Da Clumsy Noob's Spaceship Modeling Part 2

[kmanstudios 1,120]

In this part, I will finish up the model and start to prepare it for printing with cutout windows for lighting purposes. The hollowing process will be gone over in another part since I have cleaned up the process and documented it better for that purpose.

 

In this shot you can see where I am actually going into the hangar bay and detailing areas just in case it is ever really seen. This includes what amounts to flight control area (hanging from the center ceiling) and two flight decks. The flight control viewport is a floor to ceiling bay window, so that would give the hangar decks about a 20' height each.

 

Closeup of the bridge area and whatever the aft compartment would be called. If you watched Star Trek: Next Gen, it would be the equivalent of '10 forward;' bar, lounge, diner, etc.

 

 

Here you can see the Bow of the ship and the main docking area when in port.

 

And finally, the details in the freight off and on load planks on the Starboard side.Each time I went in to stamp in smaller details, I had to up the geometry as I went along or the details would become 'too soft' and not really hold. At this juncture, I am ready for a test print at about half - 2/3 size just to see what holds or does not hold.

 

This print shows the very first concept model I slammed together in about an hour or two on the left. It still had that thin topside spine going down the middle. You will also see details that survived the transition from concept and the fully developed model test prints. The coins are a USD quarter and 2 Euro piece for size comparison of details. Printed at .1mm height using standard settings. A few lines, but they are test prints. Even a shot of primer obliterates that. Edit: All prints done on the S5

 

And, now she is ready for window cutouts. Note: I had already done the 'hollowing' process at this point and will be documented in a later part. On this model, I was still developing how I would do it.

3D Coat has a 'depth limiter' when using the 'cut off' tool.  I could choose not to use it when cutting symmetrical windows like these that go all the way through:

 

Or to make sure I only cut through the facing skin of the model and not all the way through such as this area where the arboretum is shown in the green (which is the actual model part that I made to fit inside the walls so that you can see the interior on such large windows.

 

And as I go along, I keep adding or taking away things as I decide to tweak a bit here and there.

 

this shows how the two halves fit together. To accomplish this I made two copies of the full model. This keeps one master in case I screw something up (As I am prone to do sometimes and, clumsy will always be a part of me, and forever a noob, still learning and devising), or have to refine my cuts to better work with the ship's geometry. then I hide all but one copy. That one I cut. Once I am happy with how it is going to work with the geometry, I can then subtract a copy of it from the second full copy of the ship. This will give me two perfectly mated parts when assembly time comes. Also, instead of a straight line, I used angles and such so that it will be easier to mate up all the part areas without perfectly straight lines sliding around.

But, to add lights to the interior, I have to split the model in half. Along the horizontal axis will be the best bet, but I also want to follow the geometry of the ship. This is the top part with the arboretum visible in green:

 

And the interior of the hollowed top half. The arboretum, in green, has been subtracted out of the bottom half so it can mate up during assembly.

 

This is the bottom half without the arboretum....

 

And with the arboretum so that you can how it mates up against the wavy interior geometry.

 

There are a couple of things that I would like to review from questions on the previous post. This is not pure poly modeling. Thought it started out that way because, well, that is where I started, 99% of this would not be possible without the voxels. Well, at least within the scope of how I approached this in such a free form, design on the fly way. It most definitely could have been made with poly's and very traditional modeling techniques. But, to make sure I have a manifold object, with no interpenetrating geometry, ready to slice and print, voxels made life so much easier.

 

The other question was about time. That is hard to answer mainly because I was playing with ideas on this and exploring techniques. It also paved the way for me to make my own mold negatives for vacuum forming on another project and upcoming projects. These techniques have been refined a bit and that is why it is not presented here. Why show a sorta ok way to do it when I did get a better way figured?

 

But, there is a difference between 'production time needs' and 'let us have fun' desires. In this case, most definitely in the 'have fun' category. As mentioned, the first concept model took only about 2 hours. It was passable, but I was not happy and really wanted to do it right.

 

Next part: Designing the base and making it ready to pass wires into the model and power outlet needs for LED lighting and fibre optic lighting and power switching. Edit: It keeps throwing this extra picture in no matter how many times I go in and delete it. So, sorry for that......

Edited September 29, 2018 by kmanstudios

[TMicke 23]

Thank you for yet another great posting. You really are inspiring.

Yesterday I downloaded 3dcoat and I think I like it alot. Now when winter is approaching I’m hoping for some quality time in front of the screen trying to learn how to make some nice models.

And that is a really nice looking print! What filament did you use?

Edited September 30, 2018 by TMicke

[kmanstudios 1,120]

3 hours ago, TMicke said:

What filament did you use?

That is UM White TPLA. It does print nicely.

 

And, thank you.

 

I hope you enjoy 3D Coat. I know I do. It has a lot of power and also has the ability to do mesh modeling as well as voxels. I just am very familiar with 3DS MAX and use that for my basic mesh/poly modeling needs. But the program is very tgood with being able to work in a flexible way.

 

Do not forget to look at Gumroad and do searches for '3D Coat brushes' or'3D Coat Alphas.' This will give you a lot of sources to download or cheaply purchase. Very nice stuff out there. Great time savers.

 

In the next part you will see how I had to use 3D Coat for boolean ops for the stand. And, that meant back into voxels from an almost completed model in 3DS MAX. It jsut solves that messy mesh boolean issue that plagues the mesh based programs. It is the curse of boolean ops in mesh. No mesh program is immune.

[TMicke 23]

Yeah, 3D Coat made sense to me, I’m very impatient and perhaps a bit to intolerant when I try new programs. If I cant understand a thing and the menus look like something from a cockpit of an 787 then I’m off to the next. Tried Zbrush and that gave me that cockpit anxiety ?

I’m well aware of the term ‘steep learning curve’, but what can I say. Sometimes I go a few laps around programs and end up with one of those I rejected the most.

 

I realize I have a ton of new terms to learn, like the difference between voxel and mesh wich I understand is pretty much as basic as it gets ?. For starters I’m aiming at beeing able to clean up some scans that is beeing shared.

 

Just want to say that I very much appreciate your postings like this one, and many of your other postings too of course...

[kmanstudios 1,120]

Here is the basic difference between a Voxel and Mesh. A mesh is a set of planar faces. You are restricted to those4 sets of straight lines between each corner point on that plane.

 

A voxel is a cube. And it is a way of sampling areas in 3D. So, voxels interpret the surfaces of those gazillion little cubes that make up a surface. You would think that would slow things down, but they are blazingly fast to work with. But, even then you can outrun your memory on your system.

 

This is an actually decent explanation (more in depth than I gave) of what a voxel is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel

 

The only thing to really keep in mind in the beginning is that voxels are very plastic and allow a great deal of freedom. And they really zip right through any boolean operations you can want without creating a mess. And, mesh based booleans can create a huge mess. Missing faces, errant vertices, flipped normals, or, just make it disappear if the mesh is void.

 

Zbrush and 3DCoat are very similar in some ways under the hood. ZBrush uses Pixols and 3DCOat voxels. The end result is the same. It is really the interface that makes a difference. If it makes sense to you, then that is the one to go with. Price can enter into it, but you should always use the program that makes sense to you. Price is much easier to overcome. But they both offer tools that can push, pull, indent, outdent ( ?), stamp, extrude, smear, smudge, use alphas, etc. It is a lot like 3D painting on surfaces.

 

ZBrush does this thing called dynamesh which is an optimization of the results out to mesh. 3DCoat does the same thing during output to a format that can be accessed by other programs such as slicers and mesh based products like meshmixer, maya or 3DS MAX. You can output to quads (4 sided mesh) or tris (3 sided mesh). I usually just optimize it out using defaults.

 

I routinely work with a model that can have up to 60 million voxels. It can get slow when that high, but can be done. The spaceship model above was about 20 Million Voxels to keep the details when all was said and done.

Edited September 30, 2018 by kmanstudios

[cloakfiend 995]

Cockpit anxiety, lol.

[TMicke 23]

@kmanstudios

What version would you say I’m looking for?

https://3dcoat.com/buy/

 

I cant find/make out differences between amateur and 3DCprinting versions.

The price matters but most of all I want a program that lets me be more than restricted if I manage to get into modeling.

 

Edit,

Maybe I need both amateur and 3DCprint... hmmmm

Edited September 30, 2018 by TMicke

[kmanstudios 1,120]

Start off with free and try it out. The pro version lets you rip into it.

[frankrheredneck 1]

Thank you for this posting. You really are making me look at how far I have to go yet in learning cad. I also inspires  me to keep going