[Vertigo 7]

ok so I decided to delve into uber nerddom here and do a model of the Enterprise from TMP era. Here's where I'm at so far...



I really don't have a super whole lot left to do (mesh wise anyway). I've got some poly cleaning to do on the front of the nacelle and theres this cap thing that goes over the front of the glass like stuff on both sides... once im done with that i'll mirror it and attach em to the struts...

then i gotta round out the saucer a bit more (I couldn't remember what poly count I should be less than so I didn't round as much as i should have to begin with... no biggy tho) followed by modeling the bridge, sensor array, deflector dish, impulse drive and the hangar doors... oh and the lil nipple like things for the phaser banks. I havent triangulated yet but as it stands I'm a lil bit over 1k polys all together so i've got all kindsa room to work with. I think this will turn out fairly well =)

If all goes well with it I *may* even do a mod... i know i'll prolly end up doing a few other fed ships like the Miranda class and the Constellation Class... might even do a Proxima if i'm so inclined =p

[StarSlayer]

Yay Connie Refit!  In my opinion the best Enterprise and it's looking good so far.

[Vertigo 7]

ok should be done with the warp nacelles. on to rounding the saucer!

[Vertigo 7]

a bridge to blowz up! theres not a whole lot to do to it, I may round off the back edges a bit, but that'll come later



shes gettin there! 

[Vertigo 7]

Sensors and deflector dish goodness



now to do the hangar, weapons and some detailing

[chief1983]

I like it.  Your skills are getting better.

Speaking of...

[Vertigo 7]

i'm gonna get to it! its next on my list. My buddy from school hooked me up with max... i gotta tell ya, this has been like a dream. I will NEVER go back to TS... EVER! I started doing this model to get familiar with max and I fully intend on going the distance with it... LOD's, Textures (even tho i can't draw a straight line to save me arse) the works. Then, XG-1, here I come!

[chief1983]

Glad to hear it.  Keep practicing then!  If you stop by #hard-light there's usually a Max modeller or two around, but the forums are definitely a good place to get help, if you don't mind the occasional delay.

[Vertigo 7]

I'm getting close =D nother day or so and i should be ready to start texturing... i hope anyway

[Vertigo 7]

Right now i'm working on smoothing out some of the rough edges and corners... im also starting to round out the engineering hull a bit more (it just looks too boxy to me )

[Vertigo 7]

nother update! finished smoothing out the hull as much as im gonna do it got a few lil things i wanna do to the warp nacelles and figure out how i wanna do the hangar. Other than that, just the phaser points and i'll be done with the mesh =)

[Cobra]

That looks pretty damn good.

[Vertigo 7]

Thank you im right proud of er so far.... although I'm not exactly sure what happened but one of those lil clamp like things near the dish... All i did was model 1 and then made 2 copies and then Boolean joined them to the hull. the one in the picture and on the bottom came out fine, however i didn't notice till after i took the pic that the one on the port side came out like a pile of smashed ass. It was all spikey and for whatever reason max triangulated the whole thing... poorly (and whats odd is that was the only one that got triangulated). so I've been cleaning it up... its fix0red now =D Anyways, i'll prolly have another update late tonight or some time tomorrows

edit:
i donno wtf happened but both nacelles for whatever reason have lost their face data. Or atleast thats what it seems... when i convert them to an editable poly, they vanish... i checked the object properties and it reports having 0 vertices and 0 faces. And that makes no sense what so ever cuz with edged faces mode on, i can see the faces so wtf chuck. I guess ima have to rebuild them. I checked on my saves and they're doing the same thing. I donno what happened.

[chief1983]

Aren't you normally not supposed to boolean join in Max?  Or is Max one app where it's ok?

[Vertigo 7]

i've been doing it from the get go and it hasnt really given me any trouble. theres been a few artifices that i've had to clean up but nothing major cept for that one clamp lookin thing, everything else has been fine. I still don't understand what happened to the nacelles, tho. The last thing i did was boolean join a capsule at the bottom then i mirrored it and moved both into their positions. I hadn't touched em since.

But as far as joining, it seems to work ok. it doesn't tend to create bad geometry on the inside of the object, like if i were to join a cylinder to a face on a cube, it would remove all faces that would be on the inside of the completed object.

[pecenipicek]

booleans are exactly what happened. its not the best thing when it comes to joining together objects. if its imperative to join the meshes properly without much trash verts and polys, you're much better off doing it manually than letting boole do it by intersection detection. i've had events where i spent an hour or so cleaning up the mesh from booleing stuff together.



in most cases when you really want to connect two objects together, you can just punt them near each other, make a single poly mesh out of two of them and pretty much "bridge" the polys in the gap.



i really have to give max a more thorough try... C4D's, or rather Bodypaints UV tools are a bit lacking with seam fixing and i have no idea where to even begin with the fixage -.-

[Vertigo 7]

i was able to merge objects together like that in TrueSpace (bridging them) How do i do that in max? I haven't figured out how to edit the hierarchy yet

[pecenipicek]

no idea. but i think it should have a tool in the direct poly/edge/vert edit mode just for that.


dont remind of TS's booles... by the dear gods... gaah

[Vertigo 7]

i never touched em in TS... they scared me 

[Vertigo 7]

ok so i hadda rebuild the nacelles from scratch again. this time i made damn sure they didnt get screwed up! so with out further ado... new and improved nacelles!