What it isFor this project I chose to create a model space shuttle based off the real life space shuttle Endeavor. There are three key
components to this shuttle: The space shuttle itself, the large rocket underneath, and two auxiliary rockets. This project was made with Blender
Process
I found some schematic style plans for the space shuttle Endeveor which I was able to use as background photos to assist with the dimensions of the model.
I had originally planned to make an exact replica of the plans, but after realizing the detail involved with that, I more just
created a rough impersonation.
The general process was basically to just go from each viewing angle and transform a cube to match the background photos. I started first with the
space shuttle itself, then moved on to creating the larger rocket underneath, then finally moved onto creating the auxiliary rockets.
After this, even with closely following the background schematics, the result didn't look very space shuttle like. I then went with my own liberty
and custom made certain shapes until it looked a bit better.
Once the general shape was done, I smoothed it all out by subdividing the surfaces until it looked a bit more natural and less polygony.
Finding textures was a bit of a challenge because most of the free texture websites did not have very many metallic textures
that have that distinct white colour of a space shuttle. I instead just chose one of the lighter metallic textures I could find, and I
think it generally works.
Lastly getting to the rendering aspect, I placed a generic photo of the upper atmosphere in the background to give the rendering some flair.
Other than that, I left most of the rendering to the defaults of Blender. I used three different angles, which were pretty much arbitrarily chosen.
The positioning of the light was also arbitrarily chosen.
Challenges
There was quite a few difficulties involved with getting everything to scale, and to properly match up with other pieces. This
was the first time I had ever used a modeling software, so there was quite a bit of a learning curve involved with using Blender.
The schematics that I was using to match everything up turned out to not be exactly to scale with each other, so there was difficulties
making sure everything was to scale from different viewing angles.
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