Falcon Texturing Initiated

Falcon Texturing
23/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov


Sup?
How are all of you doing. Here comes the final post that is to do with the texturing. The Falcon proved to be the most difficult to texture as during the testing faze of texturing it, it showed many weaknesses to the model. This is why, an updated post was created in order to explain the changes that were underdone to the model.

 The first challenge was the small circle in the middle, which unlike the tie fighter was not separated from the front place. This is why the knife cut tool had to be used in a very small manner in order to create a small panel.

 Both the top and bottom window used once again the phong material, which made the windows more and more polished and professionally looking.

 The top is with the pre-edits of the surface. While it does show the final version of the colours that will be used, the tiles needed to be upgraded.

 Front lights used the standard material, which was with a higher brightness option in the special effects. While not visible in editing mode, the render preview did make it look much more wizzard.

And thus ends the texturing section. Hope you did enjoy it. Coming soon will be the next milestone which will be the editing and rendering section

Crusier Texturing Initiated

Cruiser Texturing
21/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov

As much as one would wish to say that the cruiser was the most hard model to texture (As it is the biggest), the award for a long texturing would have to go to the Millennium Falcon as that model required to be updated in order for the final colours to work correctly (See the images from the Update post for evidence).

Nevertheless, the imperial cruiser was still fun to texture as it required to have one correct colour in order to look nice and proffesional. The rest would have been added with the magic of careful positioning in the scene (Shadows) and the lighting to be just right.

Blin was the most used material for the imperial cruiser with only the front of the tower and the engines receiving a limbert material colour.

While the engines in the pictures do not look like the glowing beams of power from the original model, the preview in rendering mode will show the actual beautiful glow. 

 Both the sides and undersides received a smaller texturing as they did not require as much detail as they offered. The sides were given a slightly darker shade of grey, while the bays for fighters were light with a limbert in white.

Tie Texturing Initiated

Tie Texturing
19/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov

Hello one and all again to the blog, For the next 3 blog posts, I will be discussing how the texturing of each ship went. The reason for the shortness of this section is that similarly to the update section there were not that much items to be done.

So let us start with the smallest and probably quickest ship to be textured.

 For the model, the two most important materials to be used were the "Blin" (Seen around the entire body and outer/Inner solar panels on the wings) and the "Phong" (Used for the creation of the lovely glass panel). The reason for using the Blin material in stead of the standard Lambert was that the Lambert made the fighter look very bland. Also in all of the Star Wars Books, the imperial navy was always portrayed with vehicles that were always clean, polished or shiny. This is why it was more appropriate to use the slightly more expensive (come rendering) but still light material, known as blin. This made the fighter look more polished and closer to the real model.

 The front glass panel of the Tie fighter was done with the most expensive (come rendering) material from the 3 that one used for his models. The "Phong" is known to give the effect of polished glass or metall of the chrome alloy. This is why, it was used for the window panel. It was possible to use the Blin as well, however, it did not give the same polished effect as this one did.

 Finally the back of the fighter received the same treatment as the front of the cruiser`s tower. For more info, check the previous post.

 Overall the model look very nice and realistic with the current colours and is worth some brownie points.

Small update on the Millennium Falcon

A small update
15/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov

Hello one and all. This post will be the last one that is in the update section as the Tie Fighter was perfect enough (In one`s opinion to not need any further updates). As you can see in the images, some segments of the falcon have added colours, however, these were there just as an experiment. For example the two yellow circles are the lights of the falcon and are of "limbert" type as this type of material allows the lights to have a glow effect and look very 80`s.

The only update that this svelte beauty needed was the extrusion of all of the panels on the main body as otherwise, the colour that would be applied for some of the panels would cover the entire segment, which was not the desired effect. Thus the brilliant idea of using the faces function and extruding each of the desired pannels allowed for the effect in the two images to appear.

Small update on the Imperial Cruiser

A Small Update
13/11/2016
Vasil Nikolov

Hello one and all to the section of post that covers small upgrades to different aircraft that were up for updates. First craft to receive a face-lift is the Imperial cruiser. While the bottom and side of the craft were efficiently detailed, the tower of the cruiser did desire more detail as even in the distance that I wished to use for the rendering, they would still look poorly. This is why, they were first for an update.

The first item that was modified was the mid antennae. While it used to be one long line, the drawings were showing that it was actually four. Also as this was a quick job, I only needed to change the size of the original antenna and then duplicate it another 3 times. Thus as you can see, the mid antenna makes the model look much more professional.
The other segment that needed an update was the two side towers. The images portrayed that they would be waved by several struts. This is why I decided to make half of the original as the camera would not portray the towers in such a close distance that the user would notice the missing extra strutts.

The next big change was the front of the tower, which looked very poor. Upon the testing of textures, one found that the front face was very hard to add illuminates. This is why, the front was updated using the lovely cutting tool. The tool allowed me to precisely cut the shape I wanted and then by using the Extrude function, I was able to push the big base in and place several perfect shapes in a aligned distance. The final result showed a very professionally looking front, which even at a slightly closer distance makes the tower look similar to the "real" tower of a cruiser.

The final updated feature would be the addition of a black limbert background in order for the windows to look more visible, without the need for special lighting to be added, which would make the rendering much more time consuming.

Overall the new tower makes the model look much more professional and similar to the original cruiser. Off course, if the model had to be re-done, the two towers would be more square as the originals would be and the front nose would be remade as it is still slightly incorrect.

1st Conclusion

Overall
1507952
Vasil NIkolov

In Conclusion, the building of these models proved to be quite an interesting initiation to 3D Design and Modelling. I believe that the models for the animation proved to be of sufficient detail. While some may argue that the Falcon or the Imperial cruiser might have been more detailed, I believe that they would do much better with textures rather than extra details as too-much detail would lead to longer rendering time and stress on the GPU. Nevertheless, I would like to stress the importance of the In-Class exercises which provided me with the skills that helped me build the models for my coursework. Interestingly, when I was originally going to build the Tie Fighter, followed by the Falcon and Destroyer/Cruiser, however, my lecturer tipped me that the Falcon usually takes longer to build. This is why, the Falcon was the last in the line even though, it actually took me less time to build it than the destroyer.
Nevertheless, I am really excited to start texturing these models soon.
Wishing all a lovely week,
Vasil

Model Build: Engines (Check), Escape Pods (Nearly there), Bits that hang around (Check), Weirdly shaped holes (definitely there now)

Safety?
1507952
Vasil Nikolov



As you can see, the final parts of the Falcon are up for assembly. the exhaust ports, engines, engine covers and some satellites and wiring needed to be added.

The antenna was the first item to be added.  I used a sphere and then used a cube to cut it and re-shape it.

The exhaust ports proved to be very time-consuming as they were made from several shapes and then needed to be glued together and tilted to the correct angle.

The bottom of the aircraft is probably the only place of disappointment would be the bottom of the aircraft as there were no extra features  (a part from the bottom cannon).