After nearly two weeks of steady work over the holidays, I have completed my first study model/maquette of the Klingon Cruiser using Rhino 3D. This is my first time using this program and this is not exactly an ideal subject for building your first CG model, but I am very happy with the results.
For anyone who hasn't tried their hand at CG modeling, it's an amazing tool for building study models or "maquettes" to verify the dimensions of your studio-scale base structure are accurate before you commence construction.
The only other way to do this is to build a quick and dirty mockup to test your patterns. For some tricky structures I have had to do this 3-4 times in order to get it right which takes a LOT of time. With the digital approach, you can tweak and fine tune your model any number of ways and see how it will look before actually building anything.
To "prove" the accuracy of the study model, I posed it to match the angle of several known photos of the original studio miniature. First I had to figure out the focal length of the lens in each shot. Then I had to make sure I had a close match on angle, position, etc.
Once matched, each angle was rendered and then brought into Photoshop for a detailed comparison. Being off even 1 degree in rotation can have a dramatic effect on how things line up (and so can many other factors), so I repeated this process with no less than ten different photos of the studio model.
This way I could spot things that were off -- if they appeared wrong in more than one view, I knew it needed to be tweaked. On the other hand, if it matched reasonably well in at least three different views, I knew I had a very close match to the studio model.
The results can be viewed here:
http://www.starshipbuilder.com/ubb/Forum18/HTML/000006.html
That was very kind of you to say. . .
