Movie & TV Related - Firefly Class Freighter

[Rigel]

I have said on numerous occasions that I was going to work through the Serenity tutorial. But after spending two or three months turning it into .pdf format, I kind of lost interest in it.

But, now feels like a good time to tackle it!

This is being modelled in Lightwave 8.5.

This won't be the Serenity, by the way. I don't have a name for it yet, but it's a different ship of the same class.

I have completed parts 1 and 2 so far and this is the result.

[Rigel]

Originally Posted by virtualkey08

wow!

*blush*

Thanks.

[Epiphany]

Darn it I missed the part about making it a big plum

Looks good I see you got the triangles stenciled

[Rigel]

Yeah, the triangles. I made a flat rectangle with 48 segments, then stencilled the triangles onto that. I then indented them. Then I spent, oh probably 45 minutes at least, beating my head against the Bend tool to get it into a circle. Then it was a quick resize, quick taper then fit it back into the reactor.

Thanks go out to Crook for showing that idea in his R2D2 thread.

Big plum? Oh, the blue colour. I like to keep my surfaces in different colours so I can tell what polygons belong to what surface. Won't look like that when it's painted up.

[Epiphany]

one more question out of curiosity Do you have the center indentations that run down the side from the center to the end different lengths. Or is that just the angle of the picture making it look like that

[darthviper107]

That looks pretty good. Very smooth. I hate doing stenciling, I don't know if it's this way in Lightwave, but in 3ds Max it makes lots of errors and smoothing problems.

[Mikala]

Right on Rigel.
Look forward to seeing you go through this.

[Gordon Robb]

Oh no, he's lost to the Serenity Tutorial. Seriously though, good start and enjoy.

[Rigel]

Originally Posted by virtualkey08

Every time I try to use Bend the object comes out looking like a bad Salvador Dali nightmare... Is there a trick to it?

If there's a trick to it, I don't know what it is. Picture this though; I had a long rectangle stretching out to the positive and negative X sides, polygons facing positive Y. After many attempts, I finally found that by going to my side view port (so looking at the X end of the rectangle) and clicking in the approximate middle of it, then dragging downwards that got it to curl up into a circle. Mind you, it was many times too big, but at that point I didn't care (resizing is easy).

The manual says the trick is to use the tool on the axis perpendicular to the curve you want to achieve. In my case, I guess that was using the X side view and dragging down the Y axis.

[Rigel]

Originally Posted by Epiphany

one more question out of curiosity Do you have the center indentations that run down the side from the center to the end different lengths. Or is that just the angle of the picture making it look like that

After looking at my pictures to figure out what you mean, I see what you mean! You're referring the the rear most reactor glow areas and yep, they are different lengths!

So, boys and girls, when selecting polygons in different viewports, count them and make sure you get the same number!

No big deal. I'll delete the surrounding polygons, rebuild them then create a new indentation.

Good eye Epiphany, and thanks for pointing that out.

[Rigel]

Originally Posted by Mikala

Right on Rigel.
Look forward to seeing you go through this.

Thanks Greg.

Originally Posted by Gordon Robb

Oh no, he's lost to the Serenity Tutorial. Seriously though, good start and enjoy.

If I get something that looks half as good as your Bellflower, I'll be immensely pleased! Thanks for stopping by.

[Meurig]

One of those handy hints that you may or may not already be aware of, but holding down Control while using the bend tool bends in 15 degree increments, very handy when precision is required

[Rigel]

Thanks Meurig! Didn't know that.

[Rigel]

Fixed the difference in the length of the reactor glow panels.

[Lee Medcalf]

Looks like a fine start so far Rigel

Do you have a design you're working from or are you just taking elements from the Serenty and tweaking them in to a fighter design?

[Epiphany]

Originally Posted by Rigel

After looking at my pictures to figure out what you mean, I see what you mean! You're referring the the rear most reactor glow areas and yep, they are different lengths!

So, boys and girls, when selecting polygons in different viewports, count them and make sure you get the same number!

No big deal. I'll delete the surrounding polygons, rebuild them then create a new indentation.

Good eye Epiphany, and thanks for pointing that out.

If you knew how many times I had to redo that section you wouldn't say good eye I made that same mistake on mine and once had the wrong number of polygons between them It is looking good though.


I'm going to sit here as you try to get the shutters stinciled Now that part is fun

[nighthawks]

Great start. I think I lost count at 6 re-starts on the reactor. The support segments I added weren't extrusions but individual chamfer boxes (and smaller individual boxes for the extrustions over them). I thought it gave me more control for whenever I started texturing. I think I'm on my 8th or ninth re-start on the neck. Darthviper107 uploaded his version and i'm looking at it closely using it as a reference, trying to get mine right. Best of luck.

[Rigel]

Originally Posted by Lee Medcalf

Looks like a fine start so far Rigel

Do you have a design you're working from or are you just taking elements from the Serenty and tweaking them in to a fighter design?

Actually Lee, I'm following Treybor's Serenity tutorial. Not planning to deviate from the design at all.

[Rigel]

Finished Part 3 today; creating the fusion shutters. Here is an image of the reactor with shutters:



and the shutters themselves:



I decided to put indentations on the inside surface of the shutters as well; you know, symmetry.

Also, I selected all of the face polygons on the outside and used multi-shift to bevel the edges, then did the same with the inner surface.

Epiphany mentioned she was going to wait to see how I handled the shutters, so I took screenshots.

I followed the tutorial and copied the polygons into a new layer:



and created the stencil for the shutter.



Unlike the tutorial, I left it as a single flat polygon, then rotated the reactor sections 60 degrees.



I then stencilled it with the Default surface.



Rotated the sections 60 degrees again:



and stencilled.



As you can see, the stencil landed right where it needed to.

Then I rotated the hull sections -120 degrees to put them back where they belong.



I selected the Default surface polygons:



and copied them to a new layer.



Back to the hull sections, selected the Default surface, applied the Reactor Hull surface:



then used multi-shift to indent them with these settings:



then applied the Reactor Glow surface.



That's it! Then when I was stencilling the indents into the shutters, same thing. I created the stencil so it was facing the X axis, then rotated the shutters so they were also facing the X axis, then stencilled, repeated for the other shutters, then rotated them back to their proper orientation.

So, Epiphany, hopefully between the tutorial and my example your shutter construction stage will go nicely!

Oh, one more note, I have now applied weight maps to these pieces. The reactor received a weight map called "Non-moving" (which will eventually be applied to most of the model) and the shutter maps were called (can you guess??) Shutter 1, Shutter 2, Shutter 3 and Shutter 4.

[Treybor]

Originally Posted by Meurig

One of those handy hints that you may or may not already be aware of, but holding down Control while using the bend tool bends in 15 degree increments, very handy when precision is required

I did not know that either.... Love hotkey commands....

Looking Good Rigel!!!

[Treybor]

The Bend tool (Modify > Bend) is a combination of Rotate and Shear. It will move one side of an object and rotate it at the same time, causing the entire object to bend with one end of the object being fixed and the other end receiveing the maximum amout of bend.

Bend works best when you bend along a segmented axis. Say you have a vertical object you want to bend. The initial pointer location defines the center of the rotation. The trick is to use the Bend tool in the viewport that is perpendicular to the axis of the bend. You can go to the Y-axis pane, center your pointer over the center of the object, hold the mouse button down, and any diretion you move the object will bend. By default the lowest end of the object is fixed and the top is what bends.

Note that a single polygon object WILL NOT bend. The object you want to bend MUST be segmented. The fewer the segments -- the sharper the bend at each point.

You can adjust the bend effect by pressing "n" to get tho the numeric panel.
(next part shamelessly copied from the manual)
Angle — The Angle value on the numeric panel will reflect the degrees of rotation.
Shape — You can quickly select between two basic falloff directions using the Shape buttons.
The Shape setting determines the Area of Influence. This is shown graphically in both the numeric panel and viewport windows. You can also use the Left and Right cursor keys to change the selected Shape.
The Range option determines where the Falloff’s center is located. By default, a linear falloff tool’s effect is automatically applied to the object (or selected items), 100 percent at one end and zero at the other, along the axis perpendicular to the editing viewport. This is indicated by the Range option at the bottom portion of the numeric panel, which has Automatic selected.To use the tool in the Automatic Mode via the numeric panel (by clicking the Apply button), select the perpendicular Axis. (If the axis has not been set either manually or by a previous mouse-based modify operation, the Axis setting is used to compute the falloff when you click Apply.)
Automatic — The center is set by clicking in the viewport.
Fixed — The center is set by entering in values in the numeric window.HINT: Using the Automatic Range is the

[Josh2481]

When doing anything, ctrl is your friend. Just try it out.

[Epiphany]

Rigel. Rotating the reactor is the way I was suggesting in the "Serenity Tutorial" Thread. I get a much cleaner stencil that way.

Love the symmetry on your shutters. Looking good. I'm still trying to figure out if I'm going to keep that indentation design or make changes there too


By the way...Thats not Serenity. They lost one of those at the end of the Movie

I think that Mal's last spoken words werw "What was that"

[Gordon Robb]

Looks good rigel. You may want to skip ahead in the tutorial and you'll see that the thin end of the shutters should be inside the holes rather than on top of them. Sean re-did them later in the tutorial.

[Rigel]

Originally Posted by Treybor

I did not know that either.... Love hotkey commands....

Looking Good Rigel!!!

Thanks Sean!

Originally Posted by Gordon Robb

Looks good rigel. You may want to skip ahead in the tutorial and you'll see that the thin end of the shutters should be inside the holes rather than on top of them. Sean re-did them later in the tutorial.

Now that you mention it, I remember that. But, it will be good practice to change them later.

[Rigel]

No boolean subtracts used on this model so far VK. In fact, I don't think Treybor ever used booleans in the Serenity tutorial. It's all stencilling and multi-shift (verti-bevel in his case).

Let me know if there's something in particular you need help with!

[Rigel]

Finished part 4 today. It was a bit of a p.i.t.a. working with unfamiliar tools.

Ended up with something which is not an exact replica of Treybor's Serenity, but I am happy with it.