Degasi Ship Depiction (Update)
ech0gh0st
CA Join Date: 2016-05-11 Member: 216637Members
CA Join Date: 2016-05-11 Member: 216637Members
Heres the latest update to the cockpit of the Degasi Still gonna add more (and hopefully a door like in the aroura but i may possibly make my own) After this ill be working on then inside of the hangar. Sorry for the render quality on this one.
Comments
So what are you trying to depict?
It would be better if you would present some hand drawn concept art, maybe not a Pat Presley quality level but something worth of our time.
Anyway sorry to be so blunt but sometimes it helps to have a change in perspective.
I'm just mako what it may have looked like before it was scrapped
That isn't constructive criticism. Disliking his work and saying so is perfectly fine, but how can you expect him to improve from being put down like that? I took 3D modelling classes at college and if my lecturer had told us that we sucked and to stop embarrassing ourselves, we probably wouldn't have felt motivated enough to pass.
I'm not saying that Ech0gh0st's work is great right now but with enough practice, he might come back and surprise you.
There's a pretty thick line between constructive criticism and being an ass. You crossed that line.
Thanks Guys
I'm sorry to be blunt myself but... that was quite asshole-ish to post.
I can't draw so no concept art
I have another Psot on this
If you guys really want a sketch i can try XD
eh you really don't have to, I should correct myself now in stating that since I SUCK at drawing/sketches I don't bother with it and just start simple with the models I did and formed them directly from memory.
example:
I'm only an amateur and I haven't touched modeling in at least a few years these examples are one of the last models I made back then.
Sci-fi authors have been thinking about this for a while, and the optimal design is probably a teardrop shape, with the main drive in the narrow part, for various reasons. Which is boring. (I forget where I read about the teardrop shape thing, though.)
For a cargo ship that can be believed, you need standardized cargo containers, cargo space, fuel space, crew cockpit, rooms for a few other things, and thrusters. Wings on spaceships are generally optional. Best to assume "magic" hitech thrusters, so you don't have to waste 90% of your vessel on boring fuel tanks. Also, these ships are manufactured by humans, and we make things with rods and panels and a lot of 90-degree angles. I don't see the Aurora being a common design either.
Star Citizen has a lot of good takes on ships (and a lot of weird ones), NMS gets the cargo ships KINDA right, design-wise (for one-seat cargo tugs only). Heck, the Aurora was only capable of making a water landing, or the landing struts are REALLY well hidden and the bottom fins are superfluous?
You have done the renderer equivalent of doodling a stick figure on a napkin, and posted it. There's nothing there worth discussing.
Took me 12 hours to sketch this following ship (only the ship, the background is not mine), and 2 hours to model and 3 hours to texture. Just an example.
This ship was made for a game called Freelancer, so the poly count had to be low.
For those who care:
Words of advice, stay away from too organic forms and always see the ship as a summon of objects, so work object by object.
First a chair, then a console, then the ground and the cockpit, and in the end, place all the objects together and scale them accordingly.
Always work with quad mesh never triangle mesh, triangle mesh is a pain to texture.
Go to this guy site:
http://www.colacola.se
And study his models, you can download some of them, study them carefully and try not to fell discouraged by his great work...
Start with the mesh, visually isolate the objects that compose it and see how he made one object at a time.
Texturing is much more difficult than modelling btw.
You have diffuse maps, glow maps, bump maps, normal maps, light maps and shadow maps and the list goes on...
This ship was made 6 years ago, this was the third thing i ever done in 3D, its not bad considering how rookie i was.
It has only 3 maps,
Diffuse, glow and bump.
The exhausts fire is not 3d but a bump map on steroids.
PS: there is no post editing here, its just a pure render.
The ship needs to justify having all the little fiddly bits, though. Heat sinks? Shield emitters? Can probably explain it with enough handwavium, though.
1st is Concept (2D Sketching) Concept Art is probably the most difficult part because it helps all objects in a video game universe sound coherent, for instance, human ships all have similar angles and genuinely look like they belong to the same industry who has develop them, take for instance the "Mass Effect and Star Citizen" universes, the industries that made the ships and weapons follow similar concepts. You cant start modelling and hope that at some point all things will to fit together based on random luck. Like EvilSmoo posted above humans have ships with many angular forms, alien ships could look more organic, although i never favoured the "Babylon 5" alien organic ship concepts, but that is just my own opinion, for what its worth.
2nd Start modelling with a simple form similar to the object you want to create, subdivide the form as required, and use it to model object by object, imagine you are actually building it, and put object by object together, i always start with the hull, the cockpit and inner space is the last thing i work. This helps you star feeling the object as you keep working on it, like i said before stay away from too organic forms, objects like the one posted above in Wings3D are a big NO for beginners even tough you could start modelling, and even do something nice with it, you must think in your 3D as having the necessary specs s to be used... for example, in a videogame, even if it wont be used anywhere, this it will help you keep things in a good perspective, making your job look more professional. You cant even imagine how much work is rejected by Daz3d, Renderosity, turbosquid and so on... only because people don´t fit the minimal standards.
Texturing organic forms is a pain for inexperienced users and cutting a ship in smaller objects divided in groups will help you later when you get to the texturing step.
Even if your form is organic, you should divide its exterior in regions, there are good tutorials on this...
3rd Step is Retopology.
Retopology helps you get rid of all the useless polygons in your 3D work, in this step you will try to simplify your mesh and remove its imperfections, maybe even join some of the smaller objects together and organize them in groups (aka layers)
You will quickly find out that most of your work will have many garbage, to summarize this concept just picture this, all that is not on sight of the user, all "hidden geometry should be deleted or bind together to other objects.
For instance if you download the a ship file from Colacola Site called Ramjet "Ramjets from the Terran Trade Federation" you may open it in any 3D program, its one of my favourite ships based on a concept design by Grant Regan, you can find it here:
http://conceptships.blogspot.pt/2007/11/ramjet-fighter-concept-ship.html
You may study its mesh and see a lot of garbage mesh hidden from sight that could have been deleted to save space, if this ship was to be used in a videogame it had to be purged with a good retopology work, even its one of the most amazing ships i ever seen in 3D it has its flaws.
4th Texturing, If you texture an object make sure you use simple forms to make your life easier, too complex shapes will force you to use organic mapping techniques that are not too easy to master with beginner skills, so keep the mesh simple and keep it tidy and your texturing step will be a lot easier.
Procedural or customized, Procedural textures is usually a patterned textured used to cover larger areas, its not much applicable in ships but you can use it to map some areas with fabrics and metals like seats, beds and so on, although to use them you will have to layer all your objects separately by material.
Most of the space station textures follow a pattern but some have been customized. The space Station render above is a huge 4k x 4k texture.
Customized textures are the best in my opinion because you will be able to add a lot of detail like age marks and so on. If you went to colacola site take a look at the Ramjet texturing tutorial and you will see what i mean by that.
Understanding the Maps and its use. There are many maps that can be used to make your renders look awesome, but you have to understand how to use them and how much weight/impact they will have in your textures/renders.
Diffuse map, a simple JPG that serves as the foundation of your texture.
Bump maps will help you add that extra detail to your object like hull soldering points,rivets, console buttons and so on. It will help you emboss some of the details that dont really need to be represented in 3D, allowing you to keep your mesh low poly count, Because many game engines have geometry limitations and even with LOD some geometry may be too heavy on some user machines, and when you make a game your target all users, even those with not so great CPU´s and GPU´s.
Specular maps, will give that extra metal glare.
Glow maps will make those lights like in Tron suits.
Go here if you would like to know more:
http://blog.digitaltutors.com/bump-normal-and-displacement-maps/
5th Step is Render
One unique texture or many smaller ones, its debatable, i have used both techniques in the past and they greatly depend on your target renderer or game engine.
Avoid film grain like in the first post, and always try to capture a good angle, if sometimes your object can look like crap, but if you are able to give it the right rendering angle and balance the textures together you will be able to make it look good.
If you haven't bothered texture your work use a render that can support a good clay effect. I like Maxwell but Blender also has a few nice plugins that can give the same effect, and its free.
Lighting plays a major role here, and this is why i really like Maxwell, you can even import light specs from some lamp manufacturers into it.
Light is a science on its own, very hard to master, one of the first tricks i learned to make was to place 2 low light sources directly under a 3D human character to give it a simple shade effect making the skin shine under a blue and red lamp,its a simple yet great effect.
Then you have the background, i found myself purchasing a canon camera and a fisheye lens and a Manfrotto tripod with a nodal point support just to build my own 360 panoramas that i could use for my customized renders, but today they are available for free in many user sites, and you can even build them easily if you own a tablet or ipad.
(im skipping the animation, rigging and post editing processes, and HDR lighting because they are for more advanced users)
From my perspective there is no excuse for someone to say today i dont know how to do this with at least basic posting quality, because you have Youtube, you have Google, there are not many more secret skills out there, internet abolished most of them, you can use all this to your advantage, and see what others are doing before you post anything that may not have the necessary quality to be worth discussing. 3D modelling will summon many skills, just try to master one at a time. I watched many tutorials on 3D modelling even before i was convinced i could do something. You will have to learn the basic operations in 3D modelling, divide your skills in beginner, intermediate and advanced user and watch/read the corresponding tutorials as your skills evolve.
In the wise words of master Yoda:
"Do it or do it not, don´t try."