These are the first three models for this animation.
The merchant ship is the target of the dragon carriers. This ship is 1 km long
The Dragon carrier holds a number of the smaller ships. it is about 250 m long. I plan to have a number of Dragon carriers attack the Merchant ship.
This is the scout ship. there is one scout per dragon carrier.
Two more ships to follow:
This is the attack fighter, it has two missile tubes on its underside.
There would be a number of them in the carrier.
This is the bomber. The design is the same as the attack fighter except for the weapons.
Any focused comments would be greatly appreciated.
The basic shapes look good. You need some hull detail (you could get away with texturing).
Have you got any thoughts on what kind of battle you are going to stage? Is there any particular movie or show you are basing it on, or are you after something more ‘realistic’?
Scout ship leave hanger, finds target. Pack engages. The battle will be pretty straight forward. Pack thinks they have an easy prey. Merchant ship surprise. Pack starts getting upper hand. Big surprise happens. someone is destroyed. the end.
I added some more details. Smoothed out some spots. What do you think?
Not to sound too noobish, but for modeling the hanger bays for my animation, is it better to create a new scene with those interior walls or is it better to have the details in one model?
I’m having to deal with that question in my own project. What I decided is that if the camera is only ever going to be in the hanger, then do it is a separate scene. It’s easier to work with and you don’t have the extra unseen geometry getting in your way. If you plan to have your camera outside your ship looking in, then you will have to model it as part of the ship.
Ensure the light sources have raytraced shadows enabled.
shadows are enabled in the material. why is it passing through the ship mesh though?
You need to ensure the actual lamps are set to cast shadow. So look the the lamp properties and make sure raytraced shadows is enabled.
Nah, don’t use any lamps. Just use a material with an emit.
All the glows in this image were done with 2.5’s indirect lighting. No lamps at all. It is not perfect, as you can see, but it does work for engine glows and windows/ports and such.
I am using a emitting material but it is cutting through the mesh. is there a way to minimize that? or it is a product of still being in the beta phase of development with 2.5x?
Wait so you are using indirect lighting already? or the “glow” is a red lamp? if it is a lamp then just decrease the distance value. If indirect lighting or lamp make sure there no holes. As for indirect lighting, just use the compositor to blur the material that is emitting the light a bit that way it wont look so “fake”.
I am using a emitting material for this. I plan to have an particle system to create exhaust but I want a glow to make the animation look better. I have not used compositor yet, so would that work for my animation?
ok, I got the glow to work using nodes. My problem is the light from emit going through the mesh. I seperated the emitting elements from the ship. I also thickeded those area so that the light should hit the next face, but it is going through the thickened face and through the engine casings as you can see from the pic. What else can I do to stop the light from emitting through these extra layers?
If you are using the emit value in the compositor, then the light should not be going through any mesh. I will put together a quick model you can load for reference.
The attached .blend demonstrates the effect you are trying to get. You should be able to have a look at everything and see how it is done. This is only something I put together in 5 mins, so plenty of tweaking can be done to get to 100%.
The .blend file
EngineLights.blend (631 KB)
Thanks ronnke for the help. It is closer to what I was looking for. I think I had some translucency issues with the model. But thanks again for the help.
Looking good!
