TIE Fighter
polycounter lvl 5
Hey PC 
I'm starting on my humble journey of creating a TIE Fighter. When looking at my portfolio, aside from the fact that it lacks content and other problematic things, I have decided to work on a weak area of mine; hard-surface. I think that if I were to be honest with myself, whenever I have created a hard-surface model and whether it be for a school project or whatever else, I seemed to have always cut corners.
My intention here is to create a highly detailed model, exercise the concept of chamfering edges, smart retopology, good quality bakes, etc. When I think about it, I've had nonsense in my head of just "knowing" how this high-to-low process was done with respect to hard-surface...but I've never honestly sat down and proved I could do it. So let's do it!
Here's a sample of the collection of reference images/blueprints I've gathered for the project. I learned very quickly that the original 77' blueprints don't actually hold very much detail at all besides the basic shapes.
Going through my references, whether they be other 3D renders or photos of model kits, it's clear that almost every TIE is different. Whether it be for casting/molding reasons, size, whatevs. I don't intend on creating the absolute perfect replica of the original ILM models, so I will be cherry-picking and making some decisions on my own. But please correct me if I make some sort of glaring mistake that can't be forgiven.
Also, this seems like something that I think may be obvious to many of you out there--(but this is almost kinda sorta my first rodeo with something like this so I needed to logically cut it up and make sense of things)-- the breakdown. Breaking things up into big shapes, then smaller shapes, then even smaller.
Alrighty, so here's what I have so far. I waited a day-ish to kind of have at least some detail to show. I got started on blocking in the cockpit area, but the main focus as of right now is getting the wings/solar-panels done.
Panel geo
Here's some quick low sampled occ shots
So, I'd say the outside of the wings are 60-70%ish done. For the most part, I think whats left is going to be about filling in the rest of those blank spaces up with as many little doodads as possible.
Any words of wisdom are always very much appreciated
I'm starting on my humble journey of creating a TIE Fighter. When looking at my portfolio, aside from the fact that it lacks content and other problematic things, I have decided to work on a weak area of mine; hard-surface. I think that if I were to be honest with myself, whenever I have created a hard-surface model and whether it be for a school project or whatever else, I seemed to have always cut corners.
My intention here is to create a highly detailed model, exercise the concept of chamfering edges, smart retopology, good quality bakes, etc. When I think about it, I've had nonsense in my head of just "knowing" how this high-to-low process was done with respect to hard-surface...but I've never honestly sat down and proved I could do it. So let's do it!
Here's a sample of the collection of reference images/blueprints I've gathered for the project. I learned very quickly that the original 77' blueprints don't actually hold very much detail at all besides the basic shapes.
Going through my references, whether they be other 3D renders or photos of model kits, it's clear that almost every TIE is different. Whether it be for casting/molding reasons, size, whatevs. I don't intend on creating the absolute perfect replica of the original ILM models, so I will be cherry-picking and making some decisions on my own. But please correct me if I make some sort of glaring mistake that can't be forgiven.
Also, this seems like something that I think may be obvious to many of you out there--(but this is almost kinda sorta my first rodeo with something like this so I needed to logically cut it up and make sense of things)-- the breakdown. Breaking things up into big shapes, then smaller shapes, then even smaller.
Alrighty, so here's what I have so far. I waited a day-ish to kind of have at least some detail to show. I got started on blocking in the cockpit area, but the main focus as of right now is getting the wings/solar-panels done.
Panel geo
Here's some quick low sampled occ shots
So, I'd say the outside of the wings are 60-70%ish done. For the most part, I think whats left is going to be about filling in the rest of those blank spaces up with as many little doodads as possible.
Any words of wisdom are always very much appreciated
Replies
Once I get this wing completely done I'll post up some new results soon, all of this little detail is taking forever
I'm thinking that I'm finished with the outside of the wings/panels. From here I can duplicate what I have for the other side as well as the insides, switch some greebles around, etc.
Thoughts/tips/tricks? Any glaring problems?
Updatin'
I think I can call the panel connectors pretty much done. When I flipped the greebles to make up the inside portion of the panel, I also flipped them on the Y that way the inside and outside of the panels from any angle look different. I'm thinking there's enough variation or visual noise so that it's not immediately obvious, but my thoughts on that may change later
I want this thing to be fairly high res after retopo, so I've been thinking about the UV layout as I work, and I may not have a choice but to put the panels/wings on their own UV set because of the huge surface area. Unless I do some overlapping and whatnot, yeah?
Obv the cockpit area is next to be decked out, and I don't plan on doing an interior so I'll do a dusty/dirty dark glass to hide it
High-poly is finished
It was suggested by a friend that I definitely should overlap as much much of the wings as I can, so I'm gonna go for it
HP tri count is sitting at around 1.6~mil. Any sort of comments/feedback are always appreciated
Other than that, keep it up!