Retrieval WIP 4-27-10

As you can see, work has continued on the textures. UV mapped the entire back end of the model and got a lot of work done back there. Also got around to dirtying up the intake grills up front. Found a rocket exhaust model online and added it to the ships engines. Messed around with the colors a little to make it more like in the show, and added some small lamps to each engine so the flames would actually cast light on the model. I like how it looks. I found the model for the exhaust here.

Here are a few screenshots of my progress:

And, like last time, here's a couple screenshots of one of my other models, the Morita Assault Rifle, the standard gun from Roughnecks. I never finshed texturing this model, and I've learned so much since I made it that I think I'll just have to start over on it sometime.

Retrieval WIP 4-22-10

I got the textures on the doors finished, added more dirt and smoke stains to various parts. Did UV mapping on a couple more parts on top of the ship so I can start texturing them.

I’m going to start showing some of the other models I have made. Some are stills works in progress. Here’s the Fleet Rifle from the series. I always thought that this gun might have been scaled wrong in the show. Something about it made me think that it should have been more like an UZI or MP5, but whenever it showed up it looked really big, larger than the Morita that the troopers used. I’m curious what the original designer intended.

I’m pretty happy with it as is. Gonna have to texture it sometime.

Retrieval WIP 4-21-10

I should note here that making this model would have been far more of a pain if I hadn’t found lots of reference material for it, including blueprints, from John Mcginley’s website. John worked on Roughnecks and had lots of great stuff on his site before it disappeared from the web.

So, I finished the rivets on the cargo bay, then I worked on the smoke and shmootz on both the cargo bay and the cockpit. Added numbers to the cargo bay, and made a SICON symbol for it, too. The SICON symbol is just kind a screwy version of the United Nations symbol, so I found a high res version of that and modified it. I made some WWII style art using a Dave Stevens Bettie Page picture, but it doesn’t look right to me, so I’ll probably take it back out. I UV mapped the cargo bay doors and got the chipping and scratching done on them.

If you are looking for some Starship Troopers models, there aren’t as many available on the web as there used to be. You can still find the Warrior Bug at Sci-fi 3d and I found a model of the series Morita on a forum.

They’re all gone now, but over the years I managed to find the Fleet and MI rifles from the movie, the Tac Fighter from the movie, the movie Dropship, Rodger Young, and the Athena from the movie, the barracks and gun towers from the series.

Retrieval Ship WIP 2

Started texturing the cargo hold of the retrieval ship and it went quicker than I thought it would. Got the paint chipped and scraped like I wanted it and got most of the rivets done.

I create the rivets in Blender. In a separate blender file I load up the unwrapped template for whatever part I’m texturing as a background image (view – background image). Over this I lay out lines of vertices, spacing them where I want the riveted panels to be. I line these lines up with the lines of the model and then subdivide the vertices until they are spaced as far apart as I want the rivets to be. I make the world settings completely black, then I give the vertices a material with a halo so that they will glow white when they are rendered. I point a camera at them,  then I go into camera settings and click the orthographic button to get rid of perspective. I switch to camera view (numpad 0) and make sure the vertices line up with the template. In the render settings I turn of OSA, so the vertices will render as nice clean squares with minimal anti-aliasing. I render as a targa, for better quality. I load that targa into photoshop, us Image – Adjust – Invert to invert the black and white. Then I save as a jpg, which I load into blender on the original model as a bump map.

Anyway, here are some shots of the progress I’ve made texturing the model.

Retrieval Ship WIP

This is the current project, the retrieval ship from Roughnecks. I’ve been working on this model for several years, on and off. At this point most of the exterior stuff is done, but none of the interiors are (including the cockpit.) Not all the work was done by me. I got a partial model from a guy named Andy Coyle. All that remains of the stuff that he did is the swing arms and engines and I believe the cargo bay doors were his, too. I’m in the middle of texturing at the moment and I’m including a pic of how far that has gotten. I’ll update as the work progresses.

Intro

My name is Brian Campo. I'm 35, married, a father of two. I've been using Blender on and off for about eight or nine years. No where near professional level, better in some areas than others. I'll be using this blog as a journal for whatever I'm working on in Blender at the moment.  You will notice a theme with my projects, because most of the stuff I model is from either Starship Troopers (the movie) or Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles (tv show). I love the tv show and the designs that Fil Barlow created for it. It's not as popular as other sci-fi movies and shows, so there aren't a lot of other people working on models for it. If there is any interest, in time I may start a website sharing the models and reference material I have. If you create troopers models and would like to trade for some of mine, drop me a line and maybe we can work something out.