With my Saturn 5 now up on Blendswap, I’m coming back to do the Lunar Module and Apollo Capsule.
For the sake of completeness I’m starting with the Lunar Module. I already did a low-poly ‘boiler-plate’ Capsule for the Saturn 5 so the LEM is the only component of the whole stack that I haven’t touched.
Here’s my first ‘work in progress’ image.
So far the geometry around the main hatch and windows (Black) has been the greatest challenge. fortunately the fwd cabin was symmetrical, so once I finally get it right I can simply duplicate the mesh and mirror it.
Despite its odd shape, the midsection of the LEM (Red) was/is comprised of simple N-gons and as a result came together rather quickly and easily once I found a decent reference image.
Blocking out the general details for the ascent stage was surprisingly difficult. Sources used for the dimensions of various components vary by as much as 2 ft in some cases. In the end I ended up taking the known measurements of certain components, namely the windows and front hatch and extrapolating from there.
The site is a guide for building an ultra-detailed 1/24 scale LEM from scratch. It has become my primary source now and as such I’ve gone back and re-done much of the ascent stage, adjusting proportions and cleaning up the topology.
Iv’e decided that the geometry is as close as I’m going to get to the real thing without driving myself mad. As such I’m declaring it done and moving on to textures.
