Design thread for the SA-43 Hammerhead Fighter (Space: Above and Beyond)

[Awry_Chaos]

thumbs up, it looks fantastic.

Thank you!

 

[Revell-Fan]

Instead of going A, B, C, D, and E; with Blender it might end up going from A to B, then E to C, and then finally doing D.

That describes exactly a usual day at work!

 

[Awry_Chaos]

That describes exactly a usual day at work!

Since you live so close to Amsterdam, do you visit there often? I'd like to go to Amsterdam and visit the Blender Institute.

 

[zathros]

I'm really do think you're going to pull off a really great model, and a much anticipated and desired one too.

 

[Awry_Chaos]

I'm really do think you're going to pull off a really great model, and a much anticipated and desired one too.

Thank you, Zathros!

 

[Awry_Chaos]

This is not really an update, but something to illustrate a problem you may come across of you are a Blender user. In this picture, my mesh looks okay. I'm getting the form of the Hammerhead established. The air intakes are starting to take shape.

 

[Awry_Chaos]

But, when I go to apply the Subdivision Surface Modifier to the mesh (Level 2), we see that there is a problem! If yoy look carefully, you will notice that the mesh is not being smoothed in the area by the white line. It looks "off" to what one would expect.

 

[Awry_Chaos]

When I go from Edit Mode to Object Mode, and apply "Shade Smooth" to the mesh, the problem becomes more than apparent.

We notice an ugly black band going around the model, basically ruining the nice geometry we want to have.

This is caused by the "normals" of the mesh being out of whack. Somehow when I was extruding vertices and faces, the "normals" of some of the faces got reversed causing the black band around the model.

What can we do to fix this mess, this abomination that ruins our work?

 

[Awry_Chaos]

The solution to our problem is quite simple: we select the entire mesh (Alt-A) and recalculate the "normals" as shown. When you are doing this make sure you are in Edit Mode.

 

[Awry_Chaos]

And Viola! Your mesh as fixed, back to it's beautiful self, from which you can continue.

I thought I would highlight this in case anyone has the same problems in Blender.

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

This is really taking form nicely!!!

 

[Awry_Chaos]

@Rhaven Blaack Thank you for your kind words!

 

[mijob]

Ooo this looks so good.

 

[Revell-Fan]

Wow! Thank you for this little tut. It seems that every 3D modeling program has its own sort of "requirements". As a SketchUp user I somtimes encounter a broken mesh or faces that would disappear during editing. The areas may be healed by simply drawing a new face but sometimes the auto snap-in feature prevents that, especially when the edges of the neighbouring faces are too close together. Usually you connect two edges of two neighbouring faces to create a new face between them. Then, all of a sudden, one of the existing faces changes its shape and the whole area is brought out of alignment. The lines are not drawn as desired to connect the edges but snap to very weird positions on various place of the line between the edges. This is probably caused by hidden geometry. The only workaround I found is to delete the trouble corner and draw a new shape.

 

[Awry_Chaos]

@Revell-Fan You're welcome! I thought it would be a useful tidbit to point out. When I was first learning Blender dealing with this was aggravating until I stumbled upon a tutorial that explained "normals" and how to correct them if need be. Every 3D program has its own quirks and idiosyncrasies, and part of the 3D process is to learn about them and how to work around them.

In Blender, I also have to be careful of hidden geometry or when i go to subdivide the mesh it messes that up. In my case, it's usually because I forgot to delete some internal face or delete (or merge) unnecessary vertices.

 

[bigpetr]

Nice progress.
Is it good approach to use Subdivision Surface Modifier when modeling for paper? Will not it be complicated to unfold such dense geometry?

 

[Awry_Chaos]

Nice progress.
Is it good approach to use Subdivision Surface Modifier when modeling for paper? Will not it be complicated to unfold such dense geometry?

@bigpetr That those are great questions! As this is my first design for a card/paper model, I'm going to find that out. My plan right now is to make a low-poly mesh of the model and then refine the details as needed. Once I get a low-poly mesh done I will be able to see the areas that need to be refined, and then I'll make the decision to apply the Subdivision Surface Modifier.

As far as a workflow, I'm keeping the low-poly mesh, and refining that as needed. My theory is that it will be easier to unfold a low-poly mesh rather than a high-density one. I will have to do some experimentation to see what works the best.

Please stay tuned and thank you for your great questions!

 

[bigpetr]

I see. Good plan. Personaly I would not use Subdivisons. Every subdivison level multiplies number of guads by four (tris by three), and it means a lot more geometry to handle and sort out when unfolding. Subdivisions are useful when modeling for renderings nad such, because then you control subdivided highpoly mesh with base lopoly mesh and it is much easier. When modeling for paper, you need to have precise control over every face to be able to devide model to individual paper parts.

I am tuned - so far great work.

 

[mijob]

Are there any heads up on this project?

 

[Awry_Chaos]

Are there any heads up on this project?

I'm still working on it. Slowly, but it's coming along. I've been busy with couple other projects. I'm planning on having the modelling done sometime next month, then I can move onto unwrapping the model and printing the templates out for the alpha build(s).