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Modelling and Rendering the TMP Enterprise

Thanks guys.

Cary - NURBS? I'm afraid not!! C4D v8.2 supports NURBS cages, but for this project I've never got anything decent out of them. I'm guessing that modelling tools have moved on from when v8.2 came out in 2001.

The main body of the pods started life as a set of (circular) arcs. From what I can see from reference images, the outermost edge (as seen in silhouette) is a straight line and you know where the pods meet the secondary hull, so it's nothing more than some simple geometry. Some tweaking was applied to the y-axis, which gives a shape a little closer to the physical mode. I'd tried other approaches prior to that, but just ended up with a mess.

The colours are used to mark different sections of the hull - nothing more. So if we take the secondary hull as an example, I use magenta and blue colours to mark the panels down the side, because I haven't added any gridlines. On the main body of the side pods, I use yellow and magenta to mark out obvious texture differences I can see on the model.

blssdwlf - could you elaborate on what you want? As it stands only the secondary hull is multi-colour. Are you looking for front/back, side and top/bottom views? I have some images like that in previous posts but with the wireframe visible. Let us know and I'll render off the appropriate images ASAP.

Cheers,
S.O.
 
Science Officer said:
blssdwlf - could you elaborate on what you want? As it stands only the secondary hull is multi-colour. Are you looking for front/back, side and top/bottom views? I have some images like that in previous posts but with the wireframe visible. Let us know and I'll render off the appropriate images ASAP.
Click to expand...

Hi Science Officer - no worries. Just wishful thinking on my part. It just looked kinda neat with the multicolor panels.

You can see what jets look like under construction (it's mostly yellow but I hadn't thought of a multi-color 1701 before :) :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42740324@N02/4456130676/in/set-72157623674812834

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2004/photorelease/q2/pr_040601s.html

http://static.nacional.hr/img/5feadbaf6199ad4a6c2b9c5ae7ba331a_700x550.jpg

You could just take your last pic of the secondary hull and zoom out to show the whole ship :)
 
wow, i havnt looked in here for a while now!

SO you're making excellent progress as always, keep up the good work!
 
Starship said:
Looks like C4d has the same problem that 3dsmax has. When you apply a chamfer and/or bevel, sometimes you got weird and unaligned triangles all around, and the only way to solve this is manually adjust and weld verts and edges...

For 3ds max, exists two comercial scripts that can solve this problem:
http://www.mariussilaghi.com/qchamfer.htm
http://www.vg2max.spb.ru/EdgeChEx.htm

AND for C4D... Looks like that exists solution too:
http://www.holgerbiebrach.com/?p=1366 ;)
Click to expand...

Hi Starship.

Yes that is exactly the problem. Thanks for the above link - I've downloaded the script and I'll see if it is of any use. However there is an alternative approach - "Extrude Inner".

What I've tried (as a quick experiment) is making a copy of the side pod and then selecting the polys on the outer surface. In C4D, there is a feature called Extrude Inner, which shrinks the sides of a polygon area by the required amount. I then selected and copied the points on the shrunken surface and pasted them into the original side pod. It's then a case of re-skinning the side pod to use the new points and then applying the bevels to the edges. It's not perfect but certainly gives you less tweaking to do.

A different approach, is too use primitives with fillets and somehow bolt them onto the side pod. I used this approach in an earlier post, again with some success, but not enough to get rid of all those Phong Shading issues.

blssdwlf - no problem. I'll render something off.

Anystar - where have you been? Weren't you revamping your refit model? Good to see you here again.

Cheers,
S.O.
 
I've now added the 4 thrusters and a ring to the nose. That pretty much concludes the work to the front of the secondary hull. Now for the bit I dread - the back!

Cheers,
S.O.
thrusters.jpg
 
Bernard Guignard said:
out of Curiosity how many polies are you up to now ? Great work by the way :techman::techman::techman::techman::techman:
Click to expand...

Thanks BG,


The poly count so far is 306268. The breakdown is as follows...
  • Saucer 306268
  • Secondary Hull 11158
  • Side Pods 9192
  • Nose, Thrusters and Deflector Ribs 9692
  • Total 336310
On the saucer, I haven't modelled the phasers or etched some lines into the deck two spotlight housing. So expect that count to increase. Side Pods need bevelling so that will increase too. Nose, Thrusters and Ribs are complete.

The count for the secondary hull is nowhere near final and I'd expect that to go up into 6 digits.

Although I have modelled a neck, I'm not happy with it and so I'm not including its count here. I'll use it as a template for a new one.

Cheers,
S.O.
 
Dennis said:
Excellent work.
Click to expand...

Thanks Dennis,

If it wasn't for the first version of your refit mesh, I'd never have got into doing this. Many a long hour was spent porting it into C4D from Lightwave, but when I finally rendered a decent scene of the Enterprise in orbit around Earth, I knew it was worth it.

Cheers,
S.O.
 
Thanks. I learned CG partly by studying Eric Peterson's mesh of this ship, which was available for Imagine 3.0 back when that was the only tool I had. So we just go on passing it forward. ;)
 
Hey there SO, i finally started working on mine again recently. started in on the fantail this weekend, and well... since misery loves company :rofl:, i know you've been focused on the front end lately, but i cant help but wonder if you've done any more on that part yourself?
 
AnyStar said:
Hey there SO, i finally started working on mine again recently. started in on the fantail this weekend, and well... since misery loves company :rofl:, i know you've been focused on the front end lately, but i cant help but wonder if you've done any more on that part yourself?
Click to expand...

LOL! I must admit that there have been a few periods of misery as of late. Sometimes you feel great when something comes together, and utterly depressed when you realise you've got another part to figure out.

I took one look at the back and thought - no I can't face that! So instead I'm working on the torpedo bay and the replacement neck. The torpedo bay is starting to take shape - I've just been trying to get the correct curvature on the topside. The vertical axis was easy, but the horizontal axis is a little trickier. At the moment it looks like a 100m radius arc from the front to where it meets the spine at the back. Just needs a little refinement to make room for the light sources. Then I can start cutting out the underside. Got a very good feeling about this.

The top of the hangar bay (above the doors) is currently a set of nested cylinders so I could work out how the circular bit connects to the rest of the hull. Looking at the reference photos I can see why it causes problems and what the shape actually is. I'll post a few pics later with my observations.

Good to see you back and I hope your new refit poster project is a success.

Cheers
S.O.
 
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