I’m trying to model a big room and all the stuff inside it. It’d end up looking like one of the Star Trek Bridges in the end. What’s the best way to get started?
First make a base shape of the whole room, the most outer walls, the floor etc. Then proceed with adding furniture, command boards, handles, doors, displays etc.
Most probably the chairs on the deck will be identical to each other except the captain’s chair, so you only need to model one generic chair and copy it to various locations around the room. It’s the same with other identical things.
It might help to first draw a concept of how you want the room to look like, the whole layout of things, exits, crew stations, first aid stations and so on.
And remember model in layers, make the base shape of the room one layer, then model chairs in the second, command pannels in the third, various details in fourth etc. This way you’ll have better control over the whole scene.
You did ask quite a general question, some things also depend on artist’s experience and intuition, but with practice you should be able to get the feel of things and find better and more efficient ways of modelling. Anyway, I hope this helps and have fun 