[Irinikus]

Today I started work on this model again and am still busy finishing off the High Gain Antenna. I want each module to be perfect before I move on to the next one.

Here are the latest pics of this module:

[Irinikus]

This project is going to take a good long time!

As the transceiver for the High Gain Antenna has taken me the whole evening to build!

[Intuition]

Looking great so far. One minor critique.

I can see a slight poly edge on the dish. If you want it to be perfectly smooth you can select it....
press
ctrl+D to duplicate it.
then
ctrl+h to hide the original for back up.
then
take the duplicate and use "polygons to subdivision" under the modify>convert menu.
Then once it is converted press 3 for smoothing.

Everything else is really great so far. This kind of project is laborious but rewarding.

[Irinikus]

Looking great so far. One minor critique.

I can see a slight poly edge on the dish. If you want it to be perfectly smooth you can select it....
press
ctrl+D to duplicate it.
then
ctrl+h to hide the original for back up.
then
take the duplicate and use "polygons to subdivision" under the modify>convert menu.
Then once it is converted press 3 for smoothing.

Everything else is really great so far. This kind of project is laborious but rewarding.

Thanks for the critique.

I have applied quite a bit of smoothing to the wiring already and will smooth the dish a bit closer to finishing off, I'm currently trying to keep the vertex count as low as possible at the moment, as this is only about 5% complete, and I don't know at this point how far I'll be able to push the vertex count before running into problems with the available processing power of the Tezro.

The next part is going to be difficult, as it requires me to build in an imperfect manner, due to the nature of the probe's thermal blanket.

Once the bus module is complete, it will be lengthy, but free sailing from a build point of view. (besides the thermal blanketing on the optical equipment of course, but I'll build these modules up completely, before building the thermal blanketing for them.)

---

I've just rendered it, having smoothed the dish to two levels (one wasn't enough), using linear subdivisions:



This is what the mesh looks like when smithed to the required level:



I have reverted it to its pervious level of smoothness, just to complete the build.

[Intuition]

That is why I recommend using convert to subdivision. Mesh >Smooth will give you raw polygons but a subdivision will smooth with the same count as the low poly frame. Plus you can switch it on and off by pressing 1 or 3.

Either way, I completely get wanting to keep the FPS refresh nice while modeling. Which, btw, is looking really nice.

[Irinikus]

That is why I recommend using convert to subdivision. Mesh >Smooth will give you raw polygons but a subdivision will smooth with the same count as the low poly frame. Plus you can switch it on and off by pressing 1 or 3.

Either way, I completely get wanting to keep the FPS refresh nice while modeling. Which, btw, is looking really nice.

Thanks Man!

Here's the latest. 

I've made start on the bus module, but still have a long way to go:

[Irinikus]

Here's the latest progress:

[Intuition]

Looking snazzy. The vents are a very nice detail.

[Irinikus]

Thanks man!

I'm trying to build it up as realistically as possible, according to information that I'm getting from NASA's model as well as a variety of other pictures of the probe.

The only problem is that there are differences in each one of the sources that I have, so I'm therefore averaging them out!

[Irinikus]

Here's the latest.

It doesn't look like much more has been done since the last renderings, but I've spent the entire evening optimising the model.

I've spruced up the mounts for the high gain antenna (this took quite a while to do!)