[Becco_UK]

Bubbaloo: Thank you.

The spine took a few days to UV map but I got there in the end with a nice UV to use when the proper painting starts. As with other parts of this model I also baked an ambient occlusion that is being used as a 'dirt' control mask in my paint software.

[Becco_UK]

All of the Eagle so far.

[Becco_UK]

Returning to the passenger pod it's seen here with all the different parts connected and some polygon selection tags created - all 46 of them. Time spent making polygon selection is rewarded in Bodypaint by creating the UV map faster, distortions minimised and as seam free as posible. Still tedious work though!

[Becco_UK]

After the UV is made it's time to bake an Ambient Occlusion - for use as a dirt mask layer in my paint software.

[Becco_UK]

The passenger pod with a 'dirt' layer - this dirt layer is flexible to use both in terms of colour and opacity.

[Becco_UK]

The advantage of spending time making a nice UV map is also rewarded when texture adjustments are required - in this example it was simple to add some stripes to make a rescue/medical pod variant.

[Becco_UK]

Still with the passenger pod I thought I would make an Alpha Moonbase logo. This started with a photo of a logo from a real Eagle model. That image was then used as a background to trace out a new logo using a mixture of vectors and hand painting. I'm not after a perfect look but something that will look realistic at the most important time - the render! I made the logo in mono' to use it as mask over more suitable colours.

[Becco_UK]

A render of the story so far. Any adjustments to base colours will be done nearer to completion.

[Becco_UK]

A different angle.

[Becco_UK]

The engine 'bells' were only made roughly so now they will be finished. My original construction of each bell has four parts - a connection peice, outer bell surface, inner bell surface and the Saturn V model kit part.

The outer 'bell' surface was made from two lathed b-splines. I find this type of spline for obtaining a nice curve with just three control points. I find that bezier splines are not that satisfactory for making these engine 'bells'. A few extra steps are required using my method but the final result will speak for itself.

[Becco_UK]

Grooves cut into the engine bell using mainly loop knife cuts and negative extrude of selected polygons. Each edge has a low value bevel applied.

[Becco_UK]

Because of cutting grooves into the bell the UV's would be very messy and tidying them up in Bodypaint would waste time, plus I find UV mapping tedious at the best of times. So a solution is to select edges as shown.

[Becco_UK]

To generate a new spline, Cinemas' Edge To Spline tool is used. Check that the new spline has a smooth colour graduation - this ensures that later UV's will be in order.

[Becco_UK]

The new engine 'bell' spline lathed. A quick check of seeing if the UV's are in order is to apply a checker material and have a play with the tile settings. The checkers should move across the surface without sudden breaks in the checker pattern.

[Becco_UK]

A 2048*2048 texture map is being used for the 'bell' and a quick check in Bodypaint shows nicely arranged UV's with no further UV work required. The 'bell' is a conical shape and UV's created this way will have some distortion - this could be fixed by scaling selected UV's but the engine bell I've made will have no detailed texturing so I'm happy to leave as is.