I’ve learned to use Blender and I am now trying my first REAL project. I am attempting to create the Defiant from Star Trek. I am running into massive headaches with the fore of the ship. I’ve tried to model it appropriately out of a UV sphere using schematics I found via Google. The discrepancies between the various views within said schematics are killing me. Tips? Ideas? Anything?
Maybe you could give us a link to the blueprints to understand more?
Views never align when it comes to most orthographic drawings from the web any way. Even when those drawings actuary originate from engineering drawing, error creeps in. Any scanning device or cameras that was used to copy is not accurate! Accurate distortion free optics alone will cost you thousands of dollars! Who wants to spend that much to get the “picture” on the web?
So drawing is not accurate. Photograph is not accurate. I usually get as many image and drawings as possible. And determine what makes most sense based on all the information.
You will have to be more specific about what you mean by “discrepancies”. Do you mean that the scaling or sizing of the different images you are using as background images in Blender is different or do you mean that the objects that are there are completely different from one diagram to the next?
If the former then you can use scaling of the background images as well as positioning of those images to align the background reference images as closely as possible with each other. There are tutorials on how to do this. If you mean the latter, then you are going to have to use one of our greatest assets which is “artistic license” and do your own interpretation combining what you like and eliminating what you don’t between all the different imagery.
Apologies for the late reply, the discrepancies I’ve been finding are everything from scale to certain minor details. I’ve decided to take the reference by view route and take a swing at it. Now the issue I’m having is sharp faces. The Defiant itself has rounded sides on the front/sides of the fore, I’ve got the basic shaping correct but my faces are not.
http://www.starshipmodeler.com/trek/ds9tech/wm_Defiant_NacelleFwd.jpg <
How would I go about making my sides so rounded and exact? Currently the overall shape is correct but my model seems quite sharp.
Range of options: You may be able to get away with just setting shading to smooth. If not add an edge loop; give it a more subdivision. Or just add Subdivision Surface modifier.
This option is more complex but if you want to keep the face count low, you can create a Normal map to make it appear round.