online, otherwise I'd link them. Those windows are cutouts, not textures. Always a horrendous pain both to copy and paste them all over, but also the Boolean operations don't always work.
Now, everyone here should be able to recognize the Chariot class from Atolm. It took me a long time to be able to actually find a model of it from Alex3d's page. But since I don't work in TNG, I had to change it to suite my TMP style. I used his model as a base to trace the proportions and shape. The only thing I kept from the original model was the engine pylons. I'm pretty proud of the work I did from the ground up. Making it burned me out for the next 2 weeks.
I made 2 texture versions. Since this was a Flagship, I reserved it for Fleet Admirals and the Emperor only. Imperial One has actual reflective gold all over it. The Admiral's version has to settle for yellow paint.
This is an older picture from a year ago where I took a low-poly model and beefed up the facet count. I still couldn't fix the deflector shape. Ark Royal class carrier.
Just to add a little perspective. This is my 1st kitbashed ship from 1-21-2021. I tried to cram as much photons as possible on a too little hull. Never try to do too much.
And my 1st attempt at modeling a Star Trek ship was 11 years ago. A friend of mine was doing a contest on Star Trek Online for the next Enterprise-F. Since he's a soldier, he didn't have a lot of time so he sent me a rough model. It was a huge Thru-deck Cruiser. The thing I was most proud of was how smooth I made the warp pylons.
Rough
Finished
I've also made a shit-ton of stations using DS9 parts
https://www.deviantart.com/1wyrmshadow1/gallery/84177171/stations
I can't hold a candle to a lot of the modelers out there. But I try.
