NASA What-If Cruiser

[PhantomCruiser]

It looks as if it'd be at home in the "Expanse" universe.

[Thales]

Originally Posted by dhanners

Cool design. What is the theory behind the four large U-shaped structures that connect the middle and rear sections? While I get the aesthetics of it, they seem a complex and over-engineered means of connection when a simple truss structure would accomplish the same thing, especially since the separation isn't that great of a distance. Or do they perform some additional function?

I have no idea. I found the picture on deviant art and thought it would make a good model. It looked plausible enough from my mind's eye, and I thought it looked "cool". This was very much a design exercise and not a starship design project. I wanted to learn a bunch of tricks to use to make a studio scale SW Blockade Runner.

I have a bunch of images I've found of concept art that I think would make interesting models.

And here is the detail as of last night.

[dhanners]

Makes sense. Like I said, I get the aesthetics of it. It's just that when designing space hardware, simpler/less complex is usually better. And easier to build.

[redwolf28386]

Looks like a great model in the works!

[ShadowCory]

Looking good! Blender is great, I use it myself, but one reason your quite powerful cpu and gpu are struggling is because Blender hasn't figured out a good way to handle undo. It has to keep your entire scene in memory. I'm not technically minded enough to tell you why, but i did run across the conversation that explained it a few weeks ago. As your scene gets bigger and bigger, your machine will get slower and slower. Other software packages have solutions for this, offloading computations and referencing and such so you can work with huge scenes without taxing your hardware so much. You can work with multimillion polygon sculpts in Z Brush, or hugely complex meshes with super high res HDR maps in Maya, and not have your machine struggle like it would if you had the same thing in Blender.
The workaround I use is to break complex scenes into separate files to detail out, then bring the pieces back together without all the baggage of things like both hi and lo res versions of meshes, maps that dont apply to the part you are working with, etc.

[Thales]

Originally Posted by ShadowCory

Looking good! Blender is great, I use it myself, but one reason your quite powerful cpu and gpu are struggling is because Blender hasn't figured out a good way to handle undo. It has to keep your entire scene in memory. I'm not technically minded enough to tell you why, but i did run across the conversation that explained it a few weeks ago. As your scene gets bigger and bigger, your machine will get slower and slower. Other software packages have solutions for this, offloading computations and referencing and such so you can work with huge scenes without taxing your hardware so much. You can work with multimillion polygon sculpts in Z Brush, or hugely complex meshes with super high res HDR maps in Maya, and not have your machine struggle like it would if you had the same thing in Blender.
The workaround I use is to break complex scenes into separate files to detail out, then bring the pieces back together without all the baggage of things like both hi and lo res versions of meshes, maps that dont apply to the part you are working with, etc.

I figured out how to better manage the usage of GPU memory, so that is less of a concern now.... But I am getting impatient when baking textures onto the low poly objects. I just don't want to wait for it to grind away for 5-10min.

Your idea of breaking things into parts is a good one and I'm sure I'll have to begin doing that soon. Thanks.

[Thales]

I've done a lot in the last 2 weeks. I think I have all the textures baked and where I like them now. I'm doing some final beauty renderings now. I think that means I'll start unfolding it tomorrow.

[mache777]

Hi Thales

Beautiful work! You have made a great job of the ship. Are they shuttles at the front top?

Sincerely

Tom

[Thales]

Originally Posted by mache777

Hi Thales

Beautiful work! You have made a great job of the ship. Are they shuttles at the front top?

Sincerely

Tom

Thank you. And no, those aren't shuttles. They are an observation deck and the bridge... or so I am assuming. I make this from a concept drawing I found online that looked cool. That was the only concern... "looks cool".

[Thales]

I'm starting to lay out parts.