05/11/2021 – I’ve gotten started on the Homeworld frigate I concepted out over the last two days. It’s a concept that’s been kicking around my head for an embarassingly long time, so I’d taken stabs at it in the past. Here’s the current progress:
The firing assembly at the nose is a holdover from one of the more recent attempts before starting to teach myself Maya. As is obvious, the turning thruster and airlock hatch details once completed got textured – they’re only 256×256 textures so they’re tiny. The engine in particular is probably really only about 128×256 so they’re going to be exceedingly easy to pack into whatever larger composite I need to make but for now are each their own independent texture. I’m not quite sure how to get the feel of Homeworld style textures in substance just yet, so they’re a bit experimental, and I would not be shocked if I had to update them later on when I narrow some things down. The remaining untextured hull has the ambient occlusion on it to help it be a bit less of a formless blob. I used a multiplier to make it gray instead of white.
The terracing along the side of the main hull here was accomplished largely through boolean operations instead of by inserting edges or verts and moving things around, too, which has yielded nice even results. I’m hoping to finish up the big armored clamshell tomorrow and then keep moving backwards on the hull to try and rough out all the shapes before getting too deep on any REALLY complicated component. No matter what shape the final frigate is, these turning thrusters and airlocks can easily be reused.