I dont know how many tings were broken by exporting or just not finished by NASA
I want to post final version of my struggles here so anyone can pick up where i left. Doesnt seem this model is under any licecne restrictions, also i do not take claim to it.
I just want to provide usable version of ISS for educational use.
Im fixing:
-Missing faces
-Z Fights
-Unnecesary geometry
-Missing textures
-Dubled geometry
-Lack of soft shading
-Missing UV
-Displaced objects
-Floating objects
-Origns of objects should be fixed in one place for easy assembly
This model was made using lighwave. As they state on their GITHUB “translating these files into other software is the sole function of the end user. Textures may require remapping and/or resizing.”
NASA kinda given up on their 3D model base few years ago so not all models have .blend file included.
I need this model to render in old DirectX engine (like 7 or so) so Im doing it in Internal.
Hard to find details on their 3D models but their photos are public domain so 3D models probably also.
Thanks.
No. Im not hired by NASA im just doing public service or so. Model will be posted here in First post. I hope people that will search for free ISS in google will eventually find it.
I finished what I could on this a while ago, but for some reason have lost the file after I saved it in two locations. I do have a render left though…
However to fix this model wasn’t too much of a pain. As I remember there was a lot of limited dissolve use and flipping normals, some places I left the way they were, but I didn’t do much remodeling. Smoothing and the use of autosmooth worked well.
I just can’t believe I lost this file. I had Cycles, RenderMan and LuxCore versions… all gone.
@ajm nice one! Shame you lost it. Seem like we have different pain treshold Or somehow my was more broken in import (i did not do exporting from lightwave so who knows) Or simply i just suck
@djwaterman pretty nice find i can use it as reference but i see few places already where this guy could use NASA model as reference (! 1,500k verts!).
But again there is no perfect 3d model of real object so i have to let my perfectionism go and draw line somewhere
I didn’t do anything that special. Ran a few tools quickly, and may have cleaned up a bit, I wasn’t planning on rigging anything or using a hi-res representation of the model, so most of the detail is provided by the textures they included. The longest part of the process was the UV mapping, since the model isn’t all that great. The other thing is, I don’t know why it ended up triangulated in the first place, there was no need.
Now a nightmare of a mesh was the Hubble telescope. There are many pieces missing from that one, fortunately they are internal parts and not seen, but there was a lot of rework to do there. I did the rework in LightWave that time, but did do a Blender translation.
Triangulation part is about the exported formats being used. older formats like .3ds .obj .lwo .stl .and many others didn’t support quads in older iteration, many still don’t. there isnt’ much NASA can do about it (unless they use Blender to make a mesh and release in blender - or other newer format from what whatever solution they use …)
I find detriangulation or decimation doesn’t always work that great. For those CAD exported kludge meshes, I find they’re workable as a snapping and/or shrinkwrap template, which makes building a more efficient (and subdiv-ready) quad-based mesh (albeit manually) possible. The time that goes in may make losing a model done that way a somewhat bigger ordeal.
Download link works for me. Link i posted here redirects you to github where you can download rar file. After that you extract rar file and you’ll have blend file with textures
That is my hope one of these days…
Or somehow my was more broken in import (i did not do exporting from lightwave so who knows) Or simply i just suck 
