XP-38 Landspeeder

[jwvanderbeck]

Subject: Star Wars Landspeeder
Software: Maya 7 PLE

This is a Star Wars landspeeder I started working on a few hours ago. Its still very basic form. I'm having some nasty issues when I convert to SUB-Ds which I don't like one bit

Trying something new and different as far as WIP images go. I made an animated GIF showing snapshots at stages during the modeling.

Any tips and suggestinos on this would be most appreciated. I don't even know if my work flow is even close to the way it should be or not. I do know that theres some nasty denting going on when I convert to Sub-Ds.

The animated GIF can be seen on my blog, fxCubed. Here is a basic GI render of the current progress:

[jwvanderbeck]

Can anyone help me to understand what is going on here with the front of this thing? I don't entirely understand what is happening and more importantly WHY it is happening. I could probably massage the verts to fix it, but i'd rather understand why its happening.

Poly Versiuon:


Converted to Subdivion Surface:

[jwvanderbeck]

So I spent the last several hours, essentially constantly building this vehicle's basic hull from scratch over and over again, each time doing it differently. It was in one manner frustrating to keep starting over, but on the other hand very rewarding. After doing it over and over in different manners I really begin to understand what worked and what didn't and started to, eventually, really come to appreciate the flexability of Maya's sub-d's.

The first four or five times I did this, I started with standard polygon objects and boxed modeled in the basic shape with a good amount of general detail. I then converted to sub-d's amd tweaked from there. This method though always gave me problems. On an idle thought I wondered if perhaps my problems were due to having TOO much detail in the polygon base.

So I started again and this time I started with a sub-d instead of a polygon. I then boix modeled out completely in sub-d's and I shockingly discovered how very little detail I actually needed to get the right shape. Probably less than 20% of the detail I had been putting in when in standard polygons.

Using this new method I very quickly roughed out the shape of the hull, and then I started playing around with and learning how Maya lets you "Refine" the sub-d in the areas you need, moving up and down sub division levels tweaking as you need to. This resulted in my getting almost the perfectly desired shape, yet only having the detail where it was needed.

Here, now, is the latest version of the base hull created with my new knowledge.






Oh and yeah, I goofed on the title. Before any Star Wars fanatics come and nuke my house hehe, i'm pretty sure this is an XP-34, not an XP-38. My bad.

[BazC]

I think you more or less figured out what was going on but let me make a few comments anyway. Try not to think of it as too much detail, there's nothing wrong with detail as long as it's applied correctly.

What went wrong with your earlier meshes is a perfect example of how SubDs work and their real strength once you understand it!

When you convert polygons to SubDs the shape becomes smoother, more rounded which can be a proplem in itself. What you need to do to keep definition is add more geometry. The closer together you place your edges the more suddenly the surface changes direction when convereted to SubDs. So areas you want smooth you keep the edges spaced out and where you want a sharp edge you keep the edges close together. It has a secondary effect which I sometimes find difficult to control. Areas of low mesh density tend to lose more volume than areas of high density when converted to SubDs. So for instance if you're modelling a face the corner of the mouth tends to be fairly dense compared to the cheek area right next door. This can result in the corner of the mouth sticking out of the mesh (when it should be tucked in!) when converted to subds.

This is whats happening to the nose of your ship, you have some vertical edges very close together on the nose together with some very thin polys along the edge. It's these that are causing the distortion.

Here's a quick model showing how I'd arrange the geometry. I've add the two highlighted edge loops to tighten up the edge, if you left them out you'd get the same shape but with a slightly more rounded edge.



Finally, I don't recommend working entirely in SubDs, go back to polys every now and then and make sure the mesh still looks good, you can end up with really messy geometry by working entirely in subds. I actually work the other way round. I model in polys and go to subds every now and then to see how the mesh smooths.

Hope that helps, sorry to have gone on so long! - Baz

[jwvanderbeck]

Thanks for your reply Baz. The information is very helprful, and seeing how you laid out the front is even MORE helpful

I never would have ended up with such, I guess flow is the word? on my own if I hadn't seen how you did it. I kept box modeling it moving along the top view front to back so basicly my flow was almost 90 degrees from yours if you can see from my original wires.

I redid it, again hehe, using the flow that you did and while mine doesn't quite looks as good as yours (I think it may be differences in software) it does look nice. Now i'm going to see if I can follow that same flow to work out the rest of the body.

Oh and on the "don't work soley in sub-d's".. I understand what you're saying. I thought it wasn't much of an issue because of the way Maya handles sub-d's. If you aren't familiar with how it does it, basicly you work on a polygon proxy cage of the sub-d to do all of your modeling, so your kind of working on both poly and sub-d at the same time. I figured by doing so, my poly side would never get to some wierd state without my knowing since I was seeing the cage. But I suspect that the "cage" i'm working on isn't 100% correct polys, because if I convert from sub-d to poly it looks fine, but very different from the cage.

Thanks again for the comments and informatino and tips. I'm continuing to work on this and hopefully i'll learn even more along the way.

[BazC]

Glad to help, keep posting your progress!

[jwvanderbeck]

Redid the chassis yet again, trying to better understand poly flow in the whole scheme of things. This is a quick update render with the engine pods in place.

The nose of the chassis, top and bottom, has some nasty dimpling I need to fix. The cool thing is this time around I actually know and udnerstand whats causing the dimpling. Progress! When I cut and mirrored the craft in half, the mirror operation apparently merged a couple verts it shouldn’t have so I just need to fix those to remove the dimpling.

Anyway, obviously still tons of work to do but its coming together nicely and i’m still learning lots which is the most important part

[jwvanderbeck]

Yet more progress on the landpseeder. This morning I completely redid the engine pods. They didin't look right, and I finally figured out why. I was so rigidly following the blueprints in my individual views, that I wasn't watching the overall picture. This caused me to match up the outlines right but end up with badly squashed engines. Redid them this morning, properly, and using what i'd learned last time to make them about 5 million times better

I also tweaked the chassis this morning, fixing the dimples, and doing some more overall tweaks to really bring out the right shape.

This thing is starting to look pretty sweet

[jwvanderbeck]

Some more progress on the landspeeder. Huge thanks to Proton for guiding me in the right direction to build the geometry neccesary for the windscreen. It was done using curves to define the profile of the windscreen, then lofted to create a NURBS surface then finally converted to subds (I just want the whole model in subds.. the conversino probably strictly wasn't n eccesary).

So now our passengers don't have to worry about bugs in thier teeth

This is really starting to shape up!

[BazC]

Looks great! Can we see how your mesh is shaping up?