Kick ass, you should continue with this and then make stuff like space stations with maybe 500 tris or something, asteroids, etc. Make more fighters too:)
Daily Mini-Ships
RO11
#42
Yeah I would love to see some kind of scene with all these in plus some space fortress or something.
AdamAtomic
#43
Thx all - I am not planning any kind of huge finished render right now, as it is very important to me that these ships not be part of a “project” for personal reasons (TOO DAMN MANY PROJECTS). However, I am planning on modeling all sorts of space-themed objects - asteroids, space stations, debris, etc, so it may very well be that when Daily Mini Ships comes to a close, I will have enough material to put together some fun space scenes!
I feel like I should sum up the first week or something. Here were my goals:
1 - Have FUN making 3D models again.
2 - Experiment with different ways of pushing VERY small requirements.
3 - Produce quality models very fast (1-2 hours) that are good enough to be in a portable-themed portfolio.
Toward those ends I think it is going well. These are really fun, fast models to make, and I am learning all sorts of things about geometry and faster UV mapping and faster texturing. They are also really good exercises in design - I have an excuse to just make something up for fun every night, and that has had an effect on everything I do, which is really cool. I am very surprised at the huge difference there is between simply doing some sketches or whatever and actually sitting down and just pumping out some kind of model on the fly. My least favorite ship is the Sputnik one, and that is the only one I sketched out ahead of time. This approach is not sane or reasonable in many cases, but it is working well on this project.
Anyways, thanks again, the odyssey will continue on Monday. I will try and come up with some fighters and props, but the most fun part of DMS is just letting whatever ship that wants to be made get made 
However, I really hope the asteroid pushes to the front of the pack this week, that is going to be a fun one!
Swizzle
#44
The whole concept of this is great. I love your low-poly stuff and your texturing is excellent and very fitting to the design of the ships. Participating in the Game Art Challenge is teaching me all sorts of stuff about texturing and modeling efficiently, and one of the reasons I actually wanted to get into it was because of the low-poly Halo stuff you did a while ago.
Can’t wait to see more!
LordDubu
#45
Holy crap! Friday’s ship is amazingly similar to a ship design I came up with a few years back. Except my containers were spheres and the engine nacelles were mounted off of the over and under clamp arms… oh and the thrust went the other direction, over the top of the spheres… so the cockpit faced away… I’ll see if I can find my sketch somewhere.
AdamAtomic
#47
A scavenger ship. Crane is made from intersecting pieces so it is animate-able, it can rotate and bend and all that good stuff. 16 color palette (plus 1-bit alpha).
toastie
#49
Hey, Adam.
This is some awesome stuff.
Ive been following this thread since it started. I just love minimalist models and yours are just kick ass!
So, you’ve inspired me to make one of my own today, I hope you don’t mind me posting it in your thread, since it hardly deserves one of its own. It’s sort of a robotic base for heavy robot systems to attach to.
Here it is (46 tris, 64x64 texture).
Hope to see more of yours here every day
AdamAtomic
#50
Toastie - thanks so much, the picture speaks more than the words! that is excellent 
I’m not so sure it doesn’t deserve its own thread though - your division of color for features is top-notch, and even small round features like the rivets and wheels are very well defined. I especially like the kanji on the front and the clear lettering on the side. My favorite part is the treads though for sure! The chunky look reminds me of Advanced Wars (which is a very, very good thing).
For the future, I would recommend making the center of your rivets brighter than the surrounding metal, with a fairly deep shadow on each side. So keep it at 5 pixels the way you have it, but make the center bright and the edges dark, instead of getting progressively darker toward the middle. This will better emulate both ambient light and collecting dust and dirt in the corner where the rivet meets the metal, plus it will stand out more.
toastie
#51
Thank you, Adam!
Your comments mean alot to me
You’re right about the rivets, though they’re actually 3x3 px sized so thers not much room for shadowing. If i do another model, i’ll leave some room to make them a bit bigger.
And the kanji is a random one, since i speak no japanese, i just found a pixel japanese font awhile ago, so i thought i’d use it. I hope it doesn’t say anything obscene 
Anyway, thank you and i look forward to more stuff. And if i make any more, i’ll be sure to show you.
rob-beddall
#52
Hey!!
wow, you have really inspired me to do something.
i recognise that your ships are originals but i think i might have a go at building ships from all the old shooters. just to get back into speed modelling / texturing etc.
how about the ship from IO on the commodore, anyone remember that?
thankyou for the inspiration. gonna get to work on this tomorrow.
or R-type. or…any of those old games…fantastic.
thankyou.
cheers!!
AdamAtomic
#53
Rob - thanks man, it feels great to know that this is some help or inspiration to others!
Only a wire for tonight, I will post the finished ship with Wednesday’s ship tomorrow night. By next week I should be on a better schedule, and will post each day’s ship in the morning instead of at like midnight…
There have been a lot of requests for more attack ships, so this is an air-to-air and air-to-ground missile launching ship. The huge number of ballistics it carries makes it weigh a lot and makes it dangerous to fly, so the missile launcher/jet pods can be jettisoned if the ship is in danger, and it can glide back to earth on extendable wings hidden beneath the pods. Inspired by modern military designs like the SR-71 and stealth bomber, but also by fish
Tagill
#55
It’s sort of a robotic base for heavy robot systems to attach to.
Here it is (46 tris, 64x64 texture).
you said this model was 46 tris can you post a wireframe of this model.
i only ask because seeing the shapes you used i counted 68 tris ?
DrFx
#57
Adam: This thread is uber-cool, love all your pics!
Toastie: Nice one, too!
One question: When you have say, 200 spaceships, what are you going to do with all of them? I foresee a nice RTS for some mobile platform! 
:buttrock:
beeglebug
#59
Ditto, there’s 68 there, assuming all the redundant backfaces are deleted. It was probably just a typo though, or maybe he had some of the polys triangulated and others not, giving him a funny count. Its a good model though regardless. You can add my name to the list of those inspired by this thread
We should make this a regular community thing, like the daily sketch group! We could even widen it out a bit, maybe have a couple of catagories, like 128 polys + 128x128 texture, 256 polys and 256x256 texture. I know it would help me keep motivated, pumping out something quickly each day is really good for that!
toastie
#60
Oh, oops, you’re right, guys.
Blender showed the polycount in quads, not tris. And here I was thinking I was so uber cool D: Anyway, sorry for the miscalculation, im still fairly new to Blender.
beeglebug, i was thinking of something similar also, I wanna get started making little models like that if not daily, than very often and i dont want to impose on poor adam’s thread, since he deserves all the praise here. But it would be cool to make a mini-site for something like this. Maybe a (friendly) minimalist model competition (like the 10 second animation club) with a polygon and texture size budget assigned per theme based on what it is. (Like 32x32 tex and 60 polys to model a coke can and 128x128 and 300 polys to model a character).
Anyway, if anyone’s interested i can whip up a little site with a submission system in no time.