Starship

[trekie015]

Hi, I've been experimenting with making animations from you guys' awesome meshes and now I would like to make a starship of my own. I was wondering if any of you could give me pointers.
Thanks,
~The D Man

[Chainsaw_NL]

Hi, nice one bud.

1st if you new to modeling start off with something small. Otherwise you will get discouraged by the amount off work. Start with a shuttle or a phaser or something.
If your a bit more experienced you can try something bigger. Decide what you want to do and get a blueprint or a lot of pictures of it. A lot of blueprints can be found here http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints-main2.php
Using planes you can make a box of the blueprints as a reference guide.

Start with the basic shape, then add more detail. Decide what your going to draw in 3d or what you will add as texture.

If you have more detailed questions. I'm sure there are people here who can help.

[trekie015]

Oh, Thanks, I love that site...

[Raul Mamoru]

Hi, Trekie015

Avoid looking at the ship or object as a block.
Things are formed by aggregation of smaller parts.

The Enterprise and Clydesdale or the collosal Titanic have their own complexity.

Try to take things apart:
Bridge,
Warp drive,
Main section,
Engineering,
Pylons,
Torpedo launchers,
and so on.

Cut the schematic as the pieces, and do the same as Chainsaw explained above.
Create separate files for each part.

When the pieces were concluded, join the parties - merge in the main file - and complete the work for resize, position and start texturing.

An exemple...
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/7396/72wdpartwip.png