StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Meh, the necro on Graph's got me thinking on rendering via the plug in for sketchup for Kerkythea on some old models I made. Definitely look better but I'm by no means ready to change jobs.

Here is a series of three ships representing an evolution of Earth craft from roughly 2100 to 2154, first two being Warp three craft and the last the newer anti matter powered warp five craft.

UES Discovery NX-301 Warp three colony/freighter circa 2080.




UES Aegis NX-340. Warp three combat vessel based of an earlier design of the Columbia NX-325. The Columbia Block II program became the Aegis class circa 2120 to fend against Nausican pirates.






Then the good old Daedalus Class NX-500, earth's first warp five vessel and the ship type that fought the Earth Romulan war.











I'm having a hard time smoothing the edges especially on the saucer section if anyone had some advice. And for some reason my numbers on the hangar doors didn't make the leap to render. Odd.

not a lot you can do to smooth in sketchup short of adding more segments.

Use the eraser tool and hold control while erasing the edges and they'll smooth right over. Or open up the 'soften/smooth' window and select the offending geometry and do it that way, if you don't have edges you want hard.

If it's a rendering thing (i.e.: Smooth in sketchup but rendering jagged), there's usually a setting to soften the way the edges show up. I think in Twilight (my renderer of choice) it's the 'hard edge angle' and increasing that softens the edges.

Word of warning though- that'll only smooth the edges; the polygons they create (back of nacelle, top-down view saucer, etc) will still look polygonal. You can always clean that up in PS/Gimp easily enough, but if you want a really high-resolution no-post-work-required model, you need to use higher segment count circles. You can change that right when you're drawing the circle (the UCS will let you type a new edgecount and hit enter before drawing) or after you've drawn it as long as it's not push-pulled or otherwise connected to many lines.