Thursday, January 30, 2014

LPS 1.3 - No, really!


Update number two...

I've finally started updating the bottom and the back, although it's still "functional" details rather than greeble as of yet.

The main engines are another homage to the E:D Sidewinder (of which this is most definitely not based on...that's my story and I'm sticking to it!), and are a pretty radical change from the monolithic block the area was in the beginning. I was originally going to give it round engines (and had even blocked out the required shapes a couple of times), but decided on a more "vent"-like engine as I do nothing  but round engines on everything, and it was a nice change of pace to do something different.

Additionally you can see the three landing gear on the bottom. Sadly, this is just a static detail, rather than the gear being actual physical objects; While I've done gear-as-object before, doing so in high-poly is currently outside the scope of my skills.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to let this model stew while I work on others in the mean time. Being an idiot, I decided to break one of the cardinal rules of modeling, and model without a concept, and have thus run out of ideas for this particular model; so it's going to languish while I use the knowledge gained from working on it on other projects.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

LPS 1.2 - This is not a Sidewinder...

So...update number one. It's actually starting to look like a ship now.

While looking for detailing inspiration, I ended up looking at the modern, Elite: Dangerous version of the model's inspiration, so I threw in plating that looks like its radiators as an homage. The top of the model is still the only part that has any detail, with the bottom having only a little basic plating and the back being completely bare.

The cockpit was actually the most challenging detail so far, since it was the first time I'd tried to make such a shallow indentation using this modeling technique. Like with everything else, I had to come up a process that worked, but it was a bit more complicated than simply  putting the geometry together and setting the bevel weights. Luckily the solution was just some choice loop cuts.

---

I'm starting to notice some artifacts that are probably going to show up in the normal map baking, but nothing that can't be fixed by a couple seconds in photoshop, so I'm not particularly worried.

The render resolution of the model puts it at 790,816 faces, with the actual working resolution putting it at 49,426. I'd say that the model is a little under half done.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

LPS 1.1

Long time, no post. Sorry about that.

In my defense, I've been in a bit of a creative rut lately. This is my attempt to remedy that through weapons-grade practice.

I'm tackling high-poly modeling.

The model above is a little over 360,000 faces (though I'm working at a much lower resolution that has it at only 20,000, and only up it when I need to see how it looks), and is vaguely inspired by the Sidewinder from the Elite series.

I intend to bake it onto a low-poly model at some point. In the future.

I hope.