Intro

Well, you’ve seen me promise this on the TML for some time.  Here it is finally, a tutorial on how I construct Traveller starships using Lightwave v5.5 and Photoshop.  I’ll just be callin’ them LW & PS from now on, so get used to it J  While this tutorial is written directly for using LW & PS, the general techniques should be applicable to just about any halfway decent 3D program out there.  The trick is the more texture control you have, the more realistic you can make the ship look.

Planning

The first thing that you need to do is give your project a little rough planning.  If you’re going to be creating a mesh….no, no, no, not “mess” --- a mesh is the 3D geometry that exists in program’s virtual world.  Anyway, if you’re going to be creating a mesh of one of your own designs, it’s a really good idea to have some pre-production sketches and deckplans to help you work from.  This gives you an overall idea of what you need to do in your 3D program to create your ship.  When you’re creating in 3D, think of yourself as the conceptual artist, the architect, the ironworks, the welder, the riveter, etc.  The more you work out the pre-production (i.e. “blueprints”), the better your finished product will be.  It’s also easier to build your ship to scale this way.

Since this tutorial is specifically about building the Sulieman Class Scout ship, try to assemble all the reference material you have in the form of all the deckplans that have been released over the years coupled with all of the pictures that have been released over the years.  If you’re creating a “canon” ship and you’re shy on reference material, send out a request to the TML for help.  The TML has pulled my bacon out of the fire for both “Far Trader” and for “First In” by supplying scans of the Far Trader, Donosev, Tender, and others.

A NOTE on the tutorial:  I’d initially planned on doing the ship to comply with the main G:T book illustration, but it didn’t work out.  After a vote by the TML, I decided to do it more along the lines of the CT illustrations so towards the end of the modeling I squashed the profile down to where it resides in the finished product.  I wasn’t about to redo the whole thing from the start so the tutorial would match because of the deadline I was under.  This illustrates the need for proper planning in ways words could never describe.  J   You’ll also notice that the screen caps are of my whole desktop.  Sorry, I’m too lazy to go through 50+ pictures and crop them all…

Prelude to steps

SAVE OFTEN, BACKUP, AND LIVE A LONG LIFE!!!  I tend to save multiple copies of stuff while it’s in progress, and I save all of the individual add-on parts separately from the hull before doing the final saves with the ship’s full name, etc.

Please don’t worry if colors for objects change without a corresponding description.  I’ll try and explain the major ones :)

First Steps (Step ONE)

The first step is to take your reference material, either deckplans or sketches, and take them into a prgram such as Photoshop.  Crop the images to their extents.  These will be loaded as background images in LW’s Modeler and sized to the correct scale, which in this case is approx. 36m along the ship’s Z axis (nose to tail).  FYI the Z axis is front to back, the X axis is side to side, and the Y axis is up and down.  It is absolutely preferable to model everything to it’s “real-life” scale.  This makes interaction of the models MUCH easier later on when you’re making pictures or movies with the things, especially when you’re including people or other sophonts!!

Figs 1 & 2.  Scanned images from the main G:T book inside of PS.  You can see the raw scan in the background of each fig.  I then used the box selection tool to select an area that was exactly (or close :) the same dimensions of the ship in that particular view.

Fig3.  Loading the background images that we created in Figs 1 & 2 ( display > background).  You’ll notice that I’ve loaded “side deck ref.jpg” in the X axis and “top deck ref.jpg” in the Y axis.  They are both sized to give us roughly 36m along the ship’s Z axis, which is it’s length according to all the published deck plans I’ve seen.

Step TWO

Here we’ve created a cylinder along the Z axis.  This is done by selecting the “Disc” tool under the “Objects” tab that’s shown along the top, then click-dragging out a circle of the correct rough heighth and width in the lower left pane, which represents the Z axis.  The correct height should be 9m according to my handwaved calculations.  You can then click-drag the proper length in either the Y pane (upper left) or the X pane (lower right).  Before you hit “enter” to make the cylinder, hit the letter “n” to bring up the numeric requestor (make sure your caps lock is off).  In the numeric requestor for this disc tool, changes the sides to 12 and the segments to 3, then click “ok” and hit “enter” to make the cylinder.  You should see something that looks like Fig 4. 

Fig 4.

Step THREE

Next, in the lower left pane, using the point selection tool (click lower left button or hit “spacebar” until the lower left button is lit) select the outermost group of points (+X and –X) except for the very far right and left points.  They should turn a different, highlighted color.  Then use modify > stretch (“h”), center the tool at the conjunction of the Y and X axis centerlines, and click-drag (while holding “ctrl” to contrain the motion within 45 degrees) to the right.  This will stretch the points from the centerlines towards the edges of the mesh.  Once you’ve moved them out to nearly the edge, release the click-drag, the do it again only this time move the mouse in a vertical direction to stretch the points towards the horizontal centerline.  Then repeat the process for those points on each side of the +Y and –Y on the Z axis.  You should end up with something that looks like Figs 5 & 6.

Fig 5

Fig 6

Step FOUR

Now, one of those central segments (row of points), hit “t” for the move tool, then ctrl-click-drag that set of points towards the closest end.  Unselect those points and repeat with the remaining band.  You should now have something that looks like Fig 7.

Fig 7

Step FIVE

Select all of the polygons EXCEPT the band at the rear (-Z) of the ship.  Click modify > taper2, center the tool at the intersections of the X & Y centerlines, and ctrl-click-drag at an angle moving your mouse low and left.  This will constrain the taper so that the nose keeps the same profile as the rear, it just gets smaller.  De-select all the polygons except for those of the very nose of the ship and taper that in a little bit more.  You should have something that looks like Fig 8.

Fig 8

Step SIX

In the upper right hand corner, click into a new layer, and put the wire frame we’ve been working on in the background layer.  Now use the box tool to create a box similar in size and position to the one shown in Fig 9.  Make sure the box is taller than the ship, and also extends past the side.

Fig 9

Step SEVEN

Hit “r” (modify > rotate) and rotate the box to match the cut that’s at the back of the Scout’s hull.  Now hit “shift v” for mirror, and “n” for the numeric requestor.  Make sure plane = x, and that position = 0 and then hit enter twice.  The first one OK’s the settings, the second one makes an exact mirror of the geometry that was active (the box).  Hit “shift t” to triple the polys of the boxes.  This will make for a cleaner boolean later.  Fig 10.

Fig 10

Step EIGHT

Put the boxes in the background layer, and put the hull in the foreground layer.  Hit “shift b” to bring up the boolean requestor.  Click the button for “subtract”, and click “ok”.  You should now have Fig 11.

Fig 11

Step NINE

Select all of the polygons that make up the VERY rear of the hull.  Make sure that you have you haven’t grabbed any of the top or bottom polys by accident.  Now hit “c” to copy them, click a new layer, then hit “v” to paste those copied polys in the new layer.  Put this layer in the background and click a new layer.  Click “polygon”, then “points” and create points where the original points were at the rear of the hull as in Fig 12.  The other option if you’re reading this whole doc through BEFORE you start building (a very good idea :) is you can select those points, copy them, and save them in one of the other layers until you get to this step.  OK, now that we’ve got an outline of points, hit “shift” until you have your point selection tool.  Now carefully outline, in order, one point at a time.  If you miss a point it will screw up the poly we’re aiming for.  Now hit “make” in the upper left hand corner.  Click “multiply”, “extrude”, and click once in the center of the poly we created in the lower left window.  Hit “enter”.  If the object looks inside out, hit “f” to flip the polys.  You should now have something that looks like whats behind the surface name requestor in Fig12.

Fig 12

Step TEN

Hit “q” for the surface name requestor.  Give the surface of the shape we just made the name “su rear hull” and choose some other color than grey.  A word on naming conventions.  When I’m naming surfaces on my ships, each surface will start with usually the first two letters of the class, but can also be other letters.  The Sulieman is su.  The Free Trader is ft.  The Far Trader is frt.  The Sub Merchant is sm.  The Tender is tn.  Well, you get the point.  This is so that if you load mulitple ships into a scene, you don’t start overwriting everything that says “hull” with the hull textures for a totally different ship.  The Subbie would look REALLY strange with textures from the Marava for instance.  OK, back to the matter at hand.  Where was I…Oh yeah.  You now have a block that’s the same shape as the rear of the ship’s hull.  Now, use the size tool “shift h”, hit “n” for numeric, and tell it about a factor of 96% or so.  Look at the purple area on the back of mine in Fig 13 to see about how much to decrease the size.  Now move the block back in line with the hull.  Move it as FAR back as you can so that the ends just barely overlap the rear of the hull.  This is so we don’t stencil through the hull.  Make the hull the active layer, with the block we created in the background.  Click “tools” > “s drill” (or hit “shift c”).  Choose “stencil” for the operation, and click the pull down and select the “su rear hull” surface.  Hit “ok”.  You should see something like Fig 13 now, where you’ll have a band of the default grey with the center section of the rear hull the color that you chose above.

Fig 13

Step ELEVEN

Hit “w” to bring up the “polygon statistics” panel.  Down below, you should see a pull down with the last active surface listed there.  Select “su rear hull”.  Click the + right above it.  Close the stats panel and you should have all of the “su rear hull” polys selected (they turn yellow and have a light blue line pointing out from their normals (the direction the poly is facing, i.e. outward).  If you have other polys of the hull selected, deselect everything and try again.  We only want the polys with the “su rear hull” name selected.  Now click on “multiply” > “sm shift” (smooth shift, you can hit “shift f” as well).  When the numeric comes up, choose an offset in the neighborhood of –500mm.  This will recess the whole poly set named “su rear hull” by half a meter.  If that’s too much or too little, hit “u” for undo and try over until you get what you think is right.  The rear of the hull should be recessed like the illustration in Fig 14 (though this shot has detail from a several steps later).

Fig 14

Step TWELVE

With the “su rear hull” poly’s still selected (or hit “w” and select ‘em that way again) hit the “-“ (minus) key.  This will hide those polys.  Don’t worry, they’re still there.  Now select all of the polys at the very end of the ship.  Name these “su rear hull outer rim” as in Fig 15.  Hit “-“ to hide these as well.  Now carefully select the polys that make up the lower hull.  Name these “su lower hull” with smoothing on.  Hit “-“ to hide these.  Now the remainder of the visible polys should be those that make up the upper hull.  Name these “su upper hull”, again with smoothing on.  Hit “\” to unhide everything.

Fig 15

Step THIRTEEN

In a new layer create a block looking top down to serve as the general size you want the cockpit cutout to be.  Name the surface “su cockpit cutout” (or “su cockpit recess” if you prefer), then mirror it like we did the blocks before (shift v, n, click x, 0m, enter, enter).

Fig 16

Step FOURTEEN

Now, click “tools > sdrill > stencil” and select our surface name from the previous step.  Click ok.  If the two polys with that surface name are not selected, then select them.  Press “b” to bevel the polys with an inset of only about 10mm or so, then follow that with clicking on “multiply > sm shift” and enter a value around –50mm or so.  The exact number doesn’t really matter as we’re going to yank, rotate, and generally mess with those polys a wee bit.  Rotate the inner poly from the bevel down from it’s front end (in the lower right panel).  You may also have to slightly shrink these two polys (from the centered Y axis) so that you don’t get weird looking drop-outs and seriously non-planar polygons.  You should now be looking something like Fig 17.

Fig 17

Step FIFTEEN

Deselect any polys that are currently hot.  Now select the two polys that will end up being the cockpit windows.  We could get away with just changing these two polys to a suitable cockpit color and leaving it at that, but that’s not really acceptable if you want your finished product to be able to get close to a (virtual) camera.  So, let’s give it some cockpit frame.  Hit “b” for bevel again, and enter an inset in the neighborhood of 100mm or so, but with no shift.  If 100mm doesn’t look good to you, change it to something that does.  Now, while these two inner polys are highlighted, rename the surface to something like “su cockpit glass” and give it a white color for now.  You should now look an awful lot like Fig 18.  You’ll notice that some of the points in the frame are selected.  I stretched some of ‘em around a bit to get the look I was after.

Fig 18

Step SIXTEEN

We’re going to make the recessed band that goes around the nose now.  In a new layer make a big, thin box that has the thickness that you want the band to have.  FYI this band is visible in the Starship Operator’s Manual and the G:T book, among others.  Give the box a surface name of something like “su noseband” or something else that’s just as original.  Now put the ship’s hull back in the foreground layer with this box in a background layer.  Do the whole stencil and sm shift thing like we did above.  Pick a shift level that isn’t TOO high, otherwise you get some ugly errors along the sides.

Fig 19

Step SEVENTEEN

Time to create the thruster nozzles and plates.  In a new layer, create a cylinder along the Z axis using the background image as a size reference.  I used the default 24 sides for it.  Hit “enter” to make the cylinder.  Now shrink the nozzle end of the cylinder.  Now’s as good a time as any to name this cylinder with a surface of “su thruster nozzle” and give it a darker grey, higher specular color.  Don’t use smoothing.  Now, select the nozzle end poly.  Hit “b” for bevel, and give it an inset of something like 50mm with no shift.  I can’t remember exact meaurements on these nozzle bevels, so do what looks right ;)  Now bevel the poly again, keeping the inset at 50mm (or whatever you used) and a shift of something around –250mm.  While the poly is selected, give it a surface name of “su thruster plate” and a color somewhere in the light blue range.  While thruster plate poly is selected, hit “-“ to hide the poly.  Now carefully select only the OUTER ring of nozzle polygons, leaving the inner ring alone.  Hit “b” to bevel these out with a low inset and shift value so that you get something like Fig 21.  Hit “\” to un-hide the plate.  “Shift v”, click X axis, and make sure center is 0m, then hit “enter” twice.  This should mirror the nozzle on the X axis, so you now have a pair of engine nozzles.  Save ‘em as “su_engine nozzle pair.lwo”.

Fig 20  Fig 21  Fig 22

Step EIGHTEEN

You’re starting to (or SHOULD be starting to :) get a little bit better feel for things, so I’m going to be going a bit faster and looser from here out, and I won’t be illustrating each little step (and I missed some screen captures :).  In a new layer create a box that has 3 segments along the Y axis and is about 2.1 or 2.2m high by about 1.5 or 1.8m wide by a couple of meters deep.  Stretch those middle points ‘til they’re almost to the ends, then stretch them inwards a bit as well.  This gives the airlock a beveled box crosssection as shown in Fig 23.  “Shift v”, and drag the centerline to close to where you need the other airlock.  You can then select the blocks that make up an airlock and move it into the exact position it needs to be.  Un-select the polys and do the same to move the other airlock as necessary.  Name the surface something like “su airlock walls” with a darker grey color.  Put these two airlock cutters in a background layer and put the hull in a foreground layer.  Hit “shift b” for boolean, and choose “subtract” and click “ok”.  You should now have two airlocks drilled out of the rear hull.  Go back to the layer with the airlock cutters, and move them both forward so that they’re just a little bit recessed into the hull.  Delete one of the two and give it a surface name of “su airlock door”.  Now save the door object as “su airlock door”.  You have to do this so that the texturing comes out right later on.  If you left both doors there, the iris valve texture would be stretched out between the two.  This way, it will map correctly to the one door, then you just duplicate the door and move it over to plug the other airlock (more on this later).  Clear the layer and create a box to match the dimensions of the air raft bay.  Give it a surface name of “su airraft bay” with a dark grey color.  If you wanted to have detailed textures on each wall for later use with the bay shown open, you should give each side of the box a unique name, i.e. “su ar bay top”, “su ar bay bottom”, “su ar bay front”, etc.  The rear of your ship oughta’ look a lot like Fig 23 now.

Fig 23

Step NINETEEN

OK, now I’m really starting to cheat.  Since I was getting towards the very end of my deadline, I pulled up some parts that I’d previously made.  These were the turret base (a cylinder with bevels like we did with the nozzles), the turret ball (basically a sphere with a cutout where the gun goes), the turret flap (a boolean intersection object created from a copy of the turret ball which adds more interest to the turret and covers the gaping hole leading to the gun), and the turret gun (a segmented box that’s had 3 gun barrels boolean subtracted from it).  Surface names were “su turret base”, “su turret ball”, “su turret cutout” (the boolean hole that was cut for where the gun rests), “su turret gun” (the gun body), “su gun throat” (the ‘rifling’ of the gun’), and “su gun hole” (which is the deepest part of the barrel – it’s surface color is pure black with 0 diffuse and specularity).  Each of these parts is saved as a separate part for animation or posing later on, but I also always save a copy as a single object (shift-click each layer with the parts) for simpler use.

Fig 24

Step TWENTY

Time to start putting detail on the ship.  The best canon illustrations show lots of antennas and such on the ships.  I’m **primarily** following the illustration in the main GURPS:Traveller book, so let’s start with those honking big (relatively speaking :) ventral fins.  Start out with a new layer and an 8-sided cylinder.  You can have 2 segements, or one segment and bevel later.  Shown is 1 seg, bevel later.  Zoom your view in and create the basic cylinder in the Y axis (upper left pane) as shown.  Then start selecting, dragging, and stretching pairs of points until you get the cylinder’s profile to be more aerodynamic.  Then bevel the lower end, being careful not to overlap points and create poly errors.  Now either taper the whole thing, or select the end polys or points and use stretch on them until you get what you like.  I tend to use stretch as I can control how each direction reacts.  Give it a surface name like “su big ventral fin” and turn on smoothing.

Fig 25 Fig 26 Fig 27 Fig28

Step THIRTY

Now use “rotate” (modify > rotate or hit “y”) to bank the out like it should be.  Use move (“t”) to move it into better position than where you made it.  Check positioning by shift-clicking the layers that the fin and hull are in.  If you select the points or polys that make up the fin before shift-clicking, you can move the fin while having immediate feedback in your preview window.  Once you’ve made sure that the antenna fin isn’t floating outside of the hull and you’re happy with it’s positioning, mirror it.  Now go into another layer and create another, smaller fin (or copy one of the existing fins, shrink it, rename it’s surface to “su small fins” and move to suit.  Mirror and duplicate the process as many times as you’d like antennas.

Fig 46  Fig 47

Step FORTY

Time to create the domed antennas that are seen in the illustration in G:T and in multiple other illos for this and other ships.  Create a tall, thin sphere.  I used the default settings for it.  Now rotate it so it’s facing nose forward.  Name the surface “su antenna ball”and select smoothing.  Use taper to get it a bit more in a teardrop configuration.  Figs 48 & 49.  Now select the polys of a band near the nose and do a sm shift on it with about a –50mm offset.  While these polys are selected, name them “su antenna band”.  Now rotate it 180 degrees to get it pointing the right direction, rotate to fit right, and mirror it.  Copy one of them and paste in a separate layer to re-position and mirror for the rear set.  What I do is cut and past all of the antennas into one group and name it “su_antenna group.lwo” for use in putting together the final ship later on.  Also, if you save an antenna group like this, you can copy bits of it and re-use on later models after re-nameing the surfaces.  I do this a LOT, especially with things like turrets and landing struts.  No sense in modeling something over if you’ve got a perfectly good version already.  My finished antenna group can be seen in Fig 48 as I’m saving it.

Fig 48

Step FOURTY-ONE

Well, this sucks.  I appear to have lost the remainder of the screen captures.  A word of explanation here.  I created the ship, did the screencaps, and created the texture maps, on two separate machines.  Somewhere in the shuffle, it looks like I killed the remainder of the screencaps.  That’s OK, they were boring anyway.  I’ll have to do a few with the finished model to illustrate the remainder of the modeling portion of the tutorial.

Landing struts.  There was some amount of discussion on the landing struts on the TML as well, including having two forward struts and the rear of the hull bottom being the third support.  I thought that was a pretty cool idea, but I was basically committed to a conventional strut layout.

I cheated here again, using the struts that I made for my original Suliman model that’d been on my non-Traveller site page for quite some time.  While I won’t go step by step, they’re easy to construct.  Start out with a vertical cylinder and slightly bevel the end, then name the surface “su strut upper”.  Create a series of several shorter cylinders that have a slightly larger diameter and name the surfaces “su strut upper bands”.  In another layer, create another long vertical cylinder like before, but make the diameter smaller than the strut upper, and bevel the lower end of it but with more shift.  Name this surface “su strut lower-chrome”.  Now make a small cylider off to one side with the same chrome surface name.  Cut and paste it to the strut lower.  Make another small cylider like the one just done, but give it a surface name of “su strut pad”.  Cut and paste to the lower strut as well.  With the upper and lower strut assemblies, you could now make fully articulated landing gear if you wanted to.  Me, I’m too lazy, so I just rotate, move, and clone my heart out to get what I like.  You can then make a simple, squashed box for the strut pad.  You can also add little tubing details or other nurnies if you want to.  See Figs 49 and 50.

Fig 49  Fig 50

Step FOURTY-TWO

Create some boxes that have the depth you want for the strut wells.  Copy the hull and put it in a foreground layer, and the boxes with the surface name “su strut wells” in the background layer.  Hit “shift b” for boolean and do a subtract.  Put the boxes in the foreground with the uncut hull in the background and do a boolean intersection.  These will create the closed doors.  Save the object as “su closed doors.lwo”.  Fig 51 shows the cut bays in the hull.

Fig 51

Step FOURTY-THREE

Delete the rear intersected boxes.  Copy the front strut door object in paste in a new layer.  Size the copy up a little bit.  You can do this by clicking on modify > size, then hit “n” for numeric and enter a value of like 102%.  Move the resized object up the amount of distance that you’d want the open door to be in thickness.  Select the lower hull surface and rename it to “su inner strut door”.  Now, put the unchanged object in the foreground layer, and the resized one on the background.  Boolean subtract the larger one from the smaller.  In a new layer, make a VERY thin box that bisects the solid front door right down the middle, and give it a surface name of “su strut door edge”.  Put the thin box in the background with the solid door in the foreground.  Boolean subtract the big thin box.  You now have two separate doors, you just need to zoom in really far to select all the polys from one door, cut them out, and paste in a new layer.  Save this door as one object, and save the other door as a separate object.  For the rear doors, just make a box the same size as the hole, and make it thin like the front doors.  Name the edges “su strut door edge”, name the bottom “su lower hull”, and name the top “su inner strut door”.  Save the object.  When you set up the model in LW Layout, you can either load the door, parent it to the hull, and then load, parent, & re-locate a second copy of the door, OR you can cheat and make the second copy in modeller.

I tend to make a group of objects that are the closed doors, and a group of objects that are the open doors.  If you use same objects to create each group, you can use the groups as morph targets for opening and closing the doors :)

Fig 52

Step FOURTY-FOUR

It’s time to save our object groups as sets that are easier to use than loading all the pieces and then parenting.  In a clear layer, load the hull, the thruster nozzles, the antenna group, and the turret base.  Save this object as “Sulieman Scout.lwo”.  This gives you the basic hull with all non-moving parts attached.  You’ve got a couple of options from here.  I tend to save three basic setups at the beginning.  The bare hull that we just made, an object that has the ship buttoned up and with a fixed turret, and finally an object that has the gear down, no doors (in case you want them open for cargo loading, etc) and the turrets fixed.  If you want to have a fully movable turret, you later create a scene, load the “Sulieman Scout.lwo” object, and start loading the remaining pieces, being sure to parent each piece to the hull object.  I just find it generally easier to just load a fixed turret, gear down single object, than to load a scene that lists all of the sub objects that are parented.  So, I load all of the closed doors and the fixed turret in a separate layer and make the “Sulieman Scout” layer active at the same time and save this object as “Sulieman Gear Up.lwo”.  I then take the “Sulieman Scout” layer and add the gear doors, the gear, and the fixed turret and save this object as “Sulieman Scout Gear Down.lwo”.  I leave the airlock doors and the air raft doors off in case I want one, two, or all three open in a later shot.

TIME TO TEXTURE!!

  I've never gotten around to doing the full texture tutorial, but my mini-texturing tutorial should suffice :)

  Jesse's Mini Hull Texturing Tutorial