Starfighter!

[[R_H]]

Why all the fixed guns? Why not have the two located adjacent to the cockpit in a dorsal or ventral turret.

+1 to it having a swoopie/curvy look

[Teleros]

I tihnk I'm in agreement with salm here on the "feathers". If you want them still... it might work better if they folded out for atmospheric flight, landing, or something like that I suppose.

Also, six guns? I'm standing by my previous comments on them.

[Fuzzy_Modem]

Retexturing... just the fuselage thus far... wip.

[Fuzzy_Modem]

Tweaked.











I'm satisfied with the feathers/teeth now. Back to re-texturing...

[Teleros]

Agreed, a definite improvement re the feathers / teeth.

[Havok]

Yeah that looks much better.

[Fuzzy_Modem]

Progress:

[Vympel]

The landing gear make it look like its balance is ... precarious. You might need some more surface area, maybe double wheels.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Or maybe just skids instead. It is a VTOL aircraft, right?

[Scottish Ninja]

I imagine that wheels are useful, since they make moving it around on the ground a lot easier, even if you don't have to take off on them. Skids aren't so great for tugs pulling fighters into and out of hangars.

[Gil Hamilton]

Why does a starfighter need to retract those manuevering/propulsion quills when the afterburner is in use?

[Fuzzy_Modem]

Back to work on this one after having been distracted by the StarCraft 2 Propaganda Poster contest, as well as StarCraft 2 it's self, for several months.





Improved landing gear:

[Coyote]

Very nice. Different. I like the non-standard styling. Reminds me of the P-90 SMG in a way.

[Fuzzy_Modem]

I had this crazy idea to actually model the detail on the wings using sub-d surfaces, but right now it looks more like I've thrown globs of clay at the wing and they've stuck like a 3D Jackson Pollock painting. Screenshots to come...

I guess I'm looking for advice. I might try again with polys, but I wanted it to look nice and smooth close up...

[salm]

I had this crazy idea to actually model the detail on the wings using sub-d surfaces, but right now it looks more like I've thrown globs of clay at the wing and they've stuck like a 3D Jackson Pollock painting. Screenshots to come...

I guess I'm looking for advice. I might try again with polys, but I wanted it to look nice and smooth close up...

Meh, you´ve allready got the thing unwrapped and textured. It should be easy to create a displacement map if you absolutely need to. Personally i think a bump or normal map should do the job unless you want to do extreme closeups.

[Fuzzy_Modem]

I have never been able to get Displacement maps to work on poly models in Maya. They just quadruple the render time while destroying the mesh in post. Any suggestions?

_____________________

I gave up on the sub-d details, which looked something like this:


-and I'm refining the wing and fuselage texture:



A lot of my other objects have boring or ugly textures, and I'll eventually replace them...

Also, this fighter is a prototype designed by a female pilot in my comic book. Does it say "feminine aesthetic" to you?

[Fuzzy_Modem]

A bit more exposition:

It's never been flown before. It was designed by a female character, but manufactured by her brother as a surprise gift, and is therefore in shiny, showroom condition at the time the scene takes place. I will dirty it up for future sequences, and eventually I'll need to crash it.

It's intended to be a speedy jack of all trades, master of none.

On the battlefield it will be outnumbered 10-1 by fighters of an inferior technological level (somewhere between WW2 and Vietnam)

It's very distant future tech, and it's aerodynamics will be determined by (an invisible) kinetic shield. I titled this thread "StarFighter" to avoid the issue of aerodynamics, but in actuality this will be an atmospheric fighter.

[edit]
As a super-quick for instance, how does this look:

[Fuzzy_Modem]

Okay, howabout this:

[Fuzzy_Modem]

Looking at tricked out motorcycles for inspiration...




What do you suppose the third wheel is for? Stability maybe?


Duh. >forehead smack< Chrome! My model needs chrome!

[Fuzzy_Modem]

Too blue?

[Fuzzy_Modem]

Less blue, more yellow:



Adding more cockpit detail now...

[salm]

I have never been able to get Displacement maps to work on poly models in Maya. They just quadruple the render time while destroying the mesh in post. Any suggestions?

I have no experience with Maya but depending on the rendere you´re using you might need a very high resolution mesh to make displacement maps work properly. Some renderers subdivide the mesh on the fly when rendering a displaced object but some don´t.

[Fuzzy_Modem]

All my textures are all 4096x4096, but when I apply as a Dmap, even at almost invisible contrast differential, my mesh invariably turns into a ball of spikes.

On a separate note:
...I really like Sub-D modeling in Maya. It's like working with clay. I really like poly modeling in Maya, it's like working with wood. I hate NURBS modeling in Maya. It's like trying to paper mache a swarm of bees each anchored to lead weights with fishing line.

[Fuzzy_Modem]

Cockpit progress:

[salm]

All my textures are all 4096x4096, but when I apply as a Dmap, even at almost invisible contrast differential, my mesh invariably turns into a ball of spikes.

The mesh needs to be very high res, the textures not necessarily. So you´d have to up the iterations of the Maya equivalent of MeshSmooth (the thingy that subdivides the mesh and makes it rounder).