#38 - Summary - Invisible Hand
I will now summarise the development process of the final Star Wars model, the Invisible Hand, and explain and justify the reasons I have for leaving it how it is. Generally speaking, the entire model is quite smooth, and doesn't have a lot of detail.This is for two main reasons. Firstly, the schematic I was using, and other images which I viewed, of the ship do not have many details on them either. In fact the schematic I used was the only one available. The whole body of the ship is indeed smooth, and there are no geometrical extrusions around it. Secondly, the actual shape of the model, especially the front, was very difficult to get right, and used a lot of polygons to get the right curve. To make it rounder from the front perspective would have cost a lot of rendering time, and according to my storyboard the model is never seen at this angle anyway. Therefore I decided to limit the number of faces around the ship from the top and front views, and have more from the side view as this will be far more noticeable in the animation. To do this I went over the ship and deleted any edges between faces that were straight against each other, so that I did not alter the shape of the model.
Given the circumstances, and the shape of the model, I think the front turned out fairly well, and the back turned out better. If I were to try again I would focus more on the front, taking extra time to get the shape right in the first place rather than spending ages making mistakes such as selecting the wrong edges, which caused me to have to revert back quite far a couple of times. I would probably try and find more places to add even a little bit of detail, but again, I do not really have enough time at this point and texturing will solve this anyway. Despite this, I am quite sure that I did choose the easiest way of going about forming the shape. Any other way and I would probably have suffered far more setbacks, as although there is not much detail to be put in, the main body was still a very difficult and awkward shape to create. I feel that for this model, as it was the last one I did, only three blog posts were necessary because of the lack of extra bits to add in. Once the front, back, engines and hangar were done, and the spires on the front, that was effectively it, and a lot of the techniques I used have been shown in detail in various other posts. As for the back section, I think it looks near enough perfect to what it should in terms of shape and size, and when the textures are on the hangar will look perfect for its important role in the animation. I did not place any extra objects inside the hangar, because according to Star Wars lore the ship is over 1 kilometre long, so any object would have to be so small that you can't see it anyway. I will add in appropriate objects for the animation, as they are not technically a part of the ship anyway, only intended as an effect.
I do think some parts of the model went well. Firstly, the nose at the front of the ship looked quite difficult to make but I think I got the balance of the hull just right between the edges and the vertices, so I am happy with the way it turned out. The engines were not in the schematic at all, but looking at some from images online, the ones I made using similar techniques as the ones on the Venator are looking good, and improving the overall appearance of the model by adding detail. In fact, I used so few objects in this model that I don't need a history section in the outliner. There are 10 spires, 2 engines, a front and a back. I checked the face count after deleting the edges down the straight portions of the ship, at it was less than 3500, so perhaps if I had time I could have smoothed some areas of the ship, but it does not really matter as for the purposes of the animation, and the angles from which it will be seen, the ship looks just right.
Given the circumstances, and the shape of the model, I think the front turned out fairly well, and the back turned out better. If I were to try again I would focus more on the front, taking extra time to get the shape right in the first place rather than spending ages making mistakes such as selecting the wrong edges, which caused me to have to revert back quite far a couple of times. I would probably try and find more places to add even a little bit of detail, but again, I do not really have enough time at this point and texturing will solve this anyway. Despite this, I am quite sure that I did choose the easiest way of going about forming the shape. Any other way and I would probably have suffered far more setbacks, as although there is not much detail to be put in, the main body was still a very difficult and awkward shape to create. I feel that for this model, as it was the last one I did, only three blog posts were necessary because of the lack of extra bits to add in. Once the front, back, engines and hangar were done, and the spires on the front, that was effectively it, and a lot of the techniques I used have been shown in detail in various other posts. As for the back section, I think it looks near enough perfect to what it should in terms of shape and size, and when the textures are on the hangar will look perfect for its important role in the animation. I did not place any extra objects inside the hangar, because according to Star Wars lore the ship is over 1 kilometre long, so any object would have to be so small that you can't see it anyway. I will add in appropriate objects for the animation, as they are not technically a part of the ship anyway, only intended as an effect.
I do think some parts of the model went well. Firstly, the nose at the front of the ship looked quite difficult to make but I think I got the balance of the hull just right between the edges and the vertices, so I am happy with the way it turned out. The engines were not in the schematic at all, but looking at some from images online, the ones I made using similar techniques as the ones on the Venator are looking good, and improving the overall appearance of the model by adding detail. In fact, I used so few objects in this model that I don't need a history section in the outliner. There are 10 spires, 2 engines, a front and a back. I checked the face count after deleting the edges down the straight portions of the ship, at it was less than 3500, so perhaps if I had time I could have smoothed some areas of the ship, but it does not really matter as for the purposes of the animation, and the angles from which it will be seen, the ship looks just right.
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