posted
Actually, in looking again to see if there was a free solution for going from .lwo to anywhere else, I found Blender, which supposedly has scripts available allowing for volume calc (but I'll be damned if I could make 'em work in one sitting).
While I found Blender's unique UI rather daunting, I managed to muddle through an export to .3ds and an import to SketchUp. I had to recolor the Bussard collector ends (the tips went gray), but beyond that she's a pretty ship in SketchUp (once I rescaled her to be larger than a man's toe).
At 8.5 meters, I came up with a volume of 59 cubic meters at 10% accuracy (some part of the model at about 20% of the volume calc really slows the thing up, so I didn't use the usual 5% accuracy).
I'll try to make the .3ds and .skp files available to you shortly.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
My plugin in Lightwave shows a volume of 61.1 cubic meters for the whole ship, nacelles included.
Thinking about it, I should find a way to convert my models to .skp files as it's pretty much the most popular new tool around. I can export to .3ds and .dxf with no surfacing data, but that's about it.
-------------------- www.kennyscrap.com - where I download crap I make.
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
One thing I noticed (which you probably already knew) that the Type-7 width is seriously misreported in the TNG tech manual. According to DITL, the width given is 3.6 meters, which is about half what it should be.
As for SketchUp, it's something for 3-D dilettantes like me to play with, but you can't really render scenes or do anything especially cool with it ... ships won't even light up, I don't think. I mean, if you wanna export to it that's cool (you'd be a hero, since there are only a couple of other folks putting up nice Trek models on the SketchUp 3-D Warehouse), but it's very very basic stuff.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
I've seen quite a few nice renders with it, there's a number of third-party render engines designed for it now. They seemed to have illumination and so forth, I assumed they were ubiquitous now as all the renders I see seem to be using them.
-------------------- www.kennyscrap.com - where I download crap I make.
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
I think most people are using something called Kerkythea to do their renders, but there are now quite a few packages that will render sketchup. Unfortunately, i think most of them require cash.
-------------------- www.kennyscrap.com - where I download crap I make.
Registered: Jun 2003
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