-= The Project =-

[Madkoifish]

A material question was asked and I got carried away posting all the rest of these single image or image group tuts so I thought might as well spam it on all the forums so it is a resource to everyone!

I use mental ray materials so it might not be reproducible in other packages.
What I do is up the reflectivity, toss a filth map in the glossy slot (mental ray has no specular)

Diffuse I use a mix of some color or material (usually very faint filth or paneling and I mean FAINT) and use a composite to blend (think photoshop layer blending) the AO shader so it grimes up the inside corners. Some software will have a AO shader you can add noise to the darkened area or a texture. IE produce proper filth.

Included is a flowchart thing showing where materials go and rough idea of the maps appearance. I pretty much used a photo of some polished concrete I took with my camera at home depot, or similar warehouse store. I will also always shoot pics of rusty cars and buildings too.

Klingon general hull.

hell I need a 4k display to use this editor with any consistency. Takes up too much room and is a nightmare for large projects. HAH. Does make it easier to show what a material is doing.

including a few other random charts none are really recent but might help. shrug

Older fed ship hull

This is a bit of a ehhh pearl effect, more of a fakery paneling.

metallic patterned hull used on the NX13 model



probably do not need all those bloody fall off materials. I have not looked at this mesh in a while so I do not remember the material fully.
sample of ship in question.


random mental ray settings. Mostly FG settings
https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/mr-settings.png

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/radinterpo.jpg

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/madfish-rendering.png

lighting crap
https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/madfish-wip-lighting.png

I think I have more of these things but these are what work as single images that I have online. I should some day post all of these on my blog and make some sort of coherent order for some of them IE I have multi image tuts that were used on forums that mean little as a set of images without text! lol.

Anyhow best suggestion is use a renderer and material system that best replicates real world surfaces and lighting environments. IE if you put diffuse red glass in front of a light it should tint that light. IE shadows of bussard glass should be tinted not gray. Light should bounce off objects and reflect the non absorbed light. Generally if you see specular and gloss separated it means fake surfacing. Specular is not a real thing. What we see as specular is just surfacing IE texture of a surface and glossiness of that material. Think of gloss paint on sandpaper.


Ah subdivision tuts. Shows using what is called smoothing groups in MAX. Likely called something else in other apps this allows you to easily clean up crap loops and optimize your mesh. It also allows you to control loops without all that double and triple looping that is required without smoothing groups.

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/smoothinggroups.png
example of a base mesh with subdivision and with smoothing groups active and not active.

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/smoothinggroups2.png
more views of results.

Saucer decimation example and example of loops to control smoothing. Also example of panels and separating up an object to work on. Idea is to merge it all back as a single object later.

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/saucerwire.jpg

modifying a curve to create 90deg crossing edges so chamfering later is even across the object. (mostly a max issue as any edges crossing not near 90deg means uneven chamfers.
https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/destroyer-153.png

UVW projection: using a square tiled map to make spherical hull spread.

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/uvw-projection.jpg

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/uvw-projectedsphere.jpg

Wireframe showing detached segments of objects for faster viewports and to cheat at unique patterns when UVWed.

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/wireframe-destroyer.png

to

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/destroyer-251.jpg

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/destroyer-2521.jpg

proper glow effects, something even pros fuck up.

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/glows-01.png

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/glows-02.png
2 should read glows are suppose to be additive, they DO NOT, mask, darken, or obscure. (hint using normal layer is wrong)

tip is to run a separate glow pass, preferably one for each effect. IE ship windows separately so you can adjust those. Ship glows like engines or warp grills etc so you can increase or control the blurr IE glow and intensity. Example image follows
https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/shiplight-01.jpg
basicly i turn off all lights or GI efx and let the lum materials or self ilum materials glow.

Only tools I have ever found in max to properly do this is a all in one is the glare lens shader you set up in the render area not in any post or composite setting in app.
glare lens examples

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/vorchan-107.jpg

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/lethe-te-283.jpg

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/yamato-059a.jpg

https://madkoifish.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/yamato-089.jpg

keep in mind this being done in app is not a good thing as if your animating finding a few seconds out of a week long render look like arse really, REALLY sucks so doing this crap in post is best.

OK now I think that is all of it hahahahah uh ok overboard yes?

 

[B.J.]

Wow. I don't do 3D rendering myself, but I can certainly appreciate the amount of information you've just thrown out. And there are some things in there applicable to 2D work as well!

 

[Madkoifish]

This thing is back too. hahah some major changes like inverting the struts and pulling the hull back down it matches the original doodle's look more than it did before.







Here is the original painting for reference.

 

[Madkoifish]

A bit cheesed off as I was going to show scale and realized I did not double check my scale or somewhere I decided to model this at a similar scale as the ENT D. While everything works at that scale it just looks odd next to a Galaxy class. SO as I cannot just scale thing as it fuqs up the extrusion chamfer measurements. IE if I doubled the size and I extrude 2ft it really is extruding 4 to 6 ft. Resetting xform etc wont correct this so I am now having to attach all the crap as a single object so I can scale it in poly edit mode which is the ONLY way to enlarge a model and have it fit with others. I also imported a galaxy class and heh it came in at 640ft vs 640m. So this might have been part of the original screw up as this is close to the scale I wanted for this.

I might have to abandon this project as I do not think I can meet deadline with the scale and detail.

Anyhow uh a lot of the upper bridge details are junk now. As they are all a bit too small. by about a third. I might be able to use them I might not. One render is where it was at this morning. . . . the other is the ship as a blocky enlarged object next to a galaxy class for scale.

3300ft/1009m roughly in length. Given I had planned this as a 1701-G I am guessing she would be some 100yrs post TNG. I forget where the F falls in and the J is a bit errrmmm as 2550ad that is a lot of enterprises to flush down the toilet between the SOV 2373 and 2550. So more like 60yrs?

Memory beta says the F came in on 2409. . . . easily less than 150yrs to flush 4 ships. O_o;'





AUGH cardinal rule broke!!! forgot creds!

 

[ashleytinger]

Sorry to hear about the issues. I really love how intricate and different the design on this is.

 

[Madkoifish]

I think this is the rough shaping locked down. Included are two of the ugliest views of this thing IMHO, top and bottom, though bottom always had a ok feel due to the lines on the saucer. The top though always looked squashed and unbalanced. Urge always was to revert back to the really old drawings of similar ships from 08. All of which are based off the long and likely forgotten pancake class. Sadly a lot of these images (least the masters) are long lost to the reformat gods and dead hdd gods. Almost everything I did in 08 is gone. Anyhow all moot. I will include a lq image to show what I mean by elongating the hull. See the top down image ONLY and pretend those bottom aft swept struts were gone.



I had considered just modeling some random post TNG/VOY era ship from scratch. namely something small like that top down image.

 

[Madkoifish]

apparently I did not save the top down render. . . . . .

 

[Madkoifish]

Just taking a spin at blocking in that older image and taking some ideas from this far future ship and applying them to a much smaller ship that is a NX testbed ship.

Rough drawn top down. Proportions are not right on and as always drawings are just suggestive. Example is getting the saucer thick enough to allow those huge bays.

#d model has a fully circular saucer all the way out I had thought to just make cutouts into it but I might actually make only the inner parts fully round and subdiv the other bits into it to make it a non circular shape like in the drawing.

Tenativly this is a early slipstream testbed or some other alt warp testbed. ALT ft whatever. It can be a fun run up to the larger farther future ship. I have yet to decide on the aux deflector cutout. Idea is this cutout would have additional deflection fields and could be used for other projection uses. Like maybe a huge gravity polarizer? It would also house pulse phasers and torps like my Linerunner does. Or some other fun things. Maybe I can toss all of that and put a fly through shuttle bay in and use this as a evac spaceframe/test bed? dunno possibilities. Intent is she is no more than 400m in length. (ATM 391m)









Definitely keep in mind this is all rough block in. Many shapes are multiple objects right now and some are singles which will be broken up once I decide on form. The one thing that is clearly up in the air are the nacelles. Length shape with etc are all unknown atm.

It will likely be this odd eggblue but with SOV like patterning. I figure this will be in testing some time in the 2380/90s Planned reg is NCC - 98100 or NX - 98100 but I have not hunted registries yet.

 

[Madkoifish]

Not much effort today, spent it reading.Slowly working out shapes etc. Ignore how the dish area of the deflector appears as it is missing all the inset framing the one on the Galaxy has. I plan to do that or something similar with this element in the center. Though maybe some segmented affair AKA the Voyager might work too. Pretty much that whole lower flared section is deflector control as it would relate to the new FTL design. Be it warp, transwarp, slipstream, reconfiguration to avoid subspace damage or whatever was going in in NX dev in the late 2300s. The actual warp drive components will be in the "neck" if you could call it that.

The outer rim of the saucer, least the fore and flanking will be massive sensor rooms with a few windowed rooms for people working in those sections. The central blister is where most habitation will be. The bridge is large as with this being planned as a experimental it would have twice the stations for monitoring things or acting as last wall defense against some automated system going wrong. I might be tempted to do a lifeboat like section here where the whole core and bridge can ejector seat off the saucer if things go foul. MMM Anyhow just early brain vomit nothing solid atm as I could easily change parts or handwavium some other excuse for something being how it is. Real thing to mull over is how I want these warp drives to look.










I should be avoiding the books tomorrow, so things should speed up.

 

[Madkoifish]

Smallish update mostly refining subdiv parts. The impulse drive bits likely are going to be reverted and cut when I collapse the stack and box model those buggers in as well as looking at ways to mimic the shuttlebays in the painting, which means extending that hull in some way.

 

[Madkoifish]

Any votes on what the test bed would be for?
Tanswarp slipstream or alternate geometry warp (that whole warp 5 limit thing voy was designed to alleviate or get around) Idea is this wont req bendy struts.

Updates again are just a mess of adjustments to things and better workflow for the objects. IE I separated the struts and deflector hull from that central extrusion as it really served no purpose being a single object but to add complexity and annoyance to adjusting or altering shape. I am considering a alternate deflector housing to what I have. I still feel the Galaxy class style is more advanced looking than the blockier Rick Sternbach style trek. I do plan to add a collection of those little orange pads he would have on ships near the deflector. The voyager and equinox? had them. If I do the cutout on the saucer it will have them on the lower hull as well as that curved deal above the main deflector. Idea on this long neck shape is that it all ties into deflection control. It is all a means toward whatever field control is needed for whatever new FTL tech is being developed. I am thinking field manipulation and shaping.

The dish itself I guess I will model up a few quickies and have everyone give opinions on each. KIM what I have now is mostly placeholder, more detail will go into it over time. Things like the slats and better shaping to collect the LUM glows and other bits of detail around the lip.










Then it is on to the bit I have been putting off. . . the nacelle design. Likely do a paintover to work that out. I am leaning towards doing something unusual vs anything traditional. KIM this will be a late LATE 2300 ship or early 2400s IE 2370~2410. This is to at least try to retain some KNOWN details and construction. So you will see things like SOV lifeboats, paneling similar to the SOV (might have to fine eyeball some NEM refit detail as I am NOT educated on the changes to that or have anything but that last scene in 1080p for refs. Odd you would think SOMEONE has that mesh or textures and could put something out.

 

[Madkoifish]

Well after some time off that shouldn't have been taken. . . lol Feeling off and then spending some of that meh time rendering connies. Decided I did not like the neck deflector housing interface so I decided to merge them all up and better reflect the original painting. Also new bridge structure. It should provide a decent bridge and a load of officers offices or crew rooms. Most of the tall aft deck bumps will be getting split up or divided up into smaller details as right now most are 3 decks high.

 

[Tom Hendricks]

I really do love this design, overall. The neck and spin are inspired design, along with the wing like struts holding the warp engines. However there is something off about the deflector housing. Really doesn't mesh well with the rest of the design. I think it needs to be a little more angular and perhaps the dish moved forward? I like the more blocky look in the first rendering, made it look more substantial. I know this is a work in progress and future iterations will probably be different but just wanted to add my two cents.

 

[Madkoifish]

Some more configuration changes. Alteration to the deflector and squaring the dish to the hull and seeing if a oval would look better. Also goofing with angles struts to sorta align with the deflector housing/secondary hull. I cant make it match exactly as it makes the nacelles overlap the hull too much and if I pull it up too high they are obstructed by the saucer. ATM in profile anything forward of the strut is visually obstructed with the lower neck area.

 

[Arvis Taljik]

Looking awesome! Can definitely see the influence of the old STO concept for the Excalibur in the back neck/hull area and it's turning out great!

Makes me wish you'd do a game-detail version for people to play around with in BC or other space sim mods. :P

 

[Madkoifish]

If you mean the Eaves doughnut. Think he called it the McCall in later images of it. I think queues from that particular ship did make it into the final game. (not played STO) Then yeah that has influenced a lot of my ships. That and the hints of a spinal form on various TNG ships. Galaxy(those bars witht he red stripes on), VOY, SOV (again the stripes and panel break line). I had something similar on the Onimaru and a mess of WIP ships. It is something I have not been too happy with.

 

[Madkoifish]

I think I may have goofed on scale. Thinking that 360m thing was ok but comparing it to the Voyager it looks a bit small. Maybe increasing the scale up to 450 or 500m might work better for the shapes.





Random misc updates and additions of edge loops to round out the subdiv. Also rough lifeboat layouts. I do have to check these as I think the boats I am using are NOT sov scale.

 

[Madkoifish]

Well scaled to 471m using Xform gizmo which sorta minimizes the annoyance of scaling objects in max. Dunno why they do not have one that allows you to mass group scale objects to size and retain the measurements in extrusions to the world IE extrude 10in in real inches vs whatever the scaled up percentage is in inches. Example is make a box add the poly edit modifier or any edit modifier copy that box or clone it without instance. Offset it some but keep the top level with the other. Then scale one box 2X, lets call it box A. Then lets go to box B extrude the top 2ft. Then go to box A and do the same you will notice it will say 2 feet but it will extrude out 4 feet instead. Apparently in max there is no way to select a working group of objects in various states and scale then and RETAIN the units as real world or keep those in scale to other non scaled objects. Least not one I know of.

Xform modifier helps as I do not have to merge up all the fing objects but I still have a modifier on the stack applying the scale that I have to collapse thus meaning I have to reapply all other modifiers in the stack after collapsing the edit to remove {or apply permanently the changes made by the xform modifier} Things like symmetry subdivision uvw etc. Just shocked there is not a proper method or alteration to the select and scale tool that corrects this stupid behavior. YES sure built it to scale everyone says but that is not always feasible or possible EXP with assets from other users using various unit scales etc.


ANYHOW she is up to that 471m in length but will likly shorten when I get to doing the nacelles as I doubt the final units will be as long as the dummy units. Only thing that bothers me is the scale of that bridge unit next to a person but compared to the voyager bridge it seems to fit. I will likely change the top most part to be less TMP like, maybe a bit hard as I took to doing unlevel decks there as it looks a bit more fun than flat decks all over. mmmmmm. I think the voyager unit was intended to lift off and work on its own like a huge lifeboat too. Speaking of lifeboats I found mine as just a hair larger than the ones off the Sovereign. By like 5" around, enough that it can be seen as model variation and or scaling issues as it imported in at 91feet. It was a fbx but other models from nightfever have imported at scale but well exported and imported models. Again image is of the new scaled ship (have a mess of proper sized objects to relocate like lifeboats torps etc). The other is of some paintings of nacelle ideas. Sort of want to do new but sort of want to stay a bit conservative as to appeal to many vs few. Then again this ship is lol likely to cause grumblings due to shape. And yah I know I have been uploading larger renders, a bit of a accident somewhere. Dunno if anyone has a preference other than wanting to spend less BW dling them. ]


Nacelles will likely be a bit longer or streched vs the samples. The one on the ship image itself is WAY to large.

 

[Madkoifish]

Oh anyone have any idea what the quadrilateral thing is between the lifeboats on the sovereign?

 

[Kaiser]

Subspace beacon maybe?