For Week 2, I decided to model another TIE Fighter. Yeah, really inventive, I know. But there's method to my madness. I figured that I should try to start again from scratch, applying what I learned during Week 1 while also pushing the boundaries a bit. So for Week 2 I focused much more intently on surface details. I also took a lot of liberties with those details.

When I first set out I told myself it'd be a film-accurate replica, as much as my skill level would allow. But also knowing that I wasn't really being held to that standard, I felt free to experiment. And I really liked the idea of exposed wires and tubing. Accurate? No. Something you'd slap on the outside of a starfighter? Heck no. But a whole lot of fun.

By the time I finished, I'd even developed the head-canon that this was some kind of experimental or reverse-engineered TIE Fighter. Maybe this picture was taken long after the movies take place, and an old, barely-functional Fighter has been "made to work" with a patchwork of bypasses. Or maybe this is at the peak of Imperial engineering, and a whole host of highly classified experiments are being performed, requiring temporary changes that were never intended to go into the field. Whatever, it looks cool.

So what did I learn from this?

Well, cables are stupid-simple to model if you use Bezier curves, so there's that. I had so much fun just modeling little receptacles for them to plug into, and little mounting brackets to hold them in place. I'm a little disappointed that they don't stand out more in the final renders, but if they had, they might have looked lame, so I guess it's fine.

I also focused a whole lot more on getting the materials right. I'm still inexperienced with material nodes, but learned A LOT about how to mix different nodes to get a desired outcome. I managed to nail the finest details of the solar panels - down to the tiny connecting wires - and the main hull material looks just about like I thought it ought to. No, I don't think I've achieved peak realism nor film-accuracy. But I'm super happy with what I did manage.

But the real focus of this session was on the greebles - the fine details, ridges and shapes that trick your brain into thinking a sci-fi model looks like it could be "real", even though they serve no actual purpose. And it turns out, greebles in general are not that challenging to create. I had always avoided this concept because they look so incredibly daunting. And while this is my only second attempt and I'm under no illusion that this is some kind of groundbreaking work, they're actually a lot easier to create than it seems.

First you start off using Inset and Extrude to create a bunch of panels. There doesn't need to be a lot of rhyme or reason to these, and if it doesn't look right or natural, just undo and try again with another shape or location. The panels just signify areas of detail, and you can really elevate your model a lot with just this.

You can also model your greebles with just single flat polygons, and then make use of the solidify modifier to give it dimensionality. This is a super time saver for anything not requiring a ton of complexity. I did exactly this on all the tiny mounting brackets "holding" the cables to the hull. Just a single set of quads wrap around the cable, and solidify does the rest. It's almost like modeling in 2½-D. The positions are in 3 dimensions, but the shapes are in 2.

When you start wanting to add additional 3D elements, and not just random chunks of sheet metal, you can duplicate the vertices making up the surface you plan to work from, and then separate them into a different model. From there you can model away, and delete the duplicated vertices you don't end up using. The shrink wrap modifier comes in handy here when it's time to attach your greebles to the object.

The fully modeled ones, predictably, require the most effort and energy and so I didn't create a whole ton of them. If I were making a production scene, I would absolutely take a few days just modeling a suite of greebles that I could then choose from, and copy-paste into strategic locations in the main object. I'd keep that set of greebles with me from project to project, and actively add to it over time.

I found that my greebles fell into these three categories: extruded, solidified, and fully modeled. And so I ended up with approximately 3 distinct 3D objects: the main ship's hull, including the extrusions; the solidified set of flat polygons; and the set of fully 3D-modeled greebles. Obviously I'd have another set of 3 for the wings, and so on.

Also, you'd think packing all the distinct fully-modeled greebles into a single object model would be cumbersome, as it would get rather difficult selecting vertices for any particular mesh without accidentally moving others around. Enter the L, or "select linked faces" key. With L (and SHIFT+L to deselect) managing independent meshes became a breeze.

So, what's next?

Well, I'll probably stick with Star Wars for a little longer, for reasons I mentioned in Week 1. And although I had probably ought to do a third TIE Fighter to really hone the improvements and commit them to memory, I promise I won't put you through that. Well, not yet at least. Maybe next time we'll take a look at the Rebels instead.