For this weeks session we were tasked with building the physical model of the USS Enterprise a project which would be completed as H/w.
To start we were shown to take 3 poly planes and attach a blinn to them, each blinn would have a texture file added to them, a file of the model plans of the Enterprise itself.
To begin the fuselage of the model I created a poly cube, with it selected I pressed the '3' key which turned it into the shape in the image above.
I selected the 'front' face and extruded it until it was aligned with the plans of the Enterprise and began to add edges through the insert edge loop tool from which I could begin modelling the fuselage into shape.
Here is the fuselage in shape and aligned with the plans surrounding the model.
Now because the model is still essentially a cube and by pressing '1' it would return to it's original shape I needed to reset the model so that it retained it shape even when I pressed '1'. To do this I used the smooth tool which retained the models shape but now I had the issue of too many edges and vertices on the model creating too many triangles. Thus using CTRL Delete I began to remove the edges and vertices not important to the overall shape.
The fuselage complete I turned my attention to the other parts of the model. Starting with a basic shape I made the connecting joint between the fuselage and the bridge with a poly cube. I entered 'Right view' and made all objects transparent, this allowed me to see the plans in the background and model the cube into shape from the foreground.
Next was the radar dish. Using the curve tool I drew half the outline of the radar dish (following the side plan of the model) and fleshed it out with the surfaces > revolve function.
Next I made the 2 joints connecting the fuselage to the engines, following the plans the same way I made the features thus far.
The engine cylinders were made with a single poly cube which I modelled the same way I modelled the fuselage, by setting the cube with the '3' key and using the insert edge loop tool to deform the shape using the plans as my guidelines.
The last portion I had to make was the bridge. This was made using a poly cylinder which had 24 subdivisions protruding from the centre to form the circle (the same number as the plans show) and 6 subdivision caps. By following the plan from the side view I began by using the extrude tool to pull out the extrusions on the bridges geometry and selecting each individual edge on the bottom face and using the scale tool to equally pull them into a cone shape. I repeated this on the bottom face until the geometry matched the plan and to create the bottom peak I simply pulled all the edges together until they passed by one another and pulling back to just before that moment to create that bottom peak.
I repeated this process for the top half of the bridge, except I morphed the edges to create a more oval shape for the top extrusions like the plans show. This created an interesting accident when trying to create the final 2 extrusions which would form the top of the bridge in that because of the positions of the subdivisions when I extruded it created this small tube running down the back. Although it isn't in the design I liked it as it showed a visible placement of an elevator shaft so I kept it in.
Here is my final model, there is one thing missing here (which I shall address) and that is 2 tube extensions from the engines.
Apart from that I really like how this came out, but to critique my own work I would say that the circular ports on the front of the fuselage need to be adjusted as they do not match the plans brilliantly and that the 2 peaks of the bridge, while I really do like how it turned out, are just that peaks. According to the plans they have a smooth curve rather than a point.
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