This has been fun to follow, the countless revisions to a 3d model are very familiar! The cover is looking great, it is neat to see the render, like a cover song of the "original" that I have in my mind's eye, of a moment in Ejoq's universe.
Your last post suggested that a critical eye with some distance from the project would be of some value. The image in my mind comes from a universe where ships still need guns, people are as weird as ever, and shit happens. In this world I see space-grit worn paint, patches where someone installed a tower in the wrong place and a long gouge in the hull from something that always comes up at the bar when Johnson starts drinking graino. It is an imperfect world and the adventure starts when things go sideways.
One of the difficulties with 3d modelling is the perfection with which the software renders the models. Unless you model in the history of the object's life, the rendered objects have a tendency to look like they are not real, like they haven't the scars that prove its existence in a real world. From long experience I know that this kind of thing is really hard to model in 3d, but not too bad to do with a brush and paint, or other traditional artists' media. I propose that if you have an artist friend, ask them if they would age things a bit. This may be easier with a good tablet and stylus/digital "brushes" than real paint over a large format print, but a once-over by hand somehow or other would bring it out of the virtual realm, and might be an overlay to consider.
Thanks again for so many hours of adventure and wonder,
Great points! I passed on your observations to Ignatz, and he says I can quote him, so here goes:
"These observations have merit.
"Of course, you and I both know that the ship is armed although this is not obvious to the casual observer. The missile/charpac turret underneath the bridge is first and most evident of these armaments. Our private conversations about the size of the approved missile class for commercial vessels brought us around to a very modestly sized defense turret... firing off missiles that are generally not longer than a meter or two in length. Relative to the size of the ship itself this defensive missile turret is thus... um... difficult to ascertain as such unless one takes a good, close, thoughtful look. But it IS there and you might point it out. That there is only a missile pod on the belly of the ship is, of course, because for 98% of its operational time the top side is mated up to a cargo frame making a unit mounted there completely redundant. This being your universe I'm sure you can provide even more enlightenment on this issue.
"The other and in some ways more important portions of the defense system - missile pod drones, char-pac drones, sensor drones and the lantern gun drones which mate themselves up to cargo frame - did not effectively end up in either the front or back cover illustrations, although you and I expended a bit of quality time in considering this question. Again, relatively small for the punch that they carry, but simply not visible relative to the size and resolution restrictions of the graphics. You might direct Dana to the Sketchfab page to see the other items that didn't make it into the graphics. https://sketchfab.com/Ignatz/collections/stardrifter-99db3e5280114fc7865167b8a647bd6b
"Dana's comment as per texturing is well taken. Guilty as charged. Although there is a fair amount of modeling in evidence, ladders, railings, jump emitters and so forth, the limitations of time, software packages (price?) - not to mention a touch of 'space ship burnout' after all that work on the models themselves - dictated that the texturing of the models is somewhat lacking, insofar as my attention in that department was rather restricted to decal work for ship name, registration number, cargo labeling and so forth. The project had already dragged along for so long... for how many months... a year? Silly, stubborn me. Guess I won't get that much coveted phone call from the Pixar animation people. 🙁 Pointing out that, of course, these models are posted on Sketchfab, free to use, reuse and abuse and desired and Dana, or anyone else for that matter, has permission to give it a go... or even on your rule book graphics directly (or so I should guess)."
And:
"A last note about the general lack of texturing...
"The decision not to get crazy with the texturing had to do with the size of that texturing relative to the viewing distance for us (the observers) relative to the surface of the ship... such that surface irregularities, pitting, smaller scratches and so forth would have faded back into a general mess... being, thus, not worth the trouble. However, general color variations over distance would still be (somewhat) visible... so I still grant Dana his point on the texturing question.
"Maybe this is all for the best, since due to the complexity of the mesh work on the objects I already ran into some file size constraint issues when uploading the models to Sketchfab. Would have been much worse with a bunch of embedded texture files."
-David (and Ignatz, but like with the Tottenberg design, mostly Ignatz)
Hello David and Ignatz,
This has been fun to follow, the countless revisions to a 3d model are very familiar! The cover is looking great, it is neat to see the render, like a cover song of the "original" that I have in my mind's eye, of a moment in Ejoq's universe.
Your last post suggested that a critical eye with some distance from the project would be of some value. The image in my mind comes from a universe where ships still need guns, people are as weird as ever, and shit happens. In this world I see space-grit worn paint, patches where someone installed a tower in the wrong place and a long gouge in the hull from something that always comes up at the bar when Johnson starts drinking graino. It is an imperfect world and the adventure starts when things go sideways.
One of the difficulties with 3d modelling is the perfection with which the software renders the models. Unless you model in the history of the object's life, the rendered objects have a tendency to look like they are not real, like they haven't the scars that prove its existence in a real world. From long experience I know that this kind of thing is really hard to model in 3d, but not too bad to do with a brush and paint, or other traditional artists' media. I propose that if you have an artist friend, ask them if they would age things a bit. This may be easier with a good tablet and stylus/digital "brushes" than real paint over a large format print, but a once-over by hand somehow or other would bring it out of the virtual realm, and might be an overlay to consider.
Thanks again for so many hours of adventure and wonder,
Dana Grund
Dana,
Great points! I passed on your observations to Ignatz, and he says I can quote him, so here goes:
"These observations have merit.
"Of course, you and I both know that the ship is armed although this is not obvious to the casual observer. The missile/charpac turret underneath the bridge is first and most evident of these armaments. Our private conversations about the size of the approved missile class for commercial vessels brought us around to a very modestly sized defense turret... firing off missiles that are generally not longer than a meter or two in length. Relative to the size of the ship itself this defensive missile turret is thus... um... difficult to ascertain as such unless one takes a good, close, thoughtful look. But it IS there and you might point it out. That there is only a missile pod on the belly of the ship is, of course, because for 98% of its operational time the top side is mated up to a cargo frame making a unit mounted there completely redundant. This being your universe I'm sure you can provide even more enlightenment on this issue.
"The other and in some ways more important portions of the defense system - missile pod drones, char-pac drones, sensor drones and the lantern gun drones which mate themselves up to cargo frame - did not effectively end up in either the front or back cover illustrations, although you and I expended a bit of quality time in considering this question. Again, relatively small for the punch that they carry, but simply not visible relative to the size and resolution restrictions of the graphics. You might direct Dana to the Sketchfab page to see the other items that didn't make it into the graphics. https://sketchfab.com/Ignatz/collections/stardrifter-99db3e5280114fc7865167b8a647bd6b
"Dana's comment as per texturing is well taken. Guilty as charged. Although there is a fair amount of modeling in evidence, ladders, railings, jump emitters and so forth, the limitations of time, software packages (price?) - not to mention a touch of 'space ship burnout' after all that work on the models themselves - dictated that the texturing of the models is somewhat lacking, insofar as my attention in that department was rather restricted to decal work for ship name, registration number, cargo labeling and so forth. The project had already dragged along for so long... for how many months... a year? Silly, stubborn me. Guess I won't get that much coveted phone call from the Pixar animation people. 🙁 Pointing out that, of course, these models are posted on Sketchfab, free to use, reuse and abuse and desired and Dana, or anyone else for that matter, has permission to give it a go... or even on your rule book graphics directly (or so I should guess)."
And:
"A last note about the general lack of texturing...
"The decision not to get crazy with the texturing had to do with the size of that texturing relative to the viewing distance for us (the observers) relative to the surface of the ship... such that surface irregularities, pitting, smaller scratches and so forth would have faded back into a general mess... being, thus, not worth the trouble. However, general color variations over distance would still be (somewhat) visible... so I still grant Dana his point on the texturing question.
"Maybe this is all for the best, since due to the complexity of the mesh work on the objects I already ran into some file size constraint issues when uploading the models to Sketchfab. Would have been much worse with a bunch of embedded texture files."
-David (and Ignatz, but like with the Tottenberg design, mostly Ignatz)