@pipeline, on May 28 2008, 03:40 PM, said in Making new Ships for Nova:

Bryce is in no way professional level. No one in a real 3D graphics job would ever suffer through Bryce's dreadful placement and rotation tools.

I am in no way a professional and for me bryce has had it's uses; it is very easy to learn for one with little experience and was a huge improvement from what I was using before. I have also begun to use wings 3d to create shapes which I then import and manipulate in Bryce, the results of which have been most satisfactory.

I have also downloaded Blender but as of yet have not taken the time to properly understand how to do pretty much anything.

Try your luck with Blender. While it's not strictly professional, it does at least use professional motion control systems.

I've tried to figure out blender, but I just can't get the hang of it. Where's the delete button? How do I make a line? AHHH! Yeah, I've tried all the free things, and Sketchup works best for me. Wings is just barely under it, as it doesn't have type able numbers, meaning that it's all approximate. If somebody knows how to do this, I would be eternally grateful. Unfortunately, Sketchup doesn't have light sources or rendering. If you're good enough, though, it looks fine. Might need some playing around with other apps to get the masking done right, though.

Hey, one-oh-one. Good to see you. Sketchup is awesome. I used to use it a lot.

Yeah, I've been really busy over the past couple months. Last three weeks I was on a school trip. But I graduate next week, so hopefully I'll have more time to balance my priorities. Anyway, Sketchup is pretty easy to get the hang of. And for all the people who say that it doesn't have the features they need, feel free to send me an email (PMing doesn't work. Tis annoying), and I'll prove you wrong. Soft modification? Got it. Whole bunch of great stuff that's hidden.

As far as creation of primitive structures and basic architectural modeling, SketchUp (Professional) can't be beat. Once you begin to move on toward more advanced structures and organic composition, you're going to want to move toward a higher-level piece of software, such as Maya or Lightwave.

If you are just starting off, and I mean REALLY just starting off, I'd give SketchUp a try in order to get yourself familiar with 3D modeling before moving on toward Blender, which I've heard is somehow really easy to use although it's impossible for me. Go figure.

This model was created entirely in SketchUp, if you need an example of some of the more advanced architectural assembly abilities the program offers.

Nice. Any chance you could send me the model? It looks really cool.

I'd say most likely not, since it's for his TC.

Can't blame me for trying, huh? Really too bad Sketchup doesn't have a renderer. There are a couple third party ones, but they're pretty expensive.

yea, i can see why sketchup is good for primitives, but im not rally a fan of humans(Alien organic ships FTW!), so blender works for me

To each his own.

Truth is, Aliens really don't have any better of a chance of having organic ships than humans (that is, unless ftl travel has to be bio-based, in which case everyone has to have at least some organic components on their ships).

Blender does excellently with angular ships and techniques, also.

I think the theory is that the human brain is attracted to sharp, angled shapes more than smooth contours. So few human vessals would be flowing like that. An alien might have a different way of thinking that finds curves better.

I have no such attraction. I much prefer a smoothly-contoured girl, for instance.

Not that we don't like angles, but we're huge fans of smooth lines. Even the fact that guysullavin likes the classic, organic-looking alien ships more is evidence of this.

Also,

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/...25084934384.jpg
http://web.syr.edu/~.../cool%20car.jpg
http://sneakerboxx.files.wordpress.com/200...ambo-orange.jpg
http://www.motorimania.it/manifestazioni/s...audieres_11.jpg
http://www.gearfuse.com/wp-content/uploads...pr07/car1_1.jpg
http://www.autounleashed.com/images/audi_l...concept_car.jpg
http://akuse.com/Blo...ugeot_20cup.jpg
http://blog.scifi.co...concept-car.jpg
http://wallpapers.free-review.net/wallpape...Fighter_jet.jpg
http://www.spacetoys...0632F2W.jpg.jpg
http://www.citlink.n...EnterpriseE.jpg
http://www.wynnes-tr.../enterprise.jpg
http://www.fabuloussavers.com/wallpapers/9...wallpaper_s.jpg
http://www.bu.edu/core/cc105/lectures/L04-...s/spaceship.jpg

I think I've made my point.

But to be polite, some of those are really ugly.

http://blog.scifi.co...concept-car.jpg
^ For instance.

I like both the brutal, sheer, cut-off face look and the sleek, organic look. I always found the sleek ships easier to model too...

The Mazda looks like it's senile and sagging. But my point wasn't that I liked those, really, so much as that many people like them.

We like angles just fine also. Take the batmobile (the only cool batmobile), for instance:

http://static.howstu...bile-resize.jpg

Also, the fact that you've chosen just cars and jets makes my point stronger. Those need to be smooth. It's a necessity of invention. There isn't a choice. You need aerodynamics.

Well, I'm always a little skeptical of universalist proclamations about the human psyche. While it's possible that the human mind is predisposed to like angles over curves, I think it's more likely that we are conditioned to find pleasing thing to which we have greater exposure, which turns into a feedback loop of sorts (we like what we see, we make what we like, we see what we make).

@0101181920, on Jun 2 2008, 10:08 AM, said in Making new Ships for Nova:

Also, the fact that you've chosen just cars and jets makes my point stronger. Those need to be smooth. It's a necessity of invention. There isn't a choice. You need aerodynamics.

Besides the fact that there's a logical fallacy in suggesting that one 'side' of an argument is made stronger just because the other 'side' is not strong enough (more than one logical fallacy, actually; you have a False Dilemma, a Straw Man and, most notably, an Appeal to Ignorance), more than a quarter of what I chose were spaceships, which is what we have been talking about since the beginning.

I'm not trying to get into an argument, but humans have no predispositions towards any particular type of line. We like angular lines, but we also like smooth lines.

Angular vehicles that get plenty of driving (and speed):

http://www.smartspec...com/truck-1.jpg
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/4468...221_a14_512.jpg
http://www.trucker.com/extimages/American%...ail%20Photo.JPG
http://www.ajeepthin...angler-4drs.jpg
http://www.uncrate.com/men/images/2007/10/...r-h2-safari.jpg
http://static.howstu...bile-resize.jpg (which I linked to before)

Not that I agree or disagree with your original conclusion, but I think that the human mind, by nature, is not attracted to angular lines any more than to smooth lines, or vice-versa.

I see the latter two fallacies, but I'm having trouble placing the false dichotomy. Unless you mean in that spaceships don't necessarily need to be aerodynamic.