[Becco_UK]

Ambient Occlusion baked for to use as a texture 'dirt' mask and a weight map in a Maxwell Render material.

[Becco_UK]

The new engine 'bell' with a simple 2 layer Maxwell Render material applied. As with the previous 'bell' most of the material is using Platinum IOR data to power the metal effect with my Ambient Occlusion map used as a weight map to add some 'dirt' into the grooves.

The inner 'bell' surface was remade in the same manner as the new outer 'bell' surface.

[Becco_UK]

The singe engine bell assembly turns into 4! The 3 duplicates where made using Cinemas' instancing tool which in turn are converted to true instances by Maxwell Render at render time - thus saving total polygons. I ended up with an higher poly count structure with less impact on system resources - to the tune of about 15,000 less polygons at render time.

[Bubbaloo]

15,000 is not a lot. Is it worth the toll it takes on render times? You should only use instancing if you have to. It's good to keep them in your workflow in case you need them, but keep instancing off until it's a RAM limitation so you can keep higher benchmarks.

[Becco_UK]

Bubbaloo: Thank you. I agree 15,000 polygons isn't that significant but I have other instanced objects which add to the total - overall I've probably saved more or less enough to make the command module with and still have room for scenes. Render times are only affected by a few percent using Maxwell instances so. Every polygon counts on my modest system! The model at present is just under render time 400,000 polygons.

[Becco_UK]

Today I have given my eyes a rest and all I've done with the Eagle is to render it in space type environment - just to see how the materials look.

[Becco_UK]

To finish my eye rest day I done another render in the space type environment.

[JorisMX]

nice stuff. I always enjoy the space 1999 stuff....

kinda wierd it was 1999 where they believed in 70s it would be the crazy future

again if you need some nice space refs. I did enjoy the one or other babylon 5 image.
It does look like GI/Bounce renderer but there are some nice feelings in those animations now and then

[Becco_UK]

JorisMX: Thank you. Many of the 1960/70's 'Anderson' tv series vehicles have a nicer design than many other sci-fi shows (ie: Star Wars).

I've decided to do some texture work on all the side pods and landing gear, this is one at the start.

[Becco_UK]

Here the landing gear has been slightly darkened and a few of the details textured. All the landing framework includes a small percentage of Iron IOR data in the Maxwell material.

Using Bodypaint, some panel shading work gets underway. This is a bit rough and ready at present but colours are to be adjusted nearer to the end.

[Becco_UK]

On top of this Eagles' walkways are some Lunar Module parts from the Airfix Apollo Saturn V model kit. I've measured the overall dimensions of those parts and made digital 3d versions. Some detail has been left out of those parts because they are tucked in amongst the cages/spine framework and are not readily visible.

A panel from the Tamiya Leopard kit has also been made and added to the side of the front walkway.

Various pipe valves have also been added.

[Becco_UK]

The newly added detail mostly gets hidden in full renders of the Eagle!

[Becco_UK]

The Command Module gets underway with simple 3 polygon guides, the corners of which correspond to the corners of Command Module windows/black area.

[Becco_UK]

Curves have now been added to the window/black edges. Cinema4D B Splines (each with three points) were used to form the curves. I find B splines are ideal for replicating the curves that feature in these type of models.

I'm making those surfaces first and then forming a Cinema4D's hypernurbs to fit rather than cut the window/black areas out of an hypernurbs. The curved edges are particularly useful in helping the overall shape of the command module to be accurate.

[Becco_UK]

The Command Module consists of a couple of modified cubes inside a HyperNURBS (Cinema4D subdivision tool) are being used to form the overall front and rear shapes. Control points are kept to a minimum which helps in creating a bump free mesh. Points are moved about so that the mesh fits the window area.