Lathe and Loft

Before beginning this project, I decided to check out what my classmates had come up with. I was impressed by what I saw, enough so that I knew I was going to have to up the ante. I preferred the idea of a single large project over 6 smaller ones, so from there I started brainstorming on possible subjects. In truth I had been wanting to model Serenity for a while. I was going to wait until we got into editable polys so I could do the beaut' justice, but after looking her over I decided that I could do it. 

I googled for some reference images, luckily I found all of the orthographic views that I needed, and arranged them in my workspace. I decided to start with the hyperdrive and the wing thrusters because they were ideal candidates for the lathe technique. I used orthographic top view to trace out the wing, and switched to front view to draw the path for lofting the wing spline. 

Now for the hard part, the main base of the ship. I won't go into all of the ways I tried that didn't work. In the end I made the base in three parts: Body, Neck, and Cockpit. I used a similar technique on each of them. Originally I tried to draw the shape from the front view and have the path run along the center of the ship, but this lead to some complications. I found the easiest way was to draw the shape from the side and the path going across the width of it. I duplicated the shape 10 times, then set each shape in 10% increments along the path using loft. This was necessary to get the parts rounded. I scaled the shapes appropriately by going to Modifiers>Loft>Shape, then selecting the shapes I wanted to scale. I did them in pairs to get them exact, such as scaling the shapes at 0% and 100% at the same time, 10% and 90%, etc. For some of the lofts I used more than 1 shape spline to get the forms right. I did basically the same thing to make the neck and cockpit as well. The details on the hyperdrive were made using loft in a similar fashion. 

The part that curves around and under the hyperdrive I made using a variation of lathe and loft, the curved part was made by drawing a rectangle, moving the pivot point to the center of the hyperdrive, and then lathing it. I decreased the lathe to like 312 degrees instead of the full 360, so it would be open on the bottom. Then I put a bend modifier to give it some curve. The parts that come off of that, under the hyperdrive I made using loft. 

 The hyperdrive and thruster effects were made with a fire environment effect. Instead of explaining it I will just link you to the help file that I read to do it. 3ds Max Help: Fire Environment Effect


Now to unveil the ship! 








SERENITY, firefly class! :D

Yes friends, I am a browncoat. I just finished watching Firefly through for the 4th time and Serenity for the 2nd or 3rd, so I was feeling in the mood to pay tribute 

Ammo Room (Lighting)

I fidgeted with lighting for a couple hours, but didn't really get the effect I wanted. I couldn't remember how to use indirect illumination without using mental ray and I couldn't use mental ray because it literally took like 30 minutes to render, maxing out my processor somehow (I doubt it utilizes all of the cores, otherwise that is just insane) which is an AMD Phenom II X4 965, 3.4 GHZ quad core. I did render once anyways just to see how it would turn out. I suppose I could have reduced the resolution since photobucket reduces it when I upload anyways:

I would have liked the ceiling shadow transition into the light to be a bit softer perhaps since it is on a rough surface there would be diffuse reflection. I'd also perhaps dim the light a bit so the moonlight coming in through the bars has more impact.