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"Rhino" is my favourite 3D modelling
program.
Note: a lot of my renders are done on "Maxwell" while
modelling,
then in "Vue Infinite" when finally importing & texturing
for art renders.
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2010 WORK
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DRAGONFLY "SPELLAMMER" SHIP
Building one of the smaller ships from te fantasy space
setting for D&D :)
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All done!
Wings given a translucent material to test
difference #58. I think non-translucent, #57 is better, but
we'll see when I do art renders :)
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#58
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#57
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#56
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Altered the panels on railing, and material
on the "Knees" and"thighs" of the legs
between #54 and #55.
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#55
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#54
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#51 to #53
messing around trying to find what material, including dirtied
textures and/or procedural dirt shader looked best for the
hull. Also added intricate bump for the two large golden
"border" planks around hull.
For realism ALWAYS make textures dirty/worn etc on important
objects! hence my "dirt
map material" for Vue.
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#53
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#52
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#51
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#50
Adding name plate texture
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#49
made 16 bit bump map for wings, as 8 bit produces visible
pixellation
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#48
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#47
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#46
Working on railing textures
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#45
Wear/scratches added to enclosure of the stairs
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#43
Note pixellation showing on wings bump, due to the limits
of using 8 bit texture! Modellers beware
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#42
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#41
Adding scratch/wear to cargo hatches
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#40
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#39
Wing texture made
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#38
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#37
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#36
UVMapped and Imported into Vue
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#35
Line Art version made with "Penguin" renderer, demo
version
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I like rendering in "glass" as it's
a great way to show off the inside of the ships and to get
a good "feel" of how it all fits together.
Now that modelling is basically complete,
I make a "beauty" image (#34)
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#34
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#33
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#32
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I ended up leaving off the intricate hinges
I built on the cargo hatches on final model, again, because
of way too many polygons, and at a later stage rebuilt them
using much simpler shapes with chamfers. Oh well, least they
look beautiful here! ;)
Note the detail work on the straps that cross
the cargo hatches. Again, these proved to have vastly too
many polygons when exported, so yet again, I had to go back
and rebuild them, GAH!! I rebuilt them using simpler shapes
with chamfers, and hexagonal bolts. But I added rings where
ropes or padlocks would secure the hatches.
So, the final ship has less detail than these
shots show, such is life!
Since I made the door locks usign chamfers,
they were ok to export.
Note: After doing a lot of booleans etc on
an object, using the MERGE ALL FACES command after each bollean
or such, can help clean the many surfaces up. this really
can help when doing complex objects and tends to help prevent
failing booleans. I, of course, being an idiot, tend to forget
to do that... ;)
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#31
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#30
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#29
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Please note the amount of "filleting" work. This
gives roudned, or flat ("chamfered") edges to
objects depending on which type you chose to apply. This
is VITAL for realism! real objects cannot ever the have
infinitely thin, perfect edges that computers create, there's
always some rounding.
When modelling AND rendering scenes in a specific package,
say, everything done in Lightwave or Maya, you can use subdivision
and other such ways to get more rounded edges, but when
you model for exporting to obj etc to packages that cannot
added filleting, you MUST build in the fillets. This greatly
increases the polygon count, but for close up realism, is
essential.
Note in #27 you can see how I modelled planks INTO the
cargo hatch itself for realism. However as I later found
out, using "filleting" produced way too many damned
polygons when I went to export it! Grr! So I later went
back and re-built and only used "chamfer" which
produces a flatter edge, liek using a chisel to slice off
a thin strip, rather than sand it down round like a "fillet"
comamnd does, and thus chamfers make less polygons as they
are flatter. Chamfers still produce visible highlights and
are much more realsitic than a an edge so perfect ti literally
ha snot hickness and thus no highlights, it's the lack of
highlights that kills the illusion of realism.
VITAL NOTE FOR RHINO USERS:
Always ALWAYS keep every damn original object and curve
you make, if even only on a previous saved file or such.
If you screw up, or want to change things, you can thus
go back to the original to start again. This is extremely
important when doing booleans!
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#28
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#27
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#26
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#25
Since my main app, Vue Infinite,cannot assign textures on
a "Per polygon basis" only on seperate objects ,
I have to model everything in pieces.
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#24
Note I make panels in individual pieces, so I can texture,
remove, alter each one in a scene.
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#23
A "Beauty" shot to check how it all looks
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Note it has taken me several variations by
trial and error, to get the joint between wing and hull to
follow the hull AND wing curve neatly.
I use a surface, rotate to angle I think is good in 3D, to
split the lumpy projection on hull surface to leave a neat
oval shape, this Ithen "blend" surface to the "metal
collar" I built for the wing to slot into.
The "chin" piece is an elbaorate
boolean. I start with the original hull surface, increase
size and especially length, boolean it in half with a cube.
Then a smaller duplicated version of the ovoid is booleaned
out from the chin to leave it as a sort of "half egg
shell". It now has thickness, a "real" object.
I then use curves projected into a surface to boolean out
the intricate "fin-lobe" shape. Then use small curves
projected into surfaces to boolean out the small carvings.
Then I used "cage edit" to pull the "fin-lobe"
out and away in a small curve
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#22
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#21
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#20
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#19
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#18
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#17
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#16
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#15
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#14
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The wings are built using "sweep to rails"
then a metal collar buil from the end curve of the wing, using
"rail revolve" which is damn tricky to do in a 3d
non-planar shape.
Adding decorations on side of hull/ Easy way
to make them follow the hull's shape is to take a long extruded
solid of the shape of the "H" curve I made, duplicate
original hull surface and move it out slightly, then bollean
that off the "h" object, to leave the "h"
just standing proud a set amount, then booleaning the original
hull surface to cut off the back of the "h". leaving
a nice solid exactly following the hull's curve!
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#13
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#12
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#11
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The outer "metal" hull part, is
built from a copy of the ovoid surface of the original hull.
Stretched and then "rebuild" to give more points.
A lot of work is done on the points, then booleaning to finish
it.
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#10
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#9
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#8
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#7
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#6
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#5
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I initially did a "sweep to 2 rails"
for the tail, but this was messy and I didn'tliek the way
it would be. It's usually best to keep shapes as simple and
with as few neat surfaces as possible. So I merely extruded
a curve straight. then used "cage edit" to thin
and pull down the tail section.
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#4
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#3
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#2
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I used the original deckplans of the ship
to try and stay as true as possible to the size and concept
of the ship.
However I know from previous such builds, that the ship's
exterior artwork, and interior deckplans rarely match up,
and often have flaws I have to fix, or things I can see to
improve as I have the luxury of a 3D build to exact sizes!
;)
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Initial start #1
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All original art, writing on this site, copyright of
Steven James, "Silverblade the Enchanter" ©2010
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