12/07/2020 – Today we’ll start with a bit of relatively dry opining, then transition into the cool p3d link. So, the previous Shivan fighter, the SF Shahraba, made some stir in the Freespace community and I got to talking with other modelers there. One of them actually volunteered to texture the Sharabha. This was part of why I spent over a week unwrapping the thing, and led to a number of important discussions about workflow – Maya has a built in utility for packing UV shells on the sheet which will also automatically put them all on a consistent scale. Unlike some of the other Maya UV utilities, this one will not undo any manual work you’ve done stitching things together. A great example of this is the giant glowing vent on the SF Sharabha, which I manually projected from an angle where everything could be flat on the sheet without any overlaps or distortions. So in addition to the lessons from last time (UV finalized details early, always be saving, etc), the first step should be identifying troublesome regions and stitching them together, then using the automatic packing utility, then stacking similar shells as needed.
On to the cool p3d link! The SF Sharabha is meant to fit into the Freespace universe and is an antagonist. So what better to make than a protagonist fighter to oppose it? Enter the GTF Achilles. This ship is more than a little inspired by the VF-2 from Macross II, but a fair bit of its shapes are inspired by other Freespace units. Click the render below to be taken to a p3d link of the model as it stands right now! It’s still a WIP but is making rapid progress:
