Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper MKII - Page 2

# 16 31-12-2009 , 04:33 AM

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Some details hidden literally under the covers.

Booleaned areas to make perfect form fitting back section of the nose back area and the nacelles and the openings for the missile bays. That is what the panels on the front section are for. In this screen grab you can see the opening without the doors.

I know some will cringe, but I love booleans. I am going to make some models with doors and hatches and crap that would be frigging impossible to model and smooth.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 31-12-2009 at 06:07 AM.

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# 17 31-12-2009 , 04:45 AM

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aah the clear markings on a mesh that has had booleans applied to it! its nice to see someone proving everyone else wrong

looks really sweet so far (i've never seen battle star galactica)

i thought i was the only one who posts with soft edges showing and border edges thickened!

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# 18 31-12-2009 , 05:05 AM

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As you can see the hatches fit perfectly and there is no wonky surface distortion or rendering artifacts.

There is currently no interior faces on the hatch panels or interior of the nose. I would also have to add thickness and a hinge assembly. But that is all easy. I just drilled the doors to show that booleans can make very complex openings if you are willing to forgo the "I must smooth 100% of my model" mantra.

These a very cooperative surfaces without compound curves but even with more complex surfaces, all you do is build the basic base geometry throw a 2 or 3 division smooth on the easy husk geometry, then boolean out your holes.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 31-12-2009 at 05:08 AM.

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# 19 31-12-2009 , 06:10 PM

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You may enjoy booleans, but theres really no chance in hell of an excuse for an 8 sided plus polygon.

dude a studio would have you for dinner, I would have you as starter LOL, that type of geo no matter how clean it is really isnt good.

Jay

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# 20 31-12-2009 , 06:11 PM

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Still keeping my eye on this one Ctbram.

I'm interested to see your Mk VII
I reckon I'll start on BSG sometime in the coming days so i can beat you to it, though I'll probably just work on it on and off for a while.

have you though of modeling a raptor? colonial one? any other ships in the fleet?
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# 21 31-12-2009 , 11:23 PM

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Originally posted by Jay
You may enjoy booleans, but theres really no chance in hell of an excuse for an 8 sided plus polygon.

Originally Posted by

That is just not true. I see n-gon of greater then 8-side left on top or cylindrical surfaces all the time. I have seen professional modelers that work for Pixar and ILM use n-gons with > 8-sides. I can post examples of works from ILM and Pixar that have large n-gons.

I am not a pro but I know as long as a surface is planar, then having polygons with more then n-side will make no difference what-so-ever!

Originally posted by Jay
dude a studio would have you for dinner, I would have you as starter LOL, that type of geo no matter how clean it is really isnt good.
Jay

Originally Posted by

Wow! No need to be rude to me dude. I can handle constructive comments but I don't really think I deserve to be berated!

The restriction on n-gons came in the days when rendering engines could not handle them. Go to the modo site and look at the Brad Peebler interview with master modelers Rich Hurrey and Jason Bickerstaff where this very question was asked.

Their reply, and I am paraphrasing, was "It depends on what the pipeline allows, in the end if the shot looks right, the model can be textured and rendered, and if it can help reduce time to production there is no limit to n-gons in a model"

As far as I know both of these guys are not marked as a "Starter" and in fact they are industry giants! Last I checked Pixar, and ILM were both "major" studios and these guys have done incredible work at both.

I do this as a hobby. I am not a pro and I am too old to consider trying to become one. My experience and skill is based on the things I have seen and read, some of which has been produced by some highly regarded modelers in the industry. If I was to be working for a client and there was a restriction on n-gons then I would have no problem adjusting. For now this model looks fine, will texture fine, and is rendered by mental ray fine. So I see no reason to get our undies all in a bunch!

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 01-01-2010 at 02:14 AM.

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# 22 31-12-2009 , 11:54 PM

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Originally posted by legendofzombi
Still keeping my eye on this one Ctbram.

I'm interested to see your Mk VII
I reckon I'll start on BSG sometime in the coming days so i can beat you to it, though I'll probably just work on it on and off for a while.

have you though of modeling a raptor? colonial one? any other ships in the fleet?
G-man

Originally Posted by

I like the mixture of organic and inorganic in the mk.VII.

I have gathered some raptor references in collecting the mk.I stuff. Not sure if I plan to make one though. The galactica is a bit to big a project for me although it would be a great place to work on writing a auto greebling script (smile).

I have been thinking of doing a Avatar Scorpion and/or an AMP suit.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 01-01-2010 at 12:08 AM.

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# 23 01-01-2010 , 12:19 AM

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Very nice model. I did a quick try of Modo too. I actually liked the navigation, but decided to stick with Maya anyway. But there were two things I liked better in Modo that I wonder how you pros in Maya do as fast as in Modo.

The first thing is that radial array clone tool. To be able to copy any object and have the copys arranged in a circle. I just can not make that happen with mayas duplicate and transform. I can only spin on object around in an axis and my clones gets rotated to.

And I also thought it was easier to use the cutters in Modo to do Booleans. Not sure why now(my trial 14 days ran out so Modo is no longer on my mahcine), but it was nice.

Ohh, actually there was one thing more, the constrain to background was impressive to.

Last edited by Olorin; 01-01-2010 at 12:22 AM.

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# 24 01-01-2010 , 01:40 AM

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Thanks Olorin,

Yes Maya has radial copy ability. Allow me to demonstrate.

I needed an excuse to create a 202-sided polygon so this is a perfect opportunity.

You have two options:

1. "edit mesh>duplicate special" where you can set the rotation, translation, scale, and number of copies.

2. or use shift-d to copy and remember rotation, scale, and translation. To use this set an objects rotation pivot. Press shift-d to create a copy, then rotate the copy (using the r-key to bring up the rotation gizmo), then just press shift-d again and you will make a new copy rotated the amount of the first copy on each key press.

So first the more important part we need to drill a hole in a surface to create that 202-sided polygon I needed an excuse to create.

Then we add bevels and make the outer surface all wonky to show that the drilled / booleaned surface remains clean and sharp.

As long as the drilled surface is planar, the sice of the value of n in the n-gon does not matter.

This is not to say you'd ever want to create a surface like this one. But in some cases its just impossible to smooth a surface and cut out this kind of shape so if you need to get in close to the edge on a shot you have to put in a lot of edges or you will see corner artifacts and I would prefer to have a final shot that looks perfect then a crappy shot that has geometry that meets some arbitrary rule that dictates the number of allowable sides in a polygon!

This also kinda answered your other question btw. Maya does not have stensil or drill polygon tools. To stensil a hole into a surface you have to boolean, then delete the un-needed faces, then use fill hole.

I agree constrain to background is a very impressive tool. there is a Maya script called shrink wrap but it is cumbersome to use.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 01-01-2010 at 01:57 AM.

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# 25 01-01-2010 , 02:00 AM

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Not to change the subject back to critiques on my model from the feisty discussion about n-gons but...

Do the guns look okay? I made them a bit larger in scale then the ones from my references. I figure the whole purpose of that fighter is to carry those guns and the dinky looking things in the references just were not doin it for me. LOL

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 03-01-2010 at 06:00 PM.

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# 26 01-01-2010 , 08:12 AM

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Thanx a lot for you explanation. In theory I understand you, will have to test it out and see if I can make it work. I am a bit dense in converting text-tutorial to actuall Maya skill. I guess it would be great for Maya compared to Modo if somebody could make a little movie-tut and put up on youtube... nudge, nudge user added image

As for your guns. Since there really is no thing like laser-guns it is impossible to say they don't look ok. But I liked the design with white on the guns and no bottle underneath teh barrel, that bottle made it look like a water gun to me. Personally if I would do a laser gun thingy. I think I would like to make it different from the mould. Maybe something like those LED lights that we have on our heads and hats these days. After all it should shoot light and not metal-pieces so barrel seems unlogical to me.

Last edited by Olorin; 01-01-2010 at 08:14 AM.

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# 27 01-01-2010 , 08:44 AM

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Thried a bit more. Cloning and making each object rotate waas no big deal. But cloning and arranging the objects without rotating them was something I could only do by setting each pivot to center and manually adjusting each object as I did for the right half of the image. I can not near that with duplicate with transform. Any ideas about not rotating the objects and still cloning them around a radius?

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# 28 01-01-2010 , 10:10 AM

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LOL. Yeah the version of the gun that looked like a bottle with a barrel stuck on was just a proxy until I got around to building a proper one.

I just made some minor updates today. Just added the small center part that connects all the engines with some tubes. Rebuilt the wing to correct some some minor issues that were niggling me.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 29 01-01-2010 , 10:20 AM

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I have not seen the original so I guess your copy is true to the original. But actually the the wings seem a little small. I looks more like a bottle rocket than a manned craft. But then again in the future, who says we will need wings to fly at all?

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# 30 01-01-2010 , 02:30 PM

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CTBRAM

I wasnt being rude, just messing so please dont read between the lines...nuff said. But I apologise if thats what you think.

I see n-gon of greater then 8-side left on top or cylindrical surfaces all the time.

really? all the time?, please show....

I wouldnt spout my concern for the overly used Boolean ops you are doing if I didnt see reason for it. Modo is a different kettle of fish in that area, its a great tool but most in most cases its use in Maya are few and far between.

I am seriously intrigued with your comment about ILM and PIXAR. Please post!!! Also I'd like to read what the other two dudes said as well, please post a link.

N-gons are fine generally. I didnt say dont use. I use them but you wont find anything above or below a 4sided one. Regardless of 'the day' of limits on render engines. Chances are a you put a model thru any pipeline with that sort of face count on a poly you will have a problem with the model 'generally' as the renderer has to 'guess' the surface before spitting out out the image.

My last VFX director was from Weta, he said meshes have to be spot on (4sided). Also said theres no excuse for it not to be. Set ups for films happen over a series of months so the time is there to get stuff right. Nail those problems....dont fudge them and cause more

I am actually working with a couple of riggers from ILM at the moment on a film and they are hotter than hot with setups. the edge flows have got to work otherwise its a no go in any direction if the mesh is less than perfect. It causes crap way down the pipeline. My Current Supervisor recently pulled a guy for having just 5 sided polys on an ancient staircase model. the guy tried to hide them out of sight by putting them underneath a lip area, problem was that Renderman kicked off complaining about non planar geo, so my Supervisor and the VFX director had to pull the guy aside to get it sorted.

I think the the more people understand the need for clean meshes and the understanding of a pipeline regardless of whose it is the better really. Sculpting packages will also kick off if a model generally isnt quads. It will just end up dividing it into then if its not. So watch out for that.

I really hope my message here is coming thru and the need for better geo regardless of Hard surface or organic models. try not to rely on the boolean method too much.

cheers
Jay

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