BetterSpace: Whitestar Tutorial

Lesson 5 part a:
Building the Upper Wings and Engine Pods:
The non-spline-based bit...

After the brief respite from spline modelling in Lesson Four, this lesson brings back the technique with a vengeance. This section requires a total of 30 splines, made of 75 points. Prepare yourself for the most tangled mess yet as you build the White Star's upper wings and engine pods.

In order to get the splines in the right places, we will first create the non-spline-based parts of the section, namely, the weaponry and the two large protrusions from the rear of the engine pod. All of these are fairly easy to make.

Begin by creating a cylinder with the following settings:

settings for Disc requestor

Next, select the following polygons of the new cylinder.

(1) select these polygons

Now activate the Taper 1 tool by clicking Modify \ (Flex) \ Taper 1 and access the tools Numeric options. Enter these settiongs into the requestor:

(1) settings for Taper 1 requestor

Exit this requestor by pressing Apply. You must now deselect all polygons and then select the polygons shown here:

(2) select these polygons

Again, start the Taper 1 tool and enter the following settings:

(2) settings for Taper 1 requestor

Exit the requestor by Applying the tool. Next, use the Mirror tool (Shift+v) in the Y plane with a setting of -5.9m. Finally, apply a new surface to the two tubes with the following attributes:

Your tubes should now look something like this.

Mirroring the fin in the Y plane (-5.9m)

Save your work as WS_Eng_Pod_Fins.lwo

Create two discs with the following settings:

When the discs are created, they will be facing in the wrong direction, so you will need to Flip them.

Using the new discs as a base, employ the techniques learned in Lesson Four to build the gun barrels shown in the next image.

using the new discs as a base for new gun barrels

Use the Mirror tool in the X plane with a value of 25.8 m to double-up the gun barrels. Apply the WS Weaponry surface, which you created in Lesson Four, to objects.

Finally, Cut these objects out of the current layer and Paste them into the layer containing the pieces created in step 1 of this lesson. Merge all points (get into the habit of doing this fairly regularly) and your model should look like this:

WS_Eng_Pod_Details.lwo

the completed section

Save your work as WS_Eng_Pod_Details.lwo.

Do you have any comments of questions regarding this lesson?