Texturing TIE Fighter

After a few weeks out from sickness and getting back up to speed, I decided to crack on with getting my models animation ready.

I started with the TIE fighter, where I planned to texture the line pattern on the wings, and leave the rest as simple colours. However, after unwrapping it and attempting a texture in GIMP which seemed too dark and took far too long, I decided it would be simpler to create physical lines in max and texture the polygons individually with solid colours.

Here was my attempt at the wing texture in GIMP. It was a hassle to create as it was creating different colours for each wing, even with the same level of noise around the edges, and drawing the lines evenly was a big hassle, leading to my decision to create vertices and connections for the wing in max.

Here was the final wing, with the polygons textured with solid colours, ready for animation.

Conclusions

I am happy with my results from this assignment, I think my models are accurate to the originals, particularly in shape and size, which means that I will not need to edit these areas before using the ships in the later assignment. However, I found the fine details to be a real difficulty, which will be something I will be trying to learn over the coming weeks to improve my models before they are used, where I would need to learn some new techniques for a more accurate and refined finish on the models. Also I will need to use more images of the ships to get this detail, as some of it does not come out accurately in just the schematic diagrams. All in all I think my models are a good representation of the originals, with only some fine details to be refined before they are ready for my animation project.

Assignment Model 3: Slave1

For my final ship I decided on the Fett family ship, the Slave1. I decided on this ship because of the interesting shape and because I enjoyed seeing it in the films, especially as I enjoy it transition from the landing position to the upright flying position. It will not feature in my animation, but I decided to try a more interesting shaped ship to make a more interesting model.
The main problem I faced with this model was creating the right shapes. I tried to create the back with a hemisphere and the front with a an extruded spline, however, I found neither of these worked. In the end I did the back portion with a lathed spline and the front with a modified cylinder and sphere. All in all I believe using these shaped worked in my favour to create a more authentic looking shape. Another problem I faced is the actual schematics I used.

As you can see, this schematic shows two differently sized views, and in the scaling up of these, there were some real problems in alignment, although I managed to come to a good medium between the two.  I also experimented with various techniques on this ship, especially before I settled on the shapes I would use, especially chamfering to get the curve needed for the front portion, although  ultimately I decided on using a cylinder instead. I also had to use splines a lot, and with one part of the wing I used a spline to create it, extruding it up and capping the end, which was also a new technique I had to learn and experiment with.

This is by far the most difficult models I worked with, mainly due to it's irregular curved shape, which I struggled with a lot more than the straighter X-wing and TIE Fighter.
The main improvements I would make would be fine detail, particularly on the wings, where I really struggled to get the correct shapes in.

Assignment Model 2 : TIE Fighter

My second model I decided on using was the TIE fighter, which is another classic ship which is an important part of many scenes, including the one I have decided to animate. 

This ship was considerably easier to model than the X-wing, as it has a much simpler shape and design. To create the wing joins I used splines and lathing to create the general shape, the manipulated the vertices to turn the circular shape into a hexagonal one. On the wings it was simply a case of creating connections and extruding them to the correct size. Creating the center are was a simple matter of moving vertices again to create some properly sized polygons to make the window. 

I didn't learn any new techniques on this ship, rather I built on techniques I used on the X-wing and other models, particularly the splines and lathing  to creathe more interesting shapes than using base primitives.

For accurate sizing and to create the splines I used schematics as before, this time found on google.

This gave me great front and side view, which again gave me great scaling, and allowed me to position the pieces correctly. However this did not give me a top down view which lead a lot of missing detail form the top. 

I feel like my model holds fairly close to a TIE fighter, however I feel like a lot of detail is missing, especially on the center portion, however due to my struggle to find source material I struggled with this are, which would be my main improvement on this ship.

Assignment Model 1 : X-Wing

The first model I made is the X-Wing, which I chose because it is a classic icon of the original trilogy, featured in some of the most prolific scenes.
I faced many issues in building this model, the most notable being the nosecone and the cockpit. These were simply an issue of creating vertices and moving them into the correct position. In the case of the cockpit it was to create the right size and shaped polygons to make the windows. The nose cone was a real challenge as simply picking the correct starting shape proved a lot more difficult than is seemed at first. However with time I found that I could make accurate shapes with manipulating vertices.
The main techniques and tools I found useful on this model is the pro boolean tool, which I used to make the detailing on the back part of the body on the ship. I made a cutter out of a box by cutting other shapes out of it, then using that to cut out detail. I believe this makes for a more accurate ship.
The other technique I used a lot in this model is the spline and lathe. This technique was used in creating the guns and engines, which I think came out effectively, particularly the guns. The engines could be improved upon, as once lathed it would not let me boolean out the shape needed for the font and back of the engine for the intake and output. which is the biggest change I would make.  To create the splines I used the schematics I found online ant wookiepedia, as seen below.

These schematics were invaluable in creating accurate splines for the engines and the guns, as well as the general shape and scale of the entire model.

There are a few improvements that could be made on the model, which would increase the realism which would be important if using the model in an advert or film, however in a game the model would be perfectly suited. One improvement would be increased detailing on the wings, which could be done with connections and manipulation of vertices. Another would be the aforementioned intake and output detailing on the engines, as well as their placement which was difficult to do.

Notes on colleagues work

http://jackperry3dmodelling.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/desolate-village-practice-splines-and.html?showComment=1383857312897#c5830471881048841453

http://mac3dmodelling.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/castle-exercise.html?showComment=1383857565971#c5188502056147189167

My thoughts on the models and techniques.

Through these six weeks I have learnt a range of techniques. The one I have found most useful is the boolean and pro boolean tool. I tend to use the pro boolean tool more as I find it makes a cleaner cut. In my models I have found use in the tool by using pro boolean to make a shape to cut out of the main shape to make some detailing on the main body to create a more realisitic shape, especially when creating manmade structures, such as my assignment work, In particular the back section of the X-wing.

Village

Here I have a village I made to destroy, except once made, I had a real problem with using the boolean and proboolean tool, which I have used many times. In this case however, whenever I try to remove the shape, it deletes the entire face of the house it is touching. So I have decided to leave my suburban street as is, and revisit the issue at a later date. Nevertheless, here is my village/suburban street, ready to be destroyed to fit into a game like the Walking Dead.

Update and moodboard

Amidst modelling my ships for the assignment I realised my blog work had fallen through the cracks, so I will catch up these parts now.

Here is my mood board of my favourite ships from the star wars franchise. For this assignment I have decided to model an x-wing, a TIE fighter and the infamous Fett ship, the Slave1. However I only 2 of these ships will follow on to my animation assignment, as I am going to recreate the famous "running the trench"scene from A New Hope when they destroy the first deathstar. I chose to model the slave 1 as well instead of Darth Vader's TIE fighter as the two TIE fighters would be too similar, and the Slave1 can show off some other modelling skills.

Assignment blog pt.1

Here is my pre detail X-Wing. The detail I am yet to add is the nose cone and the finer detailing on the back. I was considering detailing the front of the engines with the inverted t and hollowing, but upon trying this I could not make it work, as it would not let me cookie cut it out with the boolean or pro boolean tool, or with extrusion on the polygons.