New from S7 Shipyards

[DuckofTindalos]

Oh dear, I smell Spaceship Yamato a'comin...[:D]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Oh dear, I smell Spaceship Yamato a'comin...[:D]

Not an exact copy, but you could say I was inspired by good old Anime Mecha for this one. [:D]

[tjhkkr]

Wow, I look forward to seeing this in its savage splendor...[&o]

[Shark7]

Well, it may be a while, I'm also running with the idea of the classic 'Fying Saucer' type. Thinking they would be fitting for an aquatic alien like the ackdarian. [;)]

[WoodMan]

Shark what program are you using to Render your models?  I tried some tutorials in Wings3D but they all stop at the end of the modelling process and I have not a clue how to actually render them!

[Shark7]

There are two that I would recommend.

Vue 9 Pioneer
Bryce 7

And there are many others. These are probably the most popular ones. But certainly any program that allows you to import wavefront object files and has a render engine will work. You can do a search and probably find others. Just find the one you are most comfortable with. Unfortunately with most of these products, you will probably have to register it to even try it.

Basically you need to export your Wings3d model as a wavefront object (.obj) file after you have set all your material zones, then import it into the rendering program. Set what lighting you want then you can render it to or save the render as a .png file. You'll almost certainly want to run it through a program like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop to add in more details then optimize the .png file (in my original shipset, that would be be the red and white stripes, etc).

You can also set a UV map with Wings3d, but I've found that simply using material zones works for this, since the models end up so small as to lose the details anyway.

[Shark7]

Oh dear...its the invasion from Mars... [:D]

[tjhkkr]

Those look like Adromedians from SFB...
I mean I know you did not copy those ships... but they are cool.

[Igard]

I'm working on the Andromedans for the Kirk era mod. Yes, they do look similar, but then most saucer shaped hulls do.

It's looks very cool indeed, Shark7. [8D]

[Shark7]

Pretty much all flying saucers look the same...the bigger ships will get less saucer shaped though (to take full advantage of the way DW scales them).

[Slyke57]

Nice Shark7!  The in game shot looks very well done, and kudos for making an entire shipset!  You've inspired me to have another go at modding ships again.

[Shark7]

And it starts again:

Escort

[Shark7]

Explorer

[Shark7]

Frigate

[Shark7]

Destroyer...

You may notice the smaller ships are short and fat, and the bigger they get, the longer they get. I figured that knowing how DW handles ship scaling, why not take advantage of it. [;)]

[WoodMan]

They look great Shark.  I know how hard it is to model these things, I tried, its hard!  We need little green men now [:D]

[Tacit_Exit]

I wonder if you could mimic the attitude of these guys as a DW race [:D]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

They look great Shark.  I know how hard it is to model these things, I tried, its hard!  We need little green men now [:D]

Hehe, that or your classic UFO 'Gray' alien.

[lordxorn]

Shark great job, love the functional look of your set.

I have started dabbling in my own custom set, and I really love the Alias Sketchbook Pro 2011 (Free for College Students). It allows you to do a mirror drawing so sketching up symmetrical ships is easier. Although I have checked out Wings3d and think that messing with those shapes and teasing things here and there would be fun as well.

The thing about DW is that the ship is all about looking good from the top down perspective.

Maybe I will sketch in Sketchbook Pro, then import the sketch into Wings to work up the 3d model for further tweaking. Then to PS for coloring (which I suck at).

My goal is to try an create a realistic ship set like what would the US Navy want to build?

[lordxorn]

ORIGINAL: Haree78

ORIGINAL: Igard

It doesn't make any difference what size images you use. I generally go with 500x500, but say I put a 400x400 ship in the same shipset, it won't make any difference.

I've found the size makes a difference but only to get things like engines working. If I have a 500x500 image for a ship which is actually scaled a lot smaller sometimes the engines refuse to work. I scale it down to 200x200 and redraw a line of pure blue and bang the engines are working.
I suspect this in game scaling is the cause of erroneous lights showing up. I just wish I knew what the native resolution was for each ship because they are sometimes different sizes in the different families for all the game ships.

If you look at the DW model, their smaller ships are smaller canvas size. So maybe scale your sets in the same way. 500x500 is only really necessary for maybe cruiser and up, which gives nice detail.