X-Wing #5 - Finished Guns

Here is how the gun ended up looking when completely finished. The wing is now complete and will be copied across to the other four sections of the ship.

X-Wing #3 - Guns

As work progressed on the X-Wing i came to realised that on the end of each of the guns there is a curved "C" shape. At first i wasn't sure how to approach this but after some thinking i decided to create a Taurus shape and remove half of the poly's which would leave the desired shape.

While this looks correct initially it might cause issues when rendering as sometimes poly's that are on the inside of an object do not render. If this is the case i may have to come up with another way to do this at a later date. For now however it seems correct.

X-Wing #2 - Engines and Wing

As can be seen above i have started work on the engine and wing of the X-Wing. I once again decided that seeing as all four wings are supposed to be identical i would create just one of the wings and mirror them across to the other corners of the ship once it is complete.

The engines are made up of a series of tubes, cones and cylinders all stacked on top of each other. To ensure they were all correctly in line with each other i used the align tool to centre them all to each others axis. When building this i also used the autogrid to allow me to build each component on top of the other saving time moving the objects around the space.

X-Wing #1

The second model im going to create is that of an X-Wing Starfighter.

To start this off i looked at what basic shapes would be needed to create the overall look of the ship. I managed to break it down to this:

- A rectangle for the main body
- A rectangle for each of the wings
- Tubes and cylinders for both the guns and the engines

Below you can see where i have begun work on the main body of the ship, using 2 rectangles, one for the main body itself and another for the nose cone.

TIE Fighter #4 - Mirror of wing and Complete model

All that was left to do after the last blog post was to mirror the entire wing and its connector over to the other side of the main body. Once this was done it just needed to fine tuning to make sure that it was in the correct position and the model was complete.

Rear View of the completed model

TIE Fighter #3 - Wing

In order to create the actual wing, i created a large hexagon (once again using a 6 sided gengon) and turned it into an editable poly. This allowed me to select the top and bottom of the wings to pull them out, as the wings are not even all the way around. I then made two copies of the hexagon and made one slightly larger but not thicker. Then i added a boolean operator to the larger one and selected the second copy as the b operand. This cut the original size out of the centre of the larger hexagon, leaving a border around the edge. This was then made slightly thicker to create the edge around the main hexagon.

The six spokes were created using a box. Originally i had intended to move the rotation point to the centre of the wing and shift rotate them around to create copies (as i did with the ships wheel). However due to the uneven shape of the hexagon this created a bit of a mess and they did not line up properly with where they were supposed to. In the end it seemed easier to just create each of the boxes individually myself.

TIE Fighter #2 - Wing Connection

After creating the main body of the TIE fighter, as can be seen in the last development post about it, i decided that rather than making each wing individually, i would remove the right hand beginning of a wing, and instead make the left hand side on its own, and then mirror this across to have two identical wings in the end. This would eliminate all human error that could occur when trying to make two of the same thing, meaning that all angles and sizes would be exactly the same.

I began work on the connection of the wing to the main body following the guidelines of the schematics i had placed (see separate post on this for more information). I used mainly basic shapes, such as cylinders and boxes which were then turned into editable polys to allow me to pull sides and manipulate them into the correct shapes they needed to be. For the connection to the actual wing i used a gengon to create the hexagon shape, then scaled up one side to create a sloped edge with one side bigger than the other. i did the same for the outside section of the wing, where the wing will sit inbetween the two.

Schematics

"A Cut out section"

As mentioned in the first post for my TIE Fighter, i will be creating planes in each of my models workspace to which i will then attach schematics (found online) in order to have a basic guideline to work around.

In order for this to work i have to find the schematics that i want to use, and then in photoshop cut exactly around the edges of each of the different views. These normally include a front view, a side view and a top view. Once i have cut around the edges of each then, i make a note of the dimensions of one of them, and resize the others so that they are all almost exactly the same. This can cause some problems with stretching some of the images but because they are only being used as a guideline and not an exact size this isn't too much of a problem. Once they are all of the correct size i save them as bitmap files. I will be using the .TIFF file format.

Then in 3ds Max i create a plane with only 1 poly and add each image in as a texture using the compact material editor. Each of the planes are then resized to fit the image and the texture is then applied. Using the Allign tool i then make sure they are all connected to each other to make what is almost half a box. This then gives me plenty of space to work while being able to see exactly what it should look like.

TIE Fighter #1

I began to make the model of my TIE Fighter. Using 2 planes with images i had sized in photoshop which show the schematics for how the finished item should look. This helps give a good outline for where each part of the model should go and also helps to keep things in scale.

In order to make the front of the cock pit more efficient, i created just one of the struts connecting the inner ring to the outer ring, then changed the rotation point to the middle of the circle and held shift while rotating to create multiple instances of the original. These were then slightly tweaked in position so that they were evenly spaced out around the circle.

Ships Wheel

As part of practice into using 3ds max for the first time, i created the practice pieces given to us. This is the ships wheel. It is made entirely out of primitive shapes, mostly cylinders and tubes. In order to create all the spokes and handles for the wheel i first created a single one and then changed the rotation point for them to the centre of the wheel. This meant that i could Shift Drag and rotate original and create instances of it around the wheel saving a lot of time making new, identical ones. All i had to do afterwards was slightly tweak their positions to make sure they were all evenly spaced out.

Introduction

Welcome to my blog,

This is where i will keep a record of all the work i do in helping me learn how to use 3DS Max and work towards the completion of the project that i have been set for my 3D modelling and animation Module.

There are two assignments which must be completed as part of this module, they are as follows:

Assignment 1 - Create 3 3D models which will be used in the final animation as part of assignment 2 (These models must be based upon the Star Wars universe). Create and keep updated a blog showing the creation process of all the models and the final animation

Assignment 2 - Create an animation using the 3 3D models created for assignment 1. This animation MUST be exactly 30 seconds long, be in 800x600 resolution and in a .AVI format