Monday 3 February 2014

Kennedy complete-ish


The Kennedy-class 2300AD Star Ship is now in the 'finished' category. That doesn't mean I won't be tweaking it some more - it just means that it's time to move on. I put together the above presentation then closed the file down. I think I'll give it a few days to stew before going back with fresh eyes.

Next, it's back to a long brewing idea about a vast vertical shaft of concrete, filed with gantries, bridges and pipes. A perfect setting for a simple animation. I realised that I might overcome the UV pains experienced in the last stab by creating the tunnel using the following approach:

1. Create a circle, immediately drop the faces to 8, creating an octagon.
2. Extrude the octagon along 'Z' to create a tube.
3. Bevel the edges so soften those corners.
4. Delete all the faces except for one big face and one of the connected bevel faces.
5. Subdivide the remaining big face and add some structural details.
6. Once your happy with the details, create a copy of the face and then rotate it (around the original centre point) by 45 degrees. Repeat this step on each new set of faces until you have an octagon tunnel again.


The result is a highly detailed tunnel that took about 15 minutes to model. Getting the texture mapping is where I came unstuck. I have no idea what I'm doing in either the UV tools or the node editor. Much reading required, followed by much-much practice.


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