[WIP] Cardassian Keldeki deck fighter

[Styer_Crisis]

Alright, heres my first attempt, this is very rough and that fact that the cockpit is missing is because i just wanted to see if i could get the hull and wing shape right, and some of the welding imploded while i exporeted, so the tail boom is not reaal dicernable........ utter diasaster, if you ask me

 

[Adm_Z]

The shape looks nearly perfect! Its a great start man.

 

[Hellkite]

Cardassian Deck Fighter spec and layout












Type: Attack fighter
Length: 22 m
Beam: 22 m
Draft: 8 m
Armaments:
Twin pulse disrupters, 12 Protomatter missles

____________________________

That it dose spot on well done SC

 

[Styer_Crisis]

That it dose spot on well done SC

Thanks boss, and i tend to just go by crisis.

i'm starting the final version now, that one has waaaaaay to many welding and lighting errors to fix.

 

[Hellkite]

Roger that I look forward to seeing it

 

[Styer_Crisis]

alright, things are going good and it should be done in a fewmore hours, but just a couple questions....

do you mind if i alter the desgn a bit? what i mean by that is i'd like to stay with a wider "stealth" look, like the top and bottom pics you gave me, and not the sortta "interceptor" look the front and back pics have...

like this:


what do you think?

 

[Hellkite]

I'm ok with it as long as you match the top and bottom profiles .as you did in you first try it was perfect

But I would raise the canopy up a little more if it not a little higher there would be blind spots and that equals death in a fighter.

 

[Styer_Crisis]

yes, the canopy isn't fineshed yet, but i planed to raise it and do an impression in the top hull so the pilot could see straight back

 

[thunderfoot]

If I may suggest something, I think a "Malcolm type" or bubble canopy would look pretty decent here. Perhaps side by side with one slightly aft of the other one.

 

[Hellkite]

Malcolm hood / bubble canopy would not fit the over all Cardassian profile my friend

See is dose not look right to me given the angular flow of this fighter

 

[Styer_Crisis]

At the rate i'm hitting walls in my skill level this may take longer than expected...........

 

[Hellkite]

No rush or no dead line don't sweet it take your time

 

[Styer_Crisis]

It looks llike a saber class had a heart attack over here.

 

[Majestic]

You sure decided to jump head first into a rather complex model. It's a very good start, it takes a more skilled model to do a low poly model than a higher poly one, remember that. If you can do low poly models and make them look almost as good as a high poly you'll have no issues with higher poly ones down the track.

 

[Styer_Crisis]

Aside from the tail element and the missles, this baby is done, and my arthritus in my hand hurts so bad its not even funnny........

Top


Bottom


Angle with disrupters in view

 

[Hellkite]

Excellent work Crisis

Sorry that it is causing you to be in pain

 

[Majestic]

Yes modelling can really give your mouse hand some issues, mine plays up on the cold days when I do a lot of modelling. Hence why I take rests and the like to try and help it.

Still I look forward to seeing this model textured.

 

[Terra_Inc]

Yes modelling can really give your mouse hand some issues, mine plays up on the cold days when I do a lot of modelling. Hence why I take rests and the like to try and help it.

The same applies to me and texturing. Now I've been doing computer art for years (doing pixel art w/ paint and later paint.net before I moved over into textures) and have a very steady hand (and a 848nm performance laser mouse ), but it still is rather unpleasant after one or two hours, especially if I've been gaming before.

 

[Hellkite]

Why I use a track ball instead of a mouse LOL

Given that young master Jetfreak said that he will be textureing this.

The way I see it is that add Crisis' excellent model here and Jet's magic at art of textureing , it's bound to one fine peace of art.

 

[kjc733]

I'm impressed by how quickly this mesh has progressed. Now to close off that tail
(Hint: extrude a bit out the end on each side, delete the inner faces, then drag the vertices to the centreline (select both sets and shrink them together)and merge them. Took a while to figure that on Serephim).

 

[Styer_Crisis]

I'm going to work on it again today, ToDo:

Tail

Rework Cockpit and maybe disrupters, i don't like how those came out

Missles.

And hellkite, mind if i design the missles in a more "mini-dreadnought" style?

Note: Current Polycount is Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to high.

Stands at 1800, not including missles and tail

Edit, after i finesh this, i could always re-edit it some more and creat a saber varrient, 2 ships one mesh, i like that idea.

 

[kjc733]

1800 - yikes. Bit more than 100 Is that pre or post milkshaping (cos they look like triangles in you images and 900 maya isn't so bad)?

Looking just at the shading, there's waaayy to many unneeded polys on those wings. If they're flat just use a couple of big ones. For example, early Peridhil:

View attachment 5071

That shape is 300 polys in milkshape (give or take), because there's only polys for significant changes in shape. Later on when it needed a slightly rounder saucer I added in a few extra segments, but even so only where I needed to. Fully detailed and finished she's still less than 1800 in milkshape (700 odd maya).

The other thing to remember is that some detail can be textured in. Everyone likes to see proper detail, but things like panels, gun ports, canopy lips will really kill the poly count - and this is a fighter (aka spam).

Don't take this as criticism, she's looking very good and I'm impressed with the speed in which you did it. Just offering some advice (so you don't have to learn it the hard way like I did ). Keep it up.

 

[Styer_Crisis]

1800 - yikes. Bit more than 100 Is that pre or post milkshaping (cos they look like triangles in you images and 900 maya isn't so bad)?

Looking just at the shading, there's waaayy to many unneeded polys on those wings. If they're flat just use a couple of big ones. For example, early Peridhil:



That shape is 300 polys in milkshape (give or take), because there's only polys for significant changes in shape. Later on when it needed a slightly rounder saucer I added in a few extra segments, but even so only where I needed to. Fully detailed and finished she's still less than 1800 in milkshape (700 odd maya).

The other thing to remember is that some detail can be textured in. Everyone likes to see proper detail, but things like panels, gun ports, canopy lips will really kill the poly count - and this is a fighter (aka spam).

Don't take this as criticism, she's looking very good and I'm impressed with the speed in which you did it. Just offering some advice (so you don't have to learn it the hard way like I did ). Keep it up.

1800 is post milk shaping (the poly in maya stands at 450, but thats becuz its a clone half, so the polys double twice, once for export, and once for half clone), i'm trying to work on the wings but i still like the curve they have, working around that is hard, giving up the disrupters would take out a little but not much, the missiles are really going to hurt as well, i'll try deleting some edges and see what happens,

and any bit of help you give is aprecheated, all of it.

 

[kjc733]

can you post a maya screengrab with the mesh highlighted? may help.

 

[Styer_Crisis]

I'm going to be a total idoit and say "how", i can't find the stinkin screancap button

Edit: your a genus kjc, i just removed about 200 needless polys(final model count, atualy about 50) off the wings

 

[kjc733]

. Select the mesh so the lines are visible, then I just do the time honoured technique of pressing Print Screen on the keyboard, then pasting into MS Paint and saving it as a .png (great file type, low size, good res, none of jpeg's blurring)

 

[Styer_Crisis]

and for the longest time i though print screen was broken

 

[Hellkite]

just save the polys by leaving off the Missles rack and replace it with a internal launchers

placement for rack launcher

 

[Styer_Crisis]

As a comprimise, i'm going to contine reducing its pollys so i can have missiles on the wings, i really like that idea, but i'll only do two and i'll just wip up a quick lower poly dread or reduce one of zorgs to put on there.

 

[kjc733]

Or semi recessed weapons bays, that way the missiles can just be textured into a slight box.

As for the mesh (you can make it a solid mesh by pressing "5" in maya, and back to wireframe with "4", will make it easier to see what's flat and what's not) from your earlier shots the area inboard of the wing looks reasonably flat, so you could probably remove edges from there too. Part of the problem I think is starting with a sphere, I always find cubes are easier to keep control of the count with.



Also are you sure of your poly count? That number there says 646 for half the mesh, which means a total of 1300ish for the full one, and 2600ish in milkshape?