I’m in NO WAY trying to get in competition with PTKS for the coolest Star Trek ship in Blender :evilgrin: I’d loose for sure anyway. Nah I was just so amazed by his work it made me want to try making one myself, and since my dad recently got ST:Voyager Season 4 on DVD, I felt like making a ship resembling Voyager, because well I think it looks really cool. At first I thought the easiest way to model it would be to follow blueprints and maybe tweak it later to my own liking, but surprisingly I tried later without any reference images, and I got to a better result hella faster. So after 10 min of work :
Hey nice start Borgleader, not too much to comment on at the moment, but it looks like you have the general shape down. Good luck with the project! Acer.
I’m glad that my work inspired at least someone to try his own design. I’ll be watching your progress.
I’m actually doing the same. I think that Voyager is a well designed ship and that’s why I use quite some design elements of her on my own ship.
If you’re looking for some good reference material I recommend to have a look at the following site: http://www.starfleetmodeler.com/Starships/Intrepid%20Class/
As Acer said, there’s not a lot to comment on right now. I just suggest to improve your basic shape. Getting your hull shape right is on of the most important steps and you should not hurry in this phase.
-Added the warp nacelles (basic shape)
-Fixed the back end (didnt screenshot cuz it was too minor)
-Fixed the front (where the deflector dish is)
-Added some sort of flat band on the forward part of the ship, it looked like a mushroom cap before.
I know the back looks a bit weird still but I dont know how to fix it yet. Still not much detail but I figured I’d post anyway.
@PTKS: Thanks for that link it’ll be useful for sure
EDIT: New update :
-Worked on the Nacelles, and “tried” to get a hull material with horrible result.
turn AO on and change that annoying blue background. Also try to incorporate a better lighting setup. And to make it easier for all of us to see where your going and what details you’ve added, please have clay renders.
Other than that. The tail has some issues whether it be the lighting or modeling i cant verify.
I’ll be watching.
ANyway heres a render with AO 10 & 2 sun lights in 2 opposite corners. And yes the texture is crap, but it would be useless to make a perfect texture at this point. I thought of turning on the stars feature but meh not for now.
I suggest that you made the engineering hull a bit rounder and the nacelles pylons a bit thinner. I’ve attached a picture to show you what I mean.
Can we see a picture of the top side of the primary hull. It looks like that part could use a more detailled shape
turn spec down to zero.
And it’s a bit too bright too see shadows. Possibly use area lights instead?
I hope your lighting skills are better because you’ll need them if you want to pull this off.
Ok so…
-Fixed hull texture (or partially at least)
-Added nacelle colors (temporary)
-Fixed the hull shape at the front
-Fiddled with the nacelle shape
-Fixed the lighting (or improved it somewhat)
yesss. Thanks.
Well i like the lights, but i feel like i saw something similar to that on PTKS’s thread.
Hope he doesn’t mind you using the little idea.
I’m liking it. Keep it up.
Yes well both ships are based on the same reference, the USS Voyager, but the back end of his is quite different, it splits up into two parts. I’m planning to keep it to one. Also, his ship has a ridge in the middle, mine wont. Oh and his nacelles have straighter edges.
I don’t have exclusive rights on building star trek ships yet, so I don’t really mind if he’s doing the same thing here. Plus, as Borgelader already pointed out, there are some differences between the two models
@Borgleader: I see you’ve taken my advice concerning the shape of the engineering hull. It looks much better now.
Now…the nacelles: I would make the blue part a bit smaller and also enlarge the gap between the red and blue part. Don’t you think that your nacelle pylons are a bit massive (not the thickness but the length)?
@trak wrecka: To be correct both ideas belong to paramount and if they wanted they can actually take both ships and use em as they see fit since all of Star Trek is copyrighted anyway and both are doing a derivate work. GO over to scifi-meshes and search their forum on the topic there is quite a lot of information about this.
I also have to add the obligatory note IANAL and you shouldn’t listen to some dope who posted something on the internet etc etc blah blah blah
Well I fixed the nacelle separation problem but I cant seem to add any more detail without it looking completely ugly I’ve tried forward hull detail, mid-section detail, nacelle fin detail, and shuttle bays nothing worked. I prob just created the worst possible geometry for detail adding.
You got a lot of tris in there resulting in poles in the mesh. This will screw you eventually when using subsurfing. So go clean up the mesh. Some of the tris can simply be joined together (Select both tri faces and press Ctrl-j) Other won’t be so easy. Go to the tutorial section and look at the edgeloop thread that will explain quite a bit.
About modelling details. If you need to cut structure into your mesh you might need to think about where to add the stuff. Then add edge loops to get the vertices you need and use extrude (E) to cut the shapes out. Because you are using subsurfing you need to be carfull not to place edgeloops too close together since this will created edges. For places where you need to have edges add a edgeloop (Ctrl-r) close to the loop where you need the edge.
You might consider starting over the basic shape and planing the bigger details, those that are part of the main hull like hangar bays etc… into the model from the start. Lifepods and greebles can simply be added as separate meshes.
Good luck and don’t stop here. Experience is everything!
Thanks for the advice, and yeah I thought of adding all of the smaller details on a separate layer. But its not like the pod bay can be done that way Anyway I’ll look into that.
I’ve tried forward hull detail, mid-section detail, nacelle fin detail, and shuttle bays nothing worked. I prob just created the worst possible geometry for detail adding.
