Here's a quickie render of my TIE fighter using some better lighting. Came out great! -Kix

Looks very movie-like already. Higher contrast maybe. Care to share your lighting and modelling methods with the forum?

This is a great image. As a Carrara newbie I'd love to know how you got that soft lighting effect. When can we expect the X-Wing image? :-)

Very cool, do you ever animate these models? memaci

I would not call it stupid at all. I think it actually looks very good. Nice detail. Excellent modeling. Maybe you should try to use it on a more complex rendering; maybe fighting against a rebellion ship. Just to give it more of a artistic composition type deal, with lasers blasting from it.

Kixum must live in Bizzaro World where the word "stupid" means "awesome" to us.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=304221&Start=1&Artist=Kixum&ByArtist=Yes

Ok, Lots of responses. I forget that we have a lot of new people in here and they haven't seen some of the older stuff. nomuse, The model was actually constructed and textured in Raydream (yep, she's that old!). I've moved it along as Carrara has moved along. The original mission was to create a whole 15 minute Star Wars battle and produce it to DVD but I've really let that slip. I built all the models for it and I've never gone on to do the animation for it. Primarily because I've had such tremendous pains with the motion pathways in Carrara not being very good. BigGreenFuryThing, The lighting was done really simple. There is one bulb light with the soft shadows turned on. The skylight is on with a darkgray color in the "background". The stars are a "backdrop" so the gray background isn't shown. I turned on the skylight and the indirect light and rendered. Piece of cake. memaci, Yes, I've test rendered some animations for the movie that WILL GET MADE BEFORE I DIE! I SWEAR! EEEEEEEEEEGAD. Sorry, a little pent up frustration at not being able to work on it forever. Pinklet, Check out my gallery and you can see I've used the model in a few images. The link in this post is one in particular that fits your inquiry. I just haven't rendered that image using more sophisticated lighting. That would be a good experiment. tkane18, Thanks for the comment. I'm a total Star Wars fan. Wish the particular subject wasn't such a nightmare of a challenge to build models for. Texturing and surface detail in the Star Wars universe can make a guy lose years off his life! Thanks for all the feedback! -Kix

Here's some more of the models. I do have an X-Wing built (did it and posted it as a project here in the forum). I also have a pretty nict AT-AT which I have some cool test renders of but haven't posted (made them in the beta of C3). Other stuff would be the pod racer in the gallery and a few other SW models that are of my own design and are for the movie (IF I EVER MAKE IT!!!!!!!!!!!). There's also the light saber tutorial in the back room. That about covers most of my SW stuff at present. A sand crawler is on my list of things to do soon. -Kix

Love the Star Destroyer, and all the models for that matter. Did you think about building the Blockade Runner and animate the opening sequence from the first (third) movie? Good luck finishing whatever animation you work on. Wishing you a long and healthy life so you can finish the project! memaci

The TIE looks nice, but I have one comment on the texturing. The wing has a different sort of texture, as I recall, the bump lines want to be a little thinner, and come in perpendicular from the edge of the wing, for each section. Supposedly the wings are solar arrays or something of the sort. (Can you tell who's childhood was, for a period, disturbingly imposed upon by SW) EMC

Hey, Kix and everyone else -- Really nice stuff, here.... And it's always excellent to see Carrara standing up to the "big boys" of 3D. Like EMC (which happens to be my brother's initials -- you aren't my brother, are you?), I spent way too much time in my childhood staring at pictures from the movies, absorbing every tiny detail. Of course, that's been a long time, so some of those details have faded away, but I do have a couple comments. On Darth's TIE, the little eight-sided piece of greebling on the outside of the solar wing at the point the main fuselage joins is a little too narrow. There should also be a small opening (only one visible from this angle, two overall, symetrically placed) in the rear horizontal "wing" area. The lasers on both Darth's TIE and the standard TIE are a little too big. I guess size does matter.... :o) EMC already noted the direction of the lines on the wings of the standard TIE. The interceptor looks perfect to me. And all of these little nit-picks are not to say that these are anything less than amazing models. You've really done some outstanding work here! Hope to see more, and that you eventually do have time to get the movie going! - Dex

These models are old and I've gotten a little better with stuff as time has gone by. I knew about the wings in the Tie Fighter having lines that went the other way but I haven't gotten around to fixing it. That stinking Star Destroyer was a BIG PAIN to get all the "roofs" set up and lined up but I'll confess that it's my fave of the bunch I posted here. Thanks for all the comments! -Kix

Attached Link: http://webpages.charter.net/franzs/graphics/joestiefighter/index.html

Oh and BTW, Here's the link to the webpage which talks all about the movie (not updated for a couple of years). -Kix

Yikes! I was looking through that website and LOOK, it says METACREATIONS in the set page! Probably the only screenshot I have of that. -Kix

Attached Link: http://scifi3d.theforce.net/

Hey kix, Here's a link to an webpage full of people like us (fans of Star Wars)modeling Lucas staff! Take a look! http://scifi3d.theforce.net/