[Unknown Target]

I've always wondered how other people here make their ships. I mean, when you actually get into your modelling app, how do you start and such?

Personally, I start at the front of the ship with a cylinder, which I flatten. I then extrude it to form the fuselage, and add other items onto the fuselage via manually creating connecting faces.

For capital ships I usually block them out with basic cubes, then edit and extrude the cubes until they mesh into a capital ship.


How do you guys do it?

This might help for newbie modders as well, looking for a starting point.

[aldo_14]

Depends on the ship concept, actually.  It used to be a single box with  low poly models, with HTL I often use a modified cylinder.

[Vasudan Admiral]

1) Draw concept (definitely helps to have an idea of where you're headed )
2) Make side on vert by vert outline (join the dots style)
3) Make a same scale top down outline, but only of one side.
4) Mirror this and only work on one side of it.
5) Fill in with detail poly by poly, doing the main features of the model first. (means very high level of detail, usually very well integrated features of the ship and almost no geometry errors, but is a lot of effort with 2500+ poly models. I do enjoy it tho. )

6) Export to Lith for UVing via TS (I don't texture tile any more - way too simple in every sense )
7) Make high res texture
8) Heirarchy it up, and pof it
9) Think it's finished and go to bed, only to see a bunch of errors in the morning
10) Fix the .cob, reconvert, then fix pof. Repeat as nessecary.

Mind you, this style of modeling works well in blender, but most definitely not in TS. It's advantages are that you can create very intricate models, and know them poly by poly, but it's a difficult style to learn and maintain.
You need to have an initial concept drawing on which to base your overall design on, and although probably not nessecary, you should be able to picture and manipulate complex shapes in your head in order to figure out exactly how features connect with one another.

But yeah - that's how i currently model, and i'm always finding new little cool things i can do in blender which either make it easier or the results better. Hope this helps someone eventually, but reading over it, i can see it probably won't. :\

Ah well.

[FireCrack]

Make a cube

Extrude into basic Shape

Use append, split, etc to further refine shape

[Nuke]

when i start i usually i have an idea of what my ship looks liker in my head. usually its not a complete idea and i work out the design in truespace untill it looks the way i wanted, this can take a week or it gets put aside for awhile. other times il have the complete design in my head and in that case i can have the whole model done in a day or two.

my style of modeling focuses on using hand drawn faces, and of coordanate punching. i make of use of the key in paneland frown on any 3d program that doesnt have one. i use the lathe tool for complex curves. for simple curves i usually use some trig functions to calculate point placement and position the verts manually. on occasion i will use booleans, but on simple surfaces only. usually to punch holes to work off of (usually i do this in the early stages of modelihng to prevent errors that would be caused by using booleans on geometry with much higher polycounts).

i perfer more curvy designs over the traditianally accepted freespace ones and rely less on detailing otherwise flat surfaces with extrusions and indentations. i draw most my inspiration from existing aircraft and a small amount of scifi. i try to make my designs as plausable as possible, which means following the basic rules fo craft design taking things such as center of gravity into consideration. its funny some of my models actually 'fly' in ts6 physics simulations.

and finally my models wouldnt be complete without my texturing talents. as for my general texturing meathod i use of vector shapes in photoshop and actually render the texture layer by layer. this meathod also allows for better scaling, and i can upgrade or downgrade texture size with little or no modification and the textures will re render for maximum quality a all resolutions.i usually do all my maps at 1024^2 or 2048^2, this generates insanely large photoshop docs that can grind my system to a hault`but it has turned out some awesome textures.

when i started modding freespace i couldnt texture at all. i had done textures for descent2 but those were 8 bit palletized and very low res, pixelwork in mspaint. that didnt fly well in freespace so i started splicing textures. essentally takint a few similar textures, cutting sections out of them and pasting them into a new texture, add a little airbrush work and you end up with somewhat ok textures. eventually you get to a point where you can do better stuff yourself.  so i slowly phased out of the frankenstein aproach and now i do textures entirely from scratch.

[TopAce]

Basic cube, I extrude/sweep some faces, maybe make them a little round, then I quit TS when I realise it looks bad.

[DaBrain]

Draw a concept

Draw each side of the model

Hand it over to Jonathan_S47

Make him create the model


Jonathan_S47 is a lot better at modelling than me.

Well, if  I really have to create a model, I think up a vague concept.
Maybe draw it
Create a cube
Use extrude a lot
Until I get the basic shape
Then I start adding details
As soon as I'm done I unwrap it
Now I load the model in Lith
Start working on the maps
And 'update' Lith's preview to see my progress
After this the conversion stuff comes...

I use Wings3d for this.

[WeatherOp]

Hmmm, I started out using spheres, but now I use just about everything.

[KARMA]

In ts you can model whaterver you want from whatever primitive you have if what you are going to model is blocky.
The problems come out when you have rounded bits, since you'll probably need to do em from a new primitive and then attcha them to main geometry.
There are 3 ways to connect different elements in TS:
1- do it manually. It's hard tedious and time consuming if the connection is complex
2-use booleans. The problem is, you need some experience to use booleans productively, as they may create geometry problems. It could be said that you know how to use booleans if you are already able to obtain the same result manually, since if you can do so, then you know what kind of problems the booleans can generate, you know how to use booleans so that they generate less problems and you know how to fix any problems they can generate
3- the last strategy is to don't connect at all the pieces, which means to use submodels, which means usually to use intersections and possibly have another kind of problems. I find myself using that strategy more often, in order to keep polycount under control

What does that mean afterall?
That you should always start with the rounded elements of your ship if you want to have a solid mesh (without submodels) since it's easyer to develop the blocky elements from a rounded one than viceversa.
that's my 2 cents

[Nuke]

i just use the lathe tool to do curves, then i just delete any part of the result and use the polygot draw tool to blend it into the connecting geometry. its crude but it works and generates good geometry most of the time. it goes by quicker that it would to do it yourself or mess with submodels anyway.

[pyro-manic]

The limited modelling I've done has been based off various primitives. I'll make a box or cylinder, with lots of divisions along it's length, and then start to stretch it by moving faces/vertexes etc. into some basic shape. Then I'll extrude and bevel and cut new edges etc. to add more bits on. I tend not to use more than the one primitive if I can help it, as attaching them together is a pain in the arse (edges and corners get all mixed up leaving holes). However, if I need a regular shape (eg a sphere for a radome or something) then I'll use one then and spend ages joining it up properly.

And I tend to do concept sketches beforehand to get some idea of the basic shapes. I may also doodle some details of specific features (the Iron Duke's bridge, for example, and the Vasudan light destroyer I'm playing with at the moment...)

[Grimloq]

Open truespace.

Make shape. any shape.

Mess around with shape until it looks like another shape.

Add more shapes

Boolean a few shapes

Add more shapes (Repeat as needed)

Curse

Eat lunch

Add more shapes

Have a tantrum

Have a nervous breakdown and lose interest in model

[3 days later]

Open truespace

Play around with shapes

Remember other model and open it

Play with THOSE shapes for a while

Talk to friends and ask them for input

Finish model and show it off

Realize it sucks

Try to fix it

Decide it's crap and archive it

 

[Nuke]

youd be amazed how many of my crappy ships look good with textures.

[gevatter Lars]

Originally posted by Grimloq
Open truespace.
Make shape. any shape.
Mess around with shape until it looks like another shape.
Add more shapes
Boolean a few shapes
Add more shapes (Repeat as needed)
Curse
Eat lunch
Add more shapes
Have a tantrum
Have a nervous breakdown and lose interest in model
[3 days later]
Open truespace
Play around with shapes
Remember other model and open it
Play with THOSE shapes for a while
Talk to friends and ask them for input
Finish model and show it off
Realize it sucks
Try to fix it
Decide it's crap and archive it
 

Best way of modeling I have ever heard ^_^

[Carl]

Originally posted by Unknown Target
How do you make ships?

Well, here's what I'd do.

First, go to college and get a master's engineering degree, then work in an internship or any other job related to the field you can. Excel in your job so that you will be promoted, and show intelligence and originality in your work. Show that you are capable of designing ships, then when the navy needs some designs for a new ship, one of the higher ups will remember your work and suggest you to their superiors. if your design is better than everyon else's, than a prototype will be built, and if that prototype tests well, than it will be commisioned, and your company will recieve an order for however many ships the navy needs.

[Grimloq]

Originally posted by gevatter Lars
Best way of modeling I have ever heard ^_^

...And you think I'm joking, too ^_^

[Jonathan_S47]

Originally posted by DaBrain
Draw a concept

Draw each side of the model

Hand it over to Jonathan_S47

Import images into Maya 5PLE
Make Cube
Increase subdivision on the cube
Delete half of the cube
Move vertices till they form half the model shown in the images
Use mirror geometry.
Export model through UnrealED

[gevatter Lars]

Originally posted by Grimloq


...And you think I'm joking, too ^_^

Not realy..at the moment I try to get a character-ani done and its quite the same.
Makeing the bones, envelope them, set weightmaps, move it a little, realise that the setup is crap, start again, see its not working again....eat quite to much and become to fat to do anything.