so I’ve been messing on and off with blender for a little while now I’ve finally decided to try make something all the way to the finish. should make me do textures for a start… By the way all you guys that have posted the many tutorials are amazing!
so this is what I’ve modeled so far. C&C is kind of the point of the threads here, so ripe me to shreds. I’m a little lost for the body of the ship, so comments on that would be very helpful. still working out I few kinks on how it works, but the basic idea is a miniature black hole canon. :eyebrowlift: only that the “hole” is actually a cone from the bullet/partial fired to the energy ring held in place by the extended arms.
this is a side note: does anybody know of some good spaceship concept art I could look at for ideas/mechanics?
I tried rigging something before, couldn’t get it to constrain the motion to one direction. so this is currently made of different objects in separate layers. I suppose I should check the wiki for rigging, but first I need to finish modeling…
It’s not my first model I’ve made but it is close, I think it’s the first one I’ve made that has more then one object to it.
I got out of order and was trying to make the effects for the shot, this is what I’m coming up with but it is hard to get it lined up right so the edges of the cone don’t show up. is just seems like a very complicated way to do it. if there is a way to make a halo material refract light it would make this much simpler.
Hey man your model looks excellent. You may want to work on the glass material for the cockpit though, the transparency or the refraction looks a little weak.
As far as the halo thing goes, I was wondering what you meant by refract light? Cause since the halo material is usually more akin to a type of volumetric i’m not sure what this means, could you elaborate?
Hay thanks Acolyte, I actually don’t have any transparency on the cockpit as of yet. all the materials are just color changes to the default material to help me with seeing what’s what. Besides that I don’t know that I like the way the cockpit sites in the body right now.
as for the halo, what I meant is to have the material “bend” the light around the center like it’s sucking it up, sense that’s what it is actually doing in concept. I just figured that it would be easier to do it this way then modifying all the geometry by hand. I have also realized that I need this effect in a line, like a laser beam, and I don’t think that this method will work. Any ideas anybody?
I’m starting to think that if this turns out how I’m imagining it it will have to be an animation… but don’t get your hopes up as this is a first project. (I think I’m just talking to myself here)
Small update, I reworked the main ship body and think is looks a little better, I kind of based it on the Covenant from Halo. any suggestions?
the last picture is proof of how very limited my skill is at making special effects in blender. but thanks to DichotomyMatt I think I have something else to try! (is it ok to talk about someone else’s thread and post like this? he did give the blend to any who wanted it right?)
This link (but not really:D) is the thread I just mentioned. blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=129616
It’s amazing how much noob’s like me get the urge to just ask you guy’s to fix all my problems in the scene… wonder why that is…
what Image? sorry I don’t know which image you mean. but to answer the question, not really, it has been my goal this summer to start drawing, but with all the things going on I haven’t done a very good job staying on track. I have messed around with my brothers camera, so I’ve picked up a little composition… is that what you mean?
It’s normal and believe me this is not a noob thing. Anybody stuck on a problem would like somebody else to provide the solution. It’s what we come here for often enough.
Just remember to help out spreading the wisdom you learned.
I really like the new shot but I also liked your way of creating the distortion field of the weapon. I thought it was neat that it isn’t a beam weapon. Looked more like some sort of black hole generator thing that suddenly opens up at places. It could also be used as a way to create a hyperdrive vortex.
For convenience I reposted the link you gave until your postcount is high enough to allow links.
Hey, if you want to do a laser beam, I can tell you the way I used to do it.
Add a spotlight from where you want the beam to come from. The spotlight will be your laserbeam so angle it the way you want the beam to go.
Then set the spotlight’s Halo on, set the spot size to a reasonable size (pretty small) and set HaloInt to the desired level.
Adjust the light’s power to your liking. Make sure the colour is white.
Then Duplicate the light (SHIFT + D, Right Click) and change the spot size to a higher value, set HaloInt down and bring the power down, and set this light’s colour to the colour of your laser.Done! Hope that helps. i like your model, very very good!
Looks good, my best advice at this point is just to keep on doing what you’re doing. Never be afraid to ask questions, as I think you’ll find the Blender community is one of the friendliest places to do it. The last pic your posted, with the purple color, could be improved by adding some post-processing effects on the laser, or just a glow to the entire image. You could do this by using blender’s built in Node editing system to give your materials some more fx or you could use compositing nodes to add some fx to the scene after you render it.
Thanks Musk, I like the distortion field thing to, so I’m defiantly going to go back more in that direction, still want something to connect it though, we’ll see what I can come up with. I also think I’m going to go back to my original idea that the arms are the “engines” of the ship.
Cool tb1alexc, I think I’m going back a slightly different direction but that’s good to know. one question though, can you make it fade with distance? I’m not at a blender enabled computer right now so I can’t check. if so I think I might need that trick.
yeah Acolyte, I’ve been finding that this community is pretty friendly. Sense that last pic is more of a test I won’t be doing any more work on it. I would like to use the node editor but right now I still having a lot of trouble getting the basic materials to do anything decent for me. should I just jump head long into the nodes materials?
ok, so I played around a little with the hair that I got from DichotomyMatt’s post. I kinda like it but it’s missing something. anyways with the new direction I’m taking the weapon is it possible to make that material cast a dark light? in other words for it to make the things right around it darker? thanks again everyone for the comments and pointers.
Update on the modal, let me know what you think. I’m already reworking the main gun, never liked the corn look it had.
next I have to figure out what the back part of the ship does. sense it’s no longer the engine I’m a little lost as to how to make it look. anybody have any ideas as to what else a spaceship needs that I don’t have?
Edit: how do you make the changes in the node editor show up in a render?
What kind of node, material or composite? For materials all you have to do is activate the node material and assign it to your model. When ever you render with F3 the node material will be used.
For composite nodes you have to activate Do Composite button in the render panel. (Right under the Animation button) and what ever you do in the composite nodes will immediatly show up in the render window.
If you want areas to be darker you can use negative lamps. You have to activate the negative button for it. Use a normal point lamp and duplivert it along the ray. By activating sphere and tuning the distance of the lamps you can tune the dark area to your liking.
well, i definitely wouldn’t recommend just frantically jumping around trying to learn everything at once, but you seem to be doing well enough already with everything else that I would think you could handle learning nodes and materials at the same time. hehe. Don’t get me wrong there’s lots of things to know about how materials work, I mean i’m still learning and i’ve been using Blender since '04, but if you can learn the basics of material and composite nodes you will greatly enhance your ability to pull of certain fx that you couldn’t if you were just implementing the basic materials into Blender. Good luck man, it looks awesome.
I’m finally getting back to this, life is so unpredictable. anyways, I’ve been working on the background for a little while, then got reacquainted with what happens when you don’t visit Mr. save button often enough.:o still don’t know why it crashed though.
as you can see in the picture I’m trying to make a planet.I have been loosely following the Blenderart mag 9’s tut on planets. but the pictures in it are so compressed that I can’t tell what any of the settings are. As you can see the setup is really simple, in fact, right now I don’t think that bottom light is actually doing anything at all. does anybody know of another planet tut, or a good way to make the night day transition?
Very nice effect. You might want to give that glow that planets seem to give off and maybe add a little more stars but that is still a great scene already!
hay thanks dudebot13, for the glow, I tried that in the one before it crashed so I’ll go for it again. however I think I was using the emit option and that took a really long time to render (unfortunately I didn’t save that render as I was still improving the scene) is there a better way?
but thanks to DichotomyMatt I think I have something else to try! (is it ok to talk about someone else’s thread and post like this? he did give the blend to any who wanted it right?)
anyways with the new direction I’m taking the weapon is it possible to make that material cast a dark light? in other words for it to make the things right around it darker? thanks again everyone for the comments and pointers.