Starbright Illustrations (blog)

By The Illustrator 　http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/2010/05/25/3d-spaceship-mesh-gets-a-docking-claw/

spaceship coming in to dock

I’ve been tweaking the mesh for my Vega Strike spaceship again, but at the same time I’ve also been adding a bit of detail here and there. As you can see in the render above the diplomatic shuttle spaceship now has a few new aerials poking out of the top and a pair of docking claws extending from the bottom.

When it is flown through the game – a space travel simulation game – it will regularly be docking at space stations and so the docking claws are probably going to see a lot of action.

close up of the spaceship showing new docking claws

I’m very proud of the new docking claws, and here is a close up of the spaceship to show them off. I added a sphere to the scene, attached it to the model by deleting four faces on the spaceship and four on the sphere and then buildinga bridge between them by adding new faces.

I then added a ring at the centre of the sphere and shrunk it, extended four claws from the sphere and deleted the rest of the faces. There is still some work to go to get the claws fully integrated into the spaceship mesh.

Net time I’m doing some 3D modeling work in Blender, probably tomorrow, I’ll fill in the hole in the centre of the claw and add a hose coming out the back connecting it to the engine. Until then here’s the blend file so you can see all the strange 3D shenaningans I’ve been up to since I last uploaded it.

Blend file for the Vega Strike spaceship – work in prog.