Star Trek Stuff

[scifidude79]

I didn't like the distribution of light and dark panels. It was too much light in one spot and dark in another. So, I swapped two of the colors around all over the map and I think it looks much better.

[scifieric]

Chris, that looks AWESOME!  Love it!

[scifidude79]

Thanks Eric.

[scifidude79]

Soooo... I had this all ready to post earlier and I realized I had my windows on a bad line. Due to the curvature of the saucer, they wouldn't have been effective on the deck they were on, they only could have been skylights for the deck below with unusually large rooms. That made no sense, so I changed them to farther up the curve and, thus, farther up the deck. Now they can be windows in quarters like the ones on the Enterprise-D that you saw over Picard and Troi's beds (probably others too, but I definitely remember those two.) So, this works better. Though, if you've never removed window cuts and rebuilt geometry by hand, I don't recommend it.

Aside from that, I also added some escape pod hatches. They're the same type on a lot of TNG-era ships. 3x3m, 6 people per pod, and there are currently 31 of them. That means the ship can currently evacuate 186 people. Of course, there will be more pods later. To get those in place, I created a flat hatch shape and positioned it over my saucer. Then I used Rail Clone to create duplicates along the curvature of the saucer and the heat shrink to put them right against the hull. Then I just had to extrude them and then round the edges and that all worked great. They're on the same line where I had those windows, but having pods there makes more sense as they can used the extra space for launch systems.

Aside from windows and pods, I added some transporter emitters and some things to make us go.









And, to make life more fun, the right button is going out in my mouse. It will randomly decide I'm not still pressing it anymore. I'll have to see what I have laying around until I get around to replacing it. I have some "mobile" mice, but I generally don't like using them because they're smaller. But, if I must I will.

[scifidude79]

I decided to try something different for the hull material and I think this looks better than the texture I had before.

[scifieric]

Spectacular work, Chris!  I can't wait to see this completed!

[scifidude79]

Thanks Eric. I'm looking forward to that too. Sill a bit of a way to go, though.

[scifidude79]

I got the paneling done on the secondary hull. This is a long and tedious process, but no more so than making textures and fooling with UV mapping.

[scifieric]

Excellent work, Chris!  Excellent work!

[scifidude79]

Thanks a lot, Eric.

[scifidude79]

Stuff.

[scifidude79]

More stuff. And a name change. I got the name Sunstreaker from The Transformers. Sunstreaker is an Autobot who is vain and arrogant. He thinks he's the best and lets everyone else know it. He also points out the shortcomings of others and doesn't help others. Basically, he's a d-bag. He's a skilled warrior, which is why the Autobots put up with his attitude. Aside from being associated with a character who's a d-bag, I don't want to use a name from another franchise. So, I renamed the ship the USS Minerva. Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare. She's not a violent battle craving psycho like God of War Mars, Minerva instead prefers to fight defensively. I feel that type of character fits the Federation a bit more than a sociopathic Autobot. Minerva's Greek counterpart is Athena, which is what I was going to go with, but it's used more frequently. I feel Minerva gets less use, so I went with that.

[scifieric]

Thanks a lot, Eric.

You've earned it, Chris.  You continue to turn out exemplary work!

[scifidude79]

You've earned it, Chris.  You continue to turn out exemplary work!

Thanks again, Eric.

It's getting hard to be (and stay) motivated to do CGI. It doesn't help when you post work on a certain forum (you know the one, I stopped posting there for years due to this issue) and you get no response. Yet, other threads get lots of replies. And, of course, plenty of people post their stuff and want feedback on it without giving much back to the community. But, irksome as that is, I'm 41 years old, so it's not my main reason for not feeling this stuff anymore.

The biggest problem is, I'm once again getting pissed off at Windows. There are a number of reasons I prefer Linux based operating systems. For one, Windows relies on really old drivers. Some of them are 15-20 years old. If you have any doubts, pull up the Device Manager in Windows 10 and take a look at your USB or monitor drivers. By computer standards, they're ancient. I recently switched from a 24" 1080p TV to a 32" 720p TV as a monitor. It's an older TV, but a good one. It's a Sharp Aquos that my cousin got me a great deal on at HHGregg (he used to work there) many years ago. Now, the TV will do 1366x768p resolution. However, it can go up to 1920x1080i. Windows uses an ancient generic monitor driver and will only let me set the resolution to 1366x768p. Needless to say, on a 32" TV, that's huge. I tried scaling the screen to less than 100% only to find out Windows won't do that. It will only let you scale up, not down. So, I decided to give Linux another look and found it will let me scale lower than 100%, as I thought it would. However  that's not necessary as Linux correctly identifies the display as a Sharp Aquos and lets me set the resolution to 1920x1080i. So, it's basically like running it in 1080p. Why won't Windows do this? Probably old ass drivers. The monitor driver it uses predates the TV.

Another issue that cropped is where the most recent round of Windows updates screwed up my wireless mouse. I was having issues with the right button only, but I use that a lot in Lightwave. I thought the mouse was going bad, so I switched mice. That one did it too. Fresh batteries didn't help. I finally switched to a wired mouse (I had to buy one) and it works fine now. So, they messed something up with those updates that made my Logitech wireless mice stop working correctly. Can issues like this crop up in Linux? Of course they can. But, if they do, I can just switch Linux distributions. There's only one Windows.

So, where does this leave me? Linux Mint 20. I installed it on a second computer and left the Windows machine alone. Now, Lightwave will only work on Windows or a Mac. (no way in hell am I buying an overpriced Mac) I've tried getting it running on Linux using WINE, but it's a no-go. LW2018 requires Windows firewall. So, it's either put up with Windows and its shenanigans or switch to Blender on Linux.

These issues are the main reason I'm re-evaluating whether or not I even want to continue doing CGI as a hobby. Nobody can help me make this decision, I have to figure it out myself.

[scifieric]

These issues are the main reason I'm re-evaluating whether or not I even want to continue doing CGI as a hobby. Nobody can help me make this decision, I have to figure it out myself.

Holy cow!

I know that no one can help you with this decision, but from a purely personal (and selfish) point of view, I do hope you find a way to continue.  I truly enjoy seeing your work.  But you have to do what is best for you, I get that.

Good luck either way!