Hi there,
I’m in the process of creating a space ship for an animation to be produced sometime in the future (maybe). I’d appreciate any advice you might have on my current ship design/texturing/lighting/compositing. I’ve posted 3 shots, one of the side, top, and back.
The current texture is a cloud texture set to cell noise.
Thanks for any advice.
The lighting and compositing looks good! I think the ship needs some wear to make it look realistic, though. Like dents, smudges on the finish, minor cracks, etc.
Thanks, I am experimenting with some damage texturing.
What if it’s a new ship? 
I’m curious as to what the front view of the ship is. If that middle picture is the front shouldn’t there be some glow coming off the front in the other two shots? What is the ship’s purpose? This would influence both it’s design and what kinds of wear patters would develop. The lighting on your ship right now looks like it is in a star system, probably no farther away than Earth.
very nice, maybe try making the compositing glow a bit more subtle though. right now the large glow makes the ship seem very small ( because if it where large the light wouldn’t go that far )
You might also try zooming in your camera and lowering your focal length. This will make the ship appear bigger in your frame.
Here’s a good article on focal length. This isn’t for b3d, but for real lenses, though Blender tries to emulate real lenses. The principles are similar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion_(photography)
You need some more detail. And some reference for the size of the ship. Is it a one man ship or a big battle cruiser. Try adding windows. hatches, decals and stuff like that.
Thanks for all the comments, I appreciate it.
The texturing i still haven’t worked on but the current one is a good place holder. As for the glow I’ve turned it down some. I do like to use wide focal lengths generally but it dosen’t grab all the detail for stills in this ship’s case, but i’ve turned it down to 10mm and got a render of the front side for ya. Pardon any artifacts, I’ve been rendering with simplify turned on to minimize render time.
Here’s another render,
Thanks holmen.
I’ve never really experimented with decals. I’ll look into it. I’d like the ship to be maybe a 5 man vessel because I haven’t really figured out how to give it massive amounts of detail (kinda like the Battlestar Galactica or Pegasus. Now those are beautiful ships). If I could learn techniques for that, I’d like to experiment with massive ships.
Texturing alone, won’t do it, you need some nernies. Misc. geometry like pipes and vents and such. Then you will get shadows which can help sell the size of the ship.
See shipyard for details.
I really like how the shipyard works. Since I like being original though, I may just steal the idea rather than use the pre-made parts 
. My problem has been giving those types of ship details without sacrificing face normal quality (smoothness around parts like engines). My current ship is subserfed which i see could be a problem for render time (already is) if i tried that with detail work. Shipyard has got my gears turning though, thanks for posting that link.
Hi,
looking good, but I agree with the above comments that you need details.
Remember that you do not need to make your ship a single mesh, so it’s possible to make all the detailed parts as a separate mesh, which is not subsurfed. Just parent one mesh to the other, and they will move together. For example, make a rectangular indentation in the main mesh, then drop another flat plate into the bottom of the well you have created, and mount/extrude pipes, hatches, etc onto that plate. Because it is essentially a flate plate, it does not need to be subsurfed.
HTH.
Matt
Ok so i had a lot of time last night, so i took everyone’s awesome advice and now i present you with a much better ship. It’s pretty radically different but a much much better design imo. It has room for more detail, but I’m happy with the current model.
I dig it. I think it looks awesome. I really like the ring shape around the sides. It’s very unusual, but very appealing.
Just right off the bat, you could use some windows, doors, antennae, things of the like. Think about what the ship is used for. Is it a cargo ship? Add some cargo bays. Is it a fighter? Guns. Is it a carrier? Fighter bays.
Also, I think you should spruce up the nose a bit. It’s easy to tell the back end by that incredible set of thrusters you have there. By comparison, the front end is a series of repeating forms, extruded and scaled over and over. I’d say some kind of prominent control room would be an order. Something that protrudes beyond the front of the ship.
Nice job! Sorry if I’ve come on like gang-busters. You are in the focused critique after all! You’re definitely onto something here, I can’t wait to see what it is.
Thanks ampace, you got me thinking. I wasn’t very satisfied with the front end either so I’m going to redesign it. So far I’ve add a few defensive turrets and landing bays as well as changed up a few minor details. I’m still working on antenna etc, and I’m designing the big guns too. Here’s some shots.
Here’s an update on progress. The front is taking shape. More detailing is in the works, guns included.
Still looking good! I like the updates to the nose, especially from the dorsal view. I still would like to see some purpose added in there though. When I look at it, I’m not sure what it’s for. Your details on the body are very nice. I especially like the turrets.
Thanks Ampace, you’re a huge help. I’ve taken a pause on the previous ship so as to not get too bored. The ship I’ve designed here uses the same engines. This is a smaller ship but much easier to detail. See what you think. I may be on my way to building an armada :eyebrowlift:.
Nayshun,
Your work looks great! Personally I find the your spaceships to be pretty unique as far as body style…kudos for that! Being a fairly experienced texture painter let me give you some tips that could help you a lot. The cloud texture you are using is a brilliant idea for a quick and easy ‘panel’ style body texture, what I suggest you do is unwrap those meshes (if you haven’t already) and bake that cloud tex to an image, then open gimp, ps or whatever you use and do a little improvising on the tiles, water marks, dirt, paint (especially), decals, etc… I wouldn’t suggest rust though because there isn’t enough oxygen in space to do that ;)…
