Jules/Adonis Public WIP/Tutorial Thread

[Jules]

Ship Development Tutorial by Jules (aka Adonis)

OK folks, the story is the following:

I will be building a ship from my todo list showing progress in this thread. This is not only so you can see one ship actually getting built outside the Dev boards, but also as a tutorial type showcase of how I do things.

The ship I will be building here is the Cardassian transport ship and I'll also show a nice way that I'm using on a lot of ships made for this project of how to turn one version of a ship into another variant without much hassle or making it resource-heavy by turning it into the Klingon transport afterwards. I will be going into detail on anything I do on it, so those of you who do model (or even those who don't) can learn from this also .

My next post here will be the start of the build. Please do note that this might take a bit, since I'm having exams in about a month and I won't have too much time for this besides the other Excal-related stuff I'm doing.

[sman789]

Sounds great

Will this also cover exporting it and stuff like that so that it can be used in the game. I don't mean hardpointing necessarily, but doing all the things to the model that the game needs doing to it?

[Jules]

Sounds great

Will this also cover exporting it and stuff like that so that it can be used in the game. I don't mean hardpointing necessarily, but doing all the things to the model that the game needs doing to it?

Yes it will eventually cover everything as the options show up and as we can show stuff publicly.


The forum has a per-post attachment limit of 10, so I'll do this first one here with only one attachment and post right after with the next 10.

So, buckle up, and enjoy the ride:

OK, first off we need our schematic (first attachment below, will use filenames of the attachments from now on).

[Jules]

After that we need to know it's resolution (WIP001.jpg).

Then, we go into Max, and throw a plane into the scene with the picture height rez (466 pixels) input into lenght, but only 10% of it, and width (760 px) into Width. No need to make the model too big (with 10% the plane will be 46.6 by 76 meters, in full, 466 by 760)(WIP002.jpg). Then we go into the material editor (by hitting m on keyboard) and set up our material (as showed on WIP003.jpg and WIP004.jpg), and then drag and drop the material slot onto the plane, and we have a plane that's semi-transparent and visible on both sides

Just to show you my viewport config (WIP005.jpg), and then since we only have side and aft views, we will rotate the plane - note: the "Rotate Transform Type-in" window is accessed by right clicking on the rotate button, works for scale and move buttons too - so it shows on viewport left (WIP006.jpg). After that, move the plane down slightly so it's centered, you can use the transfor type-in or the axis value controls in the lower middle secon if you want to be precise (you will want to be that precise later on, trust me!) (WIP007.jpg). Then we move the plane slightly to the side and introduce a box, also, by this time we will also need to look at how exactly structures look like, so we have a pic of the studio model to help us out here. The box has two segments, those will come in later (WIP008.jpg). Next order of business is to make a copy of the plane (by clicking on one of the axis controls in the viewport while holding down shift), and rotate it (like I showed earlier) and get it into place (WIP009.jpg) for the aft view using that box as a guide, and then  just adjust the boxes width to match up. (WIP010.jpg). Then rename both planes so we know what they are for

[Jules]

Next order or business is to convert the box to editable poly, and then delete the surface that's in the middle of the ship (WIP011.jpg, WIP012.jpg). After that, adjust the box to match the shape of the aft of the hull's side (WIP013.jpg). After that we detach the surface where the cargo pods will attach (WIP014.jpg), and extrude it (WIP015.jpg). OK, now comes the fun part, the pods themselves.

We make a small plane on the sideview (WIP016.jpg, 1), get it infront of the structure we already have so we can follow the schematic (WIP016.jpg, 2), and shape it into the outline of the pod (WIP016.jpg, 3), then put it back behind the box (WIP016.jpg, 4).

Now comes the fun part, we select the box, go to poly edit mode, turn on snap (with the option to snap to verts), and cut out the pods using the (in this case 3 - to save more time) planes as a guide (WIP017.jpg). WIP018.jpg shows how it looks like after the cut out and drawing lines so we get triangular polies (which is a wis ething to do, otherwise everything remotely serious can cause screwups with the surfaces, since max has few reference points for said surfaces exact shape.

Then just rotate one of them by 90 degrees on the longitudinal axis, and we can cut out the top and bottom one too, and since I added a symmetry line to the pod guides, I can safely do just half of it (WIP019,jpg).

After that, we just kick a symmetry modifier onto it for the next leg (WIP020.jpg).

[Vlad]

Very good tutorial you are making here Adonis, great job!

[Wolf0x]

This is a great idea. Thanks

[Aresius]

Interesting. Good luck with the exams.

[phongbong]

This is very inspiring!  Perhaps it's time a dust off my Maya books.

[Jules]

Now we extrude them pods, in 3 takes, first one is up to the height of the extrusions that are on each fore/aft of the pods, then move everything into place (by moving and scalling (WIP021.jpg), and so on until I get the whole thing (WIP022.jpg). Then when we're finished it looks like WIP023.jpg. Now, the only thing left to do is to weld the first vertical step of each pod so we save polies (WIP024.jpg).

Now the smoothing: I traditionally use group 1 for up/down, group 2 for front/aft and group 3 for the sides. The rest goes unto the other groups, however, I tend to use the least number of them as possible. The only rule is that two surfaces don't have a common vert, so they don't overlap and cause the smothing to look weird. This is how what we have so far looks when smoothed (WIP025.jpg).

Now after a few symmetry modifiers, some changes to distances among the pods (the coupled ones are closer together than they would have been if we'd just to simply symmetry them, so you we just apply a symmetry modifier, collapse the stack to editable poly, select the pods that are to the front of the ship and them move them close to the aft ones. after that it's a matter of poly deletion and target welds to make those connecting "spines"), we get WIP026.jpg.

Any questins any of you might have, just ask.

[Josh]

Nice read  youre doing it a bit different then me, i would have used shapemerge to cut in the shape of the extruded parts with a spline. ^^

[MajorD]

This makes me wish Wings3D were a bit more powerful.

[Jules]

This makes me wish Wings3D were a bit more powerful.

Better mess with Blender, it's freeware and a lot better than Wings.


At this point we are gonna go through the render setup, so we can make nice pix of our progress:
First, we go to Rendering>Environment, and we get the control window, we set it up as on WIP027.jpg. After that we kick a skylight into the scene and set up it's options like it's showed on WIP028.jpg, the set up the renderer windows (WIP029.jpg) and we get WIP030.jpg.

Next is to cut out the two panels at the aft the same way I did the pods (visible on WIP030.jpg).

[Crylo]

Awesome stuff!

[furswift]

This is a great read, Adonis. It's good to get a glimpse at how you create these unified mesh objects. Can't wait to see the texturing.

[Jules]

Now, originally, i got kinda carried away with the aft top/bottom impulse housings and finished it without making pics along the way. I'll explain how I did it instead of redoing the whole thing. First, I made a plane and moved it so it would become the bottom of the top pod, and extruded the back line so I would get the two tips that point downwards resulting in the entire bottom; mind you, I'm doing only half of the thing so far, I'll get the other side with a symmetry modifier. After that I just drew the side polies of the two tips, selected the edge of the whole thing and extruded it getting the sidewall. After that, the next thing would be getting two verts cloned and moved to the x axis (meaning their X axis position is zero) and draw the front/back and top part. Next, select the egdes except the bottom part and chamfer them.
Apply smoothing groups and a symmetry modifier now (this is a must, because it's a lot easier to extrude out the impulse itself this way instead of just working with half the thing). Now, we select the two aft polies and first do a slight inset and after that extrude it. At this point, I would use a FFD 2x2x2 box modifier to put the aft part of the impulse exhaust sloped and not straight, but I'll explain how to use the FFD modifiers late ron (I'll get chances for that, or I'll use it anyway but point to the alternate ways too). Then another inset and an extrude, but this way, we'll click the small box beside it, and set the extrusion height to zero (WIP031.jpg) and move it backward by hand (since the extruder works out the path of extrusion from the source polies only. Now we chamfer the sides of the exhaust housing and clean up (by welding verts we don't need) and delete half (we get WIP032.jpg after all that). After applying two symmetry modifiers (one on the X and one o the Z axis we get WIP033.jpg)

Now, we detach the bottom pod as a separate object and each of the pods now go different ways (since the top has the bridge tower on it and the bottom has different details). Now, select the two polies and teselate them as on WIP034.jpg, and after that do another telselate on the rest of the foreward polies of that (some might object that I did this the way I did but bare with me, you'll see why soon). Now, we weld the verts we don't need to get WIP036.jpg.
Now, we get the X axis value of the selected vert from WIP037.jpg (figure A) and having the lines selected (WIP037.jpg, figure B) we change the position of those lines by pasting the X axis avlue of that vert moving them to the same position (WIP037.jpg, figure C) and repeat that for the opposite side keeping in mind the negative value of the position (in my case the verts position is 2.408, so the lines of the opposite side should have the value -2.408 given to them)(WIP037.jpg ,figure D).

We extrude (WIP038.jpg), and now we get to the small step at the front of the bridge structure. Tesselate it (WIP038.jpg, figure A), leave the horizotal segment only by welding verts (WIP038.jpg, figure B), and chamfer it slightly (WIP038.jpg, figure C), move the top one slightly aft and copy the lower ones Z axis to the topone so they are at the same height, and move the top lines back slightly (we get WIP038.jpg, figure D).

Now comes some FFD modifier fun I promised earlier Since the step at the front we did we cannot just move by hand and pray everything will be fine, that's what the FFD is for. First, we delete half of the pod (WIP039.jpg, Figure A), select the polies we want to manipulate (WIP039.jpg, Figure B), add an FFD modifier to the stack (Modifiers>Free Form Deformers - in this case - FFD 2x2x2) and select "Control Points" and select the modifiers top two points (actually, there are 4 of them, but since we have polies selected which are planar, they converge to two) (WIP039.jpg, Figure C) and move it into place (WIP039.jpg, Figure D).

Now we collapse the stack (rightclick on any viewport, Convert to> editable poly). Select the aftmost line on the bridge structure (WIP040.jpg, figure A) and move it forewardward, select the side one and move it into place (WIP040.jpg, figure B). Now, since I kinda screwed up the way the aft looks, I select the polies on figure C and move them where they should be and move the left polys top and bottom lines into place too getting the correct slope viewed from the side (WIP040.jpg, figure C). Now, first I select the other poly's bottom line, chamfer it and move everything in place (the outer vert will go far out because of the chamfer (WIP040.jpg, figure D-1) and move the vert at the top (WIP040.jpg, figure D-2) inline with the one it's connected to (WIP040.jpg, figure D-3) by copy/pasting the Y axis value.

[Vlad]

Very good!

[webxro]

Can a admin/community manager/dev/PR guy edit the first post and make one big tutorial ? 

[Mark]

Why don't you put together a PDF?

[webxro]

how about a huge image ?