Daily ship design in September, going with rune-powered ship concepts for this year, continuing the idea from last year but now to make them in full 3D. Here is the complete montage off all ships, might not be scaled accurately though.
OVERVIEW
I aimed to make one ship/design per day this time, and to help with that I’m using parts from my Spaceship pack to populate the details/greebles and also runes from my Alpha pack for the rune circles. The main criteria for my concept was plating with mostly clear surface ‘stuffed’ with greebles inside (imagine a taco, tortilla skin/wrap = plating with fillings = greebles 
), with varied placement of the rune circles.
Render style with white & orange palette combined with lineart (modifier) to accentuate the edges and details. Presented in orthographic oblique view from several angles, usually capturing front/rear, top/bottom and sides as necessary. I was thinking to also add some pattern/motif on the plating, but discarded the idea as the modeling (and placing details) already took quite the time.
BLOCKING OUT
The design usually started from moving and rotating the rune circles until I find a good looking position. At the same time, I might also adding the plating around it to help finding good composition. Some simple Boolean objects (usually cylinders and spheres) to cut some parts of the plating can also started being added here, depending on the shapes.
PANEL LINES
Once I found a satisfying runes and plating composition, the next step is adding panel lines on the plating with another Boolean objects (usually curved planes). As the numerous and overlapping cutter objects made the scene become cluttered, I separated the Boolean objects for cutting the main shapes with the one for the panel lines. Also due to the nature of the curved objects, a somewhat high level of subdivision was a necessity.
GREEBLES
As the runes and plating have finished being assembled, next phase was to add the greebles. To be honest, I was underestimating this step, thinking it was just adding chunks of details so should be fast enough to be completed. However, as it need a somewhat strategic placement, choosing and positioning fitting parts turned out to be time consuming on itself.
SIZE VARIETY
As I also already started late, I decided to not make it all only large ships but there would be smaller crafts too, which the detailing could be easier and more importantly faster. This small ships can be distinguished by the frequency or quantity of the panel lines which have less amount compared to the large ones.
LINEART
At this point the modeling can be considered completed, and the next step was to add lineart using modifier. This was done on the respective collection, and each ship already grouped into it own collection. Used just standard setup with only changing the thickness usually already good enough.
There might be some parts where the lineart did not rendered completely or correctly, but these are rarely happening so I just skipped over them should any exist (as long as it’s not too obvious), rather than hunting them down all.
LIGHTING
Lighting setup was really simple, with only one strong sun lamp and environment/world lighting. I didn’t use strong shadows however, as I feel it can be distracting to show the shapes.
At the center of the rune circles, I also added point lamp(s) and modify the radius and intensity as needed, depending on the size.
Large ships usually were rendered in 4K resolution and half of that for the smaller crafts. Once completed, all the renders are assembled in Inkscape. In case anybody asking, I only use vanilla Blender a.k.a no fancy add-ons for the modeling.
Note that some times the process was going rather smoothly from start until render, but some other times I needed to go back and forth as I noticed some jarring mistakes when viewing latter renders (usually from other angles), like some greebles poked out from other sides, some parts were not rendered as I forgot to add mirror mods, etc.
In retrospect, this was overall a fun process, and I was able to explore more variations on the rune circles concepts. Due to the nature of the challenge that leaned more on quantity (though you can also only make some or even just one), not all designs ended up satisfying enough, but quite happy with some. I still feel there are more composition that can be explored further, but that can be ideas for other or next times.
Individual details can be seen on the Work in Progress threads on Part 1 and Part 2.
You can see also designs from previous years :
[ 2021 ] - [ 2022 ] - [ 2023 ] - [ 2024 ] - [ 2025 ]
My links : ArtStation | Instagram | Cara
