[DahBlount]

Hmm the question remains if I could make it a subsystem. Make it an engine and name it as reactor probably?

Edit: Based off the pictures, what do y'all think I could do to improve the detail of the ship?

[BritishShivans]

Well...there's a lot of details that can be added at this point. Things like armor plating designs, sensor gubbins, greebles...quite a fair bit.

[DahBlount]

In my original design sketches, it did have several sensor probes on the front prongs I just couldn't find a way to integrate them. There are some designs on the armor plates but those will be part of the normal map mostly. I could add some recesses along the barrels of the turrets to put glows on and there are for sure going to be glows on the main hull.

[DahBlount]

Okay, decided to trash the current wing design as it is starting to look out of place.

[DahBlount]

Here is a possible derivative.

[Rodo]

I must say I liked the winged version better.

[DahBlount]

Interesting... I thought people would like this version better. My main problem is the lack of possible details I could add to the winged variant. If you could make suggestions that would bring me back to using the winged variant.

[Husker]

Flight pods. Make the wings into hangar sections, ala BSG. Crapton of details you can add then.

[DahBlount]

Flight pods. Make the wings into hangar sections, ala BSG. Crapton of details you can add then.

I will attempt to convert the wings into hangars. Might take some heightening and a few other scale edits but it is definitely possible for me to do.

[DahBlount]

Quick update on the hangar wing.

Looking good so far, I believe I could fix this up into something nice.

[Husker]

Looks pretty good. I loved the hangars in BSG, looked awesome there. I think it looks practical and cool here to.

[DahBlount]

Yeah after thinking about it, there is some greebling I could add to the inside of the hangar. I think right now the outside matches the rest of the ship fairly well so I'll leave that alone for now.

[Husker]

Also, hangar pods, nameplate. Now that I think, it's a great place for potential detail.

[DahBlount]

Nameplates are gonna be fun. Only question is: How do I create a zone for them to be placed?

So yeah, here is one detail I plan to add to the hangar bay.

It's such a beautiful pipe...

[esarai]

Nameplates are pretty easy.  Just make the nameplate a separate object, and as long as the texture for it has -trans appended to the end (like blahblah-trans), that texture will render transparency properly. 

[DahBlount]

Uhh still doesn't make sense to me. So it is a subobject appended to the main hull?

[Black Wolf]

Can be. But render order issues mean that it's best unified with the main hull object and just given its own specific -trans texture. Best advice I can offer is to just look and see how other models have done it. The MVP Fenris is a good one to look at IIRC.

[DahBlount]

Okay that sounds reasonable. Now to figure out how to give specific vertices a trans map. I guess just make the map with only the vertices in question?

[Black Wolf]

I'm not sure quite waht the process wll be in Blender, but in Max what you need to do is pretty simple.

Create a new plane, ideally in the proportions of your nameplate image.
Assign it a planar UV map, and apply the nameplate map.
Position it wherver you want on your main model (The detail0 submodel).
Attach it to the detail0 submodel - attach is the Max word, I'm not sure what the Blender one will be, but essentially it makes them the same submodel.

But if I were you, I'd do this later, once you've already applied your main detail0's textures. It shouldn't need to be a priority just yet.

[DahBlount]

I understand now.
In Blender we call merging two objects into sub models "parenting". Rather the plane would become a subobject like a turret.