[Deora11]

About a month ago I decided to upgrade my learning experience by actually creating my own ship. Even though I had a rather simple one made from years back, I wanted throw all my knowledge into this project, using a program that I am familiar with, and until now, have greatly under-estimated. Gaining ideas from other great designers, and going with shapes and patterns I loved, I created this.

So far I am loving my design, but have yet to turret it or even UV map it, due to the use of  Google Sketchup. I do of cause have Blender to which the full conversion will be brought to life, however the programs I use are not relevant.

I am simply here for outside opinions and other tips and tricks. I'd lie if I said I didn't want to show off my creation either. Any advice is greatly appreciated, and I hope to improve my skills from the best. 

[niffiwan]

I can't give you any advice about modeling, but it looks good, keep it up! 

[Nyctaeus]

Don't copy Aesaar!

I'm not sure if I count as "other great designer" but let's assume I am . While I love his TEI fleet that was obviously an inspiration here, Aesaar's details are inefficient. Most small greebles of his style disappear under the textures and normalmaps even very close to player's fighter. Try to incrase size of your details. Add some variety, as ribs everywhere are quite boring. You may take a look at models of Raven2001 for example, like this one. I came up with my own style based on work of Raven, Vasudan Admiral and a few other veteran modellers and I found this method the best. Check WiP of my Lindos and judge yourself. Most detailed look of your model, with reasonable count of polygons.

Emmm... Wait, what? Did I forget about something? Yeah!
I forget that I love your warship ! Bulky, blocky, halo-styled designs are cool! I want to see it textured, and used as post Great-War sol destroyer design

[Deora11]

Thanks everyone.

About the 'ribbed design', it was inspired by Aesaar, kinder gave the look of a base structure the ship was built around. Luckily its a seperate component, and it was added late in the design ( the 112th save to be precise) ,so it won't ruin the original design.

Your Lindos has given me even more ideas, originally i wanted it to be symmetrical in apperance, now I may go with seperate modules here and there.

Hmmmm, thanks for the insight. 

[NeonShivan]

Wall of Text Replacement

This looks less "Aesaar" and more "UNSC", that's my two cents on the matter.

[Col.Hornet]

It's just about the ribs. In large numbers they are inefficient and simply disappear under the texture later. And they're consuming polys as hell without any remarkable visual effect.


My advice would be to remove most of the ribs and make them later via Normal Map. Those armor plates are a good thing. Try to add more of them and make them more various. Try to experiment with different heights, thicknesses and shapes. Multi-layer armor plating is always a good thing. Most important thing is to make them clearly recognizable from distance. Current shape of the plates is very good but I'd made them thicker.

Overall shape of the ship is excellent, I'm looking forward to see further development

Good luck

[Nyctaeus]

Wall of Text Replacement

This looks less "Aesaar" and more "UNSC", that's my two cents on the matter.

Overall shape is pure descentant of UNSC Halcyon plus some other bits inspired by other vessels, but details are stricte Aesaar-styled. Not only the ribs, but also plating on ribs, antennas, hangarbays, pod tubes...

I mean copying Aesaar is not a bad thing in general. He has a lot of cool detail designs. Antennas cluster is one of the coolest things in Erebus and one of the coolest at all, but for other things, his ships looks rather flat with insane polycounts.

Deora, try some mixture . Various sources of inspiration are the best when you're learning how to make cool stuff. I definitly see a lot of potential and skill here.

[Droid803]

I'm still thinking that these "shallow" ribbing could be pulled off with some smart Normal Mapping, but I'm not entirely sure on that.
Either way I'm not a fan of ribbing, its a bit too...uniform and repetitive. The exposed guts could probably look better with more irregular greebling.

[Deora11]

I little update on the road. I'm not sure on P3D post policy, so unless told otherwise, the provided window in the post will serve as an update window for future posts.

Following advice for the experts, I've removed the ribs all together for now to free up the poly-train. Searching around at other designs, I decided to radically restructure key areas of the hull where the ribs were most prominent (due to the rib-removal, free space needs filling). I'm also still experimenting with different  armour setups which would also fill in space, and I'm currently reducing the curves and removing unseen inside geometry.

When viewing the ship within Blender, I had noticed my poly-count was insanely high. After abandoning the mesh for a day to fix my ute, I came back to realise what happened. Due to the constructing method that Sketchup uses, my plating, hull and details are all part of 1 big mesh, unlike working as a layer system where you can select extruded plate separately.

I will continue my ship-building as is, however, come the finished product I will have to split the geometry using the Y key in Blender, before I can UV map. Either that or construct the plating and details into components in Sketchup, and join them with the hull in Blender.

[Black Wolf]

Is this meant for the FreeSpace universe? I can't quite tell - sometimes the aesthetic seems way off for FS, but occasionally I'm seeing an orionesque look to the silhouette...

[Deora11]

It was just a model I started to expand my learning experience. In other words, it wasn't made with a freespace universe in mind. I was thinking of creating a custom fleet for a custom campaign since most of the mission designs I create don't fit within the freespace verse, not any I can think of anyway.

[Nyctaeus]

W-O-A-H

[Aesaar]

[...] but for other things, his ships looks rather flat with insane polycounts.

This is very true and it's quite frustrating.

[SypheDMar]

Is this meant for the FreeSpace universe? I can't quite tell - sometimes the aesthetic seems way off for FS, but occasionally I'm seeing an orionesque look to the silhouette...

I'm getting a Fenris-inspired vibe from this, even though it looks nothing like the Fenris.

[Darius]

UNSC. It even has the double spinal mass drivers at the front.