Still chugging along...

  Still plugging away at the Type C, mostly doing detail work and greebles.  Learning from my experience with the Service Hull project, I'm spending a fair bit more time on details I can use for close-up shots.  Things like cargo and vehicle bays, windows, etc.  I'm going to start working up more shots of the day-to-day stuff, and I'd also like to do a few "field repair" scenes with some poser characters tearing apart something up close.  Turns out planning is critical from the very beginning - going back to retrofit a cargo bay and doors is a major pain in the ass, so I'm trying to get those types of things worked out now before I spend any time texturing.  That's probably the biggest pain, trying to fix the textures after you screw with geometry.  That's why I didn't do too many shots of the service hull up close.  Anyway, a couple more WIPs for your amusement (assuming anyone besides me is following this...)

Front side shot showing the cargo bay in the forward hull.  Added some greebles to the front to break it up some, including a sensor dome, some antennae and panels, and 3 connection points for custom equipment.  The interior area on the otherside of that bulk head is custom space (40 tons left over in the original design).

The other side from the front.  The central cargo bays have been roughed out, and doors built with an eye toward closeups and possibly animations down the road.  I changed the material on the back fins to the same mesh used on the radar dishes; I think it looks pretty cool.   Probably not radiators, as we originally guessed.  I'm calling them part of the sensor package but have yet to come up with the appropriate technobabble.  I've also started in on the central strut section with connections to the cargo bays and docking points for the ships' two shuttles.

The small windows on the sides are still a thorn in my side.  I built them seperately, and they'll probably stay that way.  Using booleans/shapemerge to do them turned into a total frickin' nightmare  when I discovered that even with "Ignore backfacing' turned on, it was still grabbing the occasional stray vertex or edge, which would promptly hammer the crap out of the side I wasn't looking at.  Probably what I'll do is use transparency maps on the hull beneath them, then make the appropriate part of the window transparent, just leaving them grouped with the hull.