Boolean Difference Manipulation

I had realised there were 4 vents in each side piece of the Star Destroyer and wanted in semi-circular edge or cut into the object but was not sure how to do so.

My first attempt was to place a cylinder and then a cube inside of that where I would rotate the cube to cut away more than just from top to bottom but across the edge. I found this did not work at all and left straight edges inside that looked very messy.

My second attempt was to replace the cube with another cylinder so the other cut was rounded also. The end product left an almost figure '8' shape across the object and looked messy once again.

My third and final attempt was a success. Rather than using 2 object to cut, i would just manipulate the single one. By selecting a semicircle in the top face and translating it across it created the perfect effect for what i wanted to but cut out of my object.

Moving and Scaling Multiple Objects

TIE-Fighter Duplicate Wings

Initially I had just duplicated all the object required to create the wing for the purpose of having two symmetrical wings and saving the time of re-creating everything from scratch. Only issue I had from this was that all the object would rotate separately and would be muddled all over the screen rather than staying attached in the correct areas.



Above is the final example of how i had done this.

 I have gone to Windows > Outliner and selected all the objects making the one wing.

Once that was done and all objects were highlighted in the outliner I used Ctrl + G to group these objects together.

This made it so when I edited the models from the group window, all objects would be edited respectively of where they were and how they were according to its arrangement.

So I duplicated the group from the outliner and from the attribute editor I had scaled it to -1 along the x-axis. This made it so the group was rotated perfectly 180 degrees and was easily translated into its correct position.

Cut or Connect

Using the cut or connect tool can add extra polygons to enhance you model. In the image below I am cutting a line allowing me to create an indented face a window effect.

Boolean with an Extrude

Construction of an odd shape

Before I begin I wonder what basic shape to start with. If I see a shape with a circle I will almost certainly use a cylinder or sphere as the start shape. So I had placed it correctly according to the image plane and then I noticed I wanted a flat side to be pulled up with vertices pulled closer together. So I would use a simple cube shape to cut the clean surface out and continue just as previously stated. But it needed an inner circle extruded inside itself and that took priority as there would be a face issue to extruded inwards an circle if the face was not a circle.


From the example above you can see the end result. I have given a visual example of what i had done to create the top area of the cylinder.

1. Extrude another circular face into the cylinder.
2. Cut a cube out of it (shown by a grey box).
3. Extrude the upper flat surface up and transform the vertices closer together on the x-axis.
4. Push the smaller circular face in using the extrude tool.

UV Mapping

UV Mapping was a struggle and somewhere I would to improve.

I struggled to fix the image and vertices in the correct place as i found every time i moved one vertices another attached to the same point would also move which became increasing frustrating. I understand there are areas of this I could improve and i hope to in the coming weeks.

X-Wing Start

Cockpit

Body was created in a similar way to the TIE-Fighter wing but with extra cuts along the whole body at multiple points. Once done i created a separate object for the cock pit. This was mainly a similar way as the body with just highlighting the correct vertices and moving them to their desired location through a process of cutting around the object multiple times.
I then noticed an indent in the body of where the cockpit stand do to facilitate the cockpit i then duplicated my current cockpit and just transformed across the x-axis, this is so when i boolean difference the cockpit from body it will not cut lower than where my cockpit stands.

TIE-Fighter Progress part 2

Viewer Right-Side Wing:

     Trying to create the wings basic shape was easy, creating a flat cube that is elongated and cut horizontally in the center to create the hexagon. Ctrl + E to extrude the outer face to a smaller shape and extrude once again to push the smaller shape inside the wing. Repeat this process for the inner wing too (not yet completed in example below.)
     The detail in the center of the wing used the same process to create the hexagon but the outer face is resized (without extruding) to a smaller shape. Ctrl + D to duplicate the hexagon and resize then place into it proper location.
     Finally the 6 parts sticking out of the center. These were cubes elongated with one edge target welded to another edge to create a triangular prism, and then on a triangular face I target welded the 3 vertices to one to create a point. Then duplicated 5 times and pulled each vertices to the right point to translate the image correctly.




Cockpit:

A simple sphere that has been rotated 90 degrees along the y-axis.
Boolean difference the face off to create a cockpit window and then pull he face out.
The top cut off section was booleaned off and then a face was extruded to connect both areas visually. The top vents were created using cubes that were adjusted correctly and booleaned out.
The bottom guns where attached using an circle that had been transformed into an oval.

Viewer Left-Side Wing:

     The wing was duplicated and rotated separately. This has not worked well. The solution is to create a group and then rotate.