UEA - United Earth Aliance

Started blending again, and went with my old UEA (United Earth Aliance) Pelican class destroyer.

Wanted to play with texturing first. And fix up all the crappy UV work I did in the past :slight_smile:

So still a few things to fix (texture wise and UV).

Now can someone tell me what is the best way to edit linked materials? I don’t want to keep editing a file with materials, then reload the mesh to test it out. Be cool if I can directly update material file from within the ship file.

Still have to tweak the bridge UV’s

And probably will have to redo the main cannons. the look crappy compared to the small turrets.

Please tell me if the image is too dark. Hard to say if my screens are too bright compared to others.

Attachments



now to dirty it up

Attachments



Looks good. The darkness and greebles gives me that Prometheus kind of feeling

Haven’t though of Prometheus, but I can see it now.

Honeslty the design came from the shape of a pencil of all things :slight_smile: The side squares are modules that can be replaced. Like docking port, sensor module, weapon payload, other (which I haven’t designed yet) each ship can be configured for specific function but in the end they will look similar.

But the more I work on the ship, the less I like the 3 main cannons on top, and even the small turrets. (will post close up shots of them), and already working on replacing the main gun. more images to follow.

Small update on the cannons.

Didn’t like the main cannon. looks too wimpy for the ship.

closes to farthest

  1. Small defense turret. due to its smaller size it can quickly rotate and target smaller targets. point defense.
  • might still redesign this
  1. Large cannon - Original cannons… feels wrong for the ship.

  2. Replacement for the Large cannon (or make it smaller for the Small Defense Turret

  3. The potential main cannon. longer design (still working on it)…

Second pic shows 3 and 4 cannons in front and back of the bridge area.
Along with the “3” turret scaled down as small defense turret (bottom left of image)

Attachments



The cannons look powerfull.

How did you do the ship textures?

Textures… still working on that since I was horrible at them. Originally I downloaded a texture from another site, and honeslty my ship would look more impressive if I used that. But my goal with this ship is that it gives me training on various aspects. Modeling, Lighting and texturing.

Overall the hull texture is simple boxed shapes, then used bump node to give it depth. And just mixing around. Same goes with glossy.

I’ll post the panel render a bit closer, and some node setups I used to give you some ideas.

Still haven’t abandoned this. :slight_smile:

Working on lighting now. and need some feedback on lighting.

If there is a good tutorial on space scene lighting setup I’d also welcome it.

Attachments


Can you build in some self-illumination? Not red/green markers, but Enterprise type illumination or, what I think of when I see this, BSG.

Real space lighting would be pretty awful unless you were flying next to lots of reflective surfaces/planets, or other ships. There is a big spaceship thread you can reference. That guy has it nailed down.

the title is “big spaceship thread”? I’ll definitely have a look at that one.

It seems I already seen his video and based this render a bit on it. And agreed, when near a planet, it woudl be very well lit. I’m thinking more of deeper space for this shot.

Adjusted the “shadow” light to a more grayish light vs bluish as before. Seems to work better.

Finally lighted up the bridge area. Will still have to do some basic material tweaks for the bridge in cases of closeups.

Beyond that have to tweaks some materials as they don’t look that great :frowning:

Additionally just default material render.

Attachments



Here is a small flyby. After watching it in a loop for … x amount of times … i’m back to work on the materials…

But still here is a small render.

Can’t believe how “quickly” time goes by. over 2 years sine last post. Too many distractions :slight_smile:

All hull plating is procedural. Still need to tweak a bit. Mainly 3 brick and one noise pattern. Will post soon.

Quick question.

For my cannons, being linked instances. when I make proxy only one null works on all cannons. Though this was supposed to be fixed (or is it only armature only?)

The node setup for procedural hull plating. Just play around with scales to get different result. Again just need to tweak it a bit more


Current status of the fleet.

UEA fleet - dark grey ships

Taru “enemy” feel - Green (and one white but all will be greenish)

Modeling done only on three ships.

Taru Nito “destroyer”
UEA Pelican class “cruiser”
UEA Desitny - prototype in last months of the main war.

More progress.

This time around the “scout” of the fleet. The UEA Welbak.

Taking the Pelican for a spin against 3 Nito Destroyers.