Hey all,
This is an attempt I’ve been making to create a space cruiser for a little project I’ve had going for a while. Just a general sketch right now to get the overall shape of the ship. Critics or ideas are welcome!
Good form :)… It would be a shame to break it’s sleek design with anything too bulky.
How about some thin, fibrous, complex heat emitter projections? Kinda like 3d insect wings but not so big on your model as wings would be…
That might work! The wings do seem a little thick for the ship’s look. My reasoning behind that was to break up the ship’s sleek design a little. 
I was planning on adding some communication antennas and other thin, fibrous stuff around the middle section. Also perhaps a circular bridge platform. Not sure if I should set it on the bow or up on the stern super structure. I was planning on some pretty heavy, block stuff around the middle, too. But it probably wouldn’t work very well, you’re right.
Nice ship, keep on the good work 
Thanks Excelio. 
Well, I still want wings on the ship. It kind of looks empty without them, so here’s an idea for the wings that look a little like insect wings. A little thinner and delicate-looking. Seems to fit with the rest of the ship a little more.
This is some pretty good design. The shape is a nice refreshment compared to the boxy, big, and bulky designs that are more common. I hope that the textures an materials will be shiny to emphasise the slim look of this spaceship. Keep it up!
Thanks, Myn.pheos.
Was wondering if I should risk breaking up the smooth surfaces of the hull with inset windows. I don’t see why not, though, considering all the fine people who are sitting inside it would probably like to look out. 
How I’m ever going to model windows on this thing I have no idea. I’m n00bish.
How big is the ship?
The details are needed, without them it will look very empty. But you have to design the windows themself and their placement well, not to ruin the nice shape.
Some wireframes would be good, but you will be basically add edgeloops for rows of windows. I’m thinking, if this ship will stay only is space, the deck doesn’t need to be parallel or even straight. I know, artificial gravity will be in the future, but this design asks for some slightly different layout. This might help you when adding edgeloops for windows and other fine or bigger details (like some vents (?), inspection panels, some pipes and of course weapons, every spaceship needs some…). The fuselage (or better the hull) has very small volume compared to other, so there might be some sleeky system on the outside.
Hmmm, the deck crossing gives me an idea for my own spaceship, it looks like every artist needs to make at least one, as well as one dragon for Christmas.
The ship isn’t humongous (i.e. Star Destroyer size). Probably something around four hundred meters. Just a modest star cruiser with a few guns on it to defend itself. The race who built it prides itself on their peaceful character, so they really can’t justify having a ship much more heavily armed than this.
Here are some wire frame renders. I’ll have to look up how to use edge loops, because that’s a bit out of my range right now. It’s a shame, I’ve been using Blender for 6 years now and I still don’t know most of it. :rolleyes:
Depending of stile of windows, and its size, this could be done also by bump/normal texture. But yes, spaceships are usually modelled…
It won’t probably be easy to cut straight windows and keep the subsurfed mesh nicely smooth, but it can be done. It depend on what windows you want there to be.
Well, round windows probably wouldn’t look very good, at least in my opinion. I was imagining rows of rectangular windows scattered about the hull. Kind of like:
A little bump and an update.
Well, edge loops didn’t seem to do the trick. Neither did cutting the mesh with the knife tool because of the fact that there aren’t that many faces on the hull. So in desperation I turned to boolean operations. I haven’t had much success with Blender’s boolean system in the past (usually makes a pretty bad mess of everything). But the results were a little surprising.
Just a really rough draft right now. I dunno, it looks okay I guess. :rolleyes:
Very nice, it sort of looks like some kind of a mid-evil weapon. Great job.
Those windows look huge, like they were 3 meters high at least. And do they need to be “intruded”? It somehow breaks the cleanness of the model. Maybe a better approach would be to correct the base mesh to have some loops parallel to decks, then model other details that might be there, apply subsurf (1 - 2 levels) and then make the windows only gently pressed inwards?
For such a smooth model the planning is essential.
Hundred: Thanks for the comment.
Myn.pheos: Thanks for the help! I must say I’m at something of a loss as to what details to really add to this thing. The lines are so smooth and flowing that anything on the hull that isn’t itself smooth and flowing really distracts from the lines of it. I added a touch to the stern that I kind of like:
Here are some quick renders for the windows so far. Doesn’t look very promising, but, again, it seems I’ve taken off a bite too big for me to chew.
The latter are much better, small windows emphasise the scale of hull, now it looks much larger. Unless you are going to render it in some big resolution (like 8000 px, which would mean resolution of 5 cm in best case, viewed from side) don’t bother too much with tiny details around the windows. A detailed texture might save it.
I generally hate “smoothshaped” ships. .but this looks promising. Keep working on it, looking nice.
Thanks a bunch for the help, all. I should have started posting my work for some comments and criticism a long time ago!
Eradicor: I personally like smooth ships, but they pose all sorts of challenges. Perhaps I should have stuck to creating boxy ships for a while. :o
I personally like smooth ships, but they pose all sorts of challenges. Perhaps I should have stuck to creating boxy ships for a while. :o
I almost can guess what problems there are… but i would go about making smoothy ship like this ->
Making the basic outline (smooth shapes) with SS… then apply it… and continue with common box modelling to add details. Meaning no point trying to do details with smoothstuff. Though thats propably the only way to do it really… So its no tip really. 
