mac666er

Small update:

I updated the textures and added some more detail. As always any comments and crits welcome!

Thanks for looking!

mac

This model still lacks some detailing, but I think I am slowly getting there. Any opinions and crits welcome as usual!

As you can see I am giving the Prometheus a black deck and testing some colors.

Enjoy!

mac

Hey!

No, this thread is NOT going to die! :-P I had some work to do and wasn't able to update some stuff, but I am back at the drawing board! I'll post updates soon!

@pfunk: yes, I think there is no problem in making a prototype with this file, however, I think there will be some issues as no physics was taken into account yet (translation: the model will very likely collapse under its own weight in some parts) :-P but oh well, we can always try!

@All! Thanks for the praises

mac

ok, I'll take a look on how to add detail to those thrusters, I have to add detail to the whole main gun anyway...

Meanwhile a small update, what do you guys think?

mac

As long as the yf 21 is on the t shirt and is blue, would definitely buy one.

mac

@woz: Thanks for the explanation! Actually.. I didn't know they were engines... I have never come across a reference where these thrusters are fired... As a matter of fact I don't know what those squares/cubes are... How do you know they are thrusters?

@madmacks: Please do comment! All comments and critiques are welcome! Now that you mentioned the topic... the aim is to be realistic.. yeah I know it is still a long way, but I am learning. To make it look more realistic it will take at least 2 months of full time modeling to add the insane amounts of detailing needed. In general, professionals for the movie industry took 9 months to construct in the 80's large scale models. Now I know it takes several months to go from a design to having something modeled or even something in clay. That of course requires skill and time. I am trying to get both now :-P But hey at least I am trying! Jay Lew has a much better model, and I still would need a lot of practice to achieve that level of aesthetic appeal And I am afraid that it will take time :-P

Thanks for reading the thread!

mac

I almost forgot... Zinjo, the reason I did not put a black deck on top of the Prometheus is because I understand that actually it is a hybrid of a carrier and a submarine. I also think this is true for the Daedalus and that is why they are able to function in space, because they were designed to be also submersibles of some kind. So the deck is designed to go underwater and therefore it is different from present day carriers.

That being said, I may put a black texture on top of it, but it will not look like modern carriers, because they have tiles of this on top of them that are interchangeable (so that if one has holes it is easier to replace) and that would require a change in the model itself. We'll see if I have time to explore this.

Thanks for looking!

mac

@Dante: Yes, I am working on making it less shiny.

@Knight: lol, Thought nobody would notice it... it is a bug in the renderer :-P I already fixed it.

@woz: I am not sure I am following you.. what is a grove? Also, could you be more specific about the vernier thrusters? I am not sure what part of the model you are referring to. If you could circle it in photoshop with your comments that would be excellent, but if not, a text explanation would do. I don't know what is a vernier thruster :-P

@Lonewolf: yes.

@zinjo: Thanks!

I am trying to improve the model as much as I can!

mac

Meanwhile, a little teaser:

Thanks or all the kind comments! It helps me in going forward!

Bad Scorpion: I'll think about it...

Small updates on textures and modeling in general. As always critiques are welcome:

mac

Small update,

Had time to do some texturing and extra modeling. Let me know your comments!

mac.

Chad: I may post the 3-view orthogonal views, but it will be quite detailed and it may actually not be very useful

Xyberz: Thanks! It is indeed very hard work but nice comments keep me going. As for a time frame, I wanted to do a reasonable model before the end of 2007, I think that is accomplished. However I wanted also to do other things to the model, namely, texturing and animating. That may not get done this year, it all depends on how much free time I can put on this project.

It may take more than a year because I have been working on some other stuff on the SDF 1 that I haven't posted in here... I think you guys will like it.. but... it is going to be a surprise...

And then, I wanted to do a DYRL version. I don't know when I'll start that project, but it will not take me that long to model. I already have tried several times, it is just that I don't like the result each time

madmacks: already working on the textures! Thanks for the advice! This is my weakest skill I must admit, so we'll see how I progress on this one.

mechtech: Thanks!! I hope your Daedalus sees the light of day some time soon!

As for the people that had issues with the quicktime movies I may post divx movies next time if I have time.

Thanks for all the comments!

mac

Ok, so... I have been somewhat busy and a little sick

However, I have regained my energy and I am ready to post some updates! yay!

But first, I have to say that my ultimate goal is to do the DYRL SDF version. Because of this, all the problems I encountered have been solved with that in mind.

It has been widely discussed that anime doesn't translate automatically into 3D, and the transformation of the SDF is specially painful in that regard. The transformation that I built is based on the movie, even though the model is from the TV series.

Here is a pic from the firing of the main gun:

Also, you can visit my website to look at the progress and see some other stuff My Webpage,

I cleaned lots of parts of the model, here is the cleaned up Daedalus, Hope you like it, (you will need quicktime 7 to see it):

Daedalus movie

and... for those who wanted to see something special... here is the firing of the main gun!! (well, at least the barebones sequence) also in quicktime format, enjoy!

SDF firing

Let me know what you think,

mac

This model DOES transform.. fully

It is already tested...

mac

I still have a long way to go...

Here is the complete model:

Thanks for looking,

mac

Some people have asked where can they find more pics. You can always visit my site to see how the model has evolved so far:

http://web.mac.com/m.santana/iWeb/Site%202/3D%20Work.html

Here are some more updates:

Enjoy,

mac

If it's any help I had exactly the same problem with the SDF-1 I am building, the proportions just didn't allow the ship to transform. So I had to "pre-build" it with large blocks and I made some animations making sure it could transform. After that I started building it properly.

So, to stay true to the model, I suggest you try to tweak it to your liking. It is going to be hard... but a lot of fun.

Good luck!

mac

> Everybody: thanks for the compliments! makes it easy to go through the detailing every night! I am not kidding! The Daedalus ship by MechTech inspires me a lot! I hope to see it soon afloat!

> Kelsain: I am using that reference for the bridge, do it does seem that there are three floors in the bridge. In any case I will try to get more references, but I have the MAcross Perfect Memory book, and that does seem o be the most accurate bridge pic. I will keep adding details, but in the meantime while I think about it will work on some other parts of the ship... which is HUGE!!

Anyhow, some updates on the CVS-101 Prometheus:

After some inactivity, here is a small update on the bridge!

mac

Though... the left-most engine block (on the picture above*) is missing some of the cowling around the engine thruster...

*The one on the right side, when looking at the model from the rear.

Done, I think my renderer got out of memory. I did see that the piece was missing but I ddidn't redo the render since it takes so long.

I worked on the bridge and here is a small update. Hope u like it.

As always comments are welcome.

mac

Hi Folks, no I didn't die... I just hit a wall with my hardware as it refuses to render the whole model, so I have had to come with ways around that. Anyway, here is the whole model so far, untextured obviously as it took 8 hours to render and the quality is not that high. The 'speckles' you see are artifacts of the renderer as it needs more time to clean the image.

I'd reduce the gap around those side 'panel' areas because the gap is more then enough for several people to fall through!

Done

As for the future... I'll submit as before parts of my progress and see whare that leads.. as it will take better hardware or a LOT of time to render this baby....

Anyway enjoy...

mac

Small update, added some textures to the Main Gun and added part of the Main Body.

Still rough, but as always, any comments are welcome.

Enjoy!

mac

Here is a small update of the main gun, not much detail and still missing textures... but hey I am slowly getting there

Main Gun:

mac

Oh MAYA! 

Using Maya is a painful experience but if you get fast with it then you'll be good to go for other programs as well. Thanks for satisfing my curosity!

I'd like to say that your subd is good but there are about 8 errors that can easly be  seen. *shrugs* Not nitpicking, just making an obversation. And if you need any help with a subd problem go ahead and ask me because I only do SubD work.

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Thanks! I am correcting most errors now as i obtained the sdf reference model from 3ds MAX and XSI (long story short.. I was deciding on which platform to stick.. so as you can see I decided to use Maya)... and through the importing I got some unwanted triangles... but by all means please post whatever errors you see... If you just circle them in red that would be very helpful!

Thanks for the message!

mac

Fine work Mac666! But why did you decide to use Subdivision Surfaces on this model? Oh, and btw, what prog are you using??

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Well, I worked a lot with subdivisions before, and I needed a project to expand my abilities using subdivisions... and the fact that the blue prints were not accurate made me think that I would need somet weaking so sticked to them. Had the blueprints been exact I guess NURBs would have been the way to go.

As for the program I use maya for modeling and Maxwell for renderer... they take a while to fully understand them, so this is a nice excercise to get a grasp on them

Thanks for stopping by!

I hope to post more updates soon!

mac

So here are a few updates,

Sadly the bridge of the Daedalus was lost in a corrupted file, it will take me a while to put it back on the ship.

Anyway, I was able to add some more details and included lamps and lights. So... here they are. Enjoy!

mac.

Have you ever wondered how all these ships would look at night?