Anim8or Community

Hello again Anim8or community.  It's been awhile since I posted here.

Back in the distant swirling mists of time (The 80's) there existed a tabletop roleplaying game by a company called FASA.  Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game and Star Trek: Starship Combat Simulator covered gameplay on the ground or in space in the Star Trek universe.

ST:SCS was quite good, and supplemental manuals such as the Federation Ship Recognition Guide listed specifications for both "canon" ships and originals created by FASA.  "Flavor Text" was provided for all ships, and it made for an interesting read.

At the time, there was also a magazine called Stardate which primarily dealt with the FASA game in much the same way that Dragon Magazine covered Dungeons & Dragons.  There was a section called "Jaynz Ships of the Galaxy" in each magazine where they would detail a new ship class which could be used with the game.

The one that caught my eye in those days was a design by Josh W. Spencer, the Indomitable-class battleship.

Here's the original blueprint:



As you can see, it's a "kitbash".  Looks like an Excelsior Saucer slapped onto an elongated Enterprise secondary hull with Enterprise warp nacelles.

I'd like to also credit Bernd Schneider and his Ex Astris Scientia (www.ex-astris-scientia.org) website for the awesome ship database contained therein, and a contributor to that site named GUS for his awesome Excelsior reference images.

More to follow...

That's looking quite good, Arik.

I love the stands, they look great.

The vases and pictures on the wall look superb.

My main crit would be (and I encountered this myself those times I attempted to do an interior room) is that the border between floor/wall and celing wall looks too perfect, because well, it is a perfect line.

I'd put a tiny curve there or, even better, some crown and baseboard molding would really cap it off great.

Trust me, give the transparent/emissive map thing a try.  You'll be amazed how much better it looks.

Create a gradient that fades off to total black (0,0,0) in something like Paint Shop, set it as both the transparent and emissive textures, hit the UV button (it should snap right on there perfectly without even having to move it around), and you're done.

Yup, tried all that.  Absolutely nothing at all.

Hiho: What Kahlua said.  That about sums it up.  Also applying a texture with Anim8or's UV tools to a subdivide generally results in weirdness.

Tanzim: No, no problems at all - we're only talking about 35,000 polys here.  I've worked with models having several hundred thousand polys and even then the only lag involved has been in point-edit mode. 

Sure thing, Kahlua.  It's hard to make anything out in some areas because I've gone high-poly on this one, but here's some wires.  Much to my own surprise it's only about 35,000 polys, I thought it would be much more at this point.

Thanks Craksy.

This model wouldn't be particularly suitable for a game, as the poly count is far too high.  I'll probably throw together a low-poly version after this one is done.

Added the...thing underneath the saucer section.
(P.S. Please ignore the texture on the underside of the saucer, it's just a repeat of the top of the saucer as a placeholder.)