It has been a while since my last update, but besides a wonderful vacation I have been pretty occupied with drilling holes and placing fiber optics. On the bridge I have managed to place them all. And the entire inside has been given a coat of black for light blocking.
I will be clipping the extended pieces of fiber optics once the out side of the model is painted.
Great - the work continues. Have you decided on the quantitiy of FOs you want to install? I ask, because I've seen some Star Destroyer models with lighting who had quite a lot (too many) and at this scale looked more like a cruise ship than a war ship.
Well... you had started me thinking if I was doing the right thing is putting in all those lights... but as the holes were already drilled, I think I need to continue.
But on the other end, I do like the remark the ILM made, back in the day: In order to give the viewer a sense of scale, we wanted to have many little lights. Because many little lights will give that feel on something very big.
So I'm crossing my fingers that I can accomplish that. And if it would really be too much... I can always paint some of them over I guess.
13 hours ago, Noosart said:But on the other end, I do like the remark the ILM made, back in the day: In order to give the viewer a sense of scale, we wanted to have many little lights. Because many little lights will give that feel on something very big.
That is correct, but don't forget: The ILM-model was over 2 meters long and had approximately 200,000 0.5mm fiberoptics. Our models are only 60cm long.
Looks good so far, though - I also like that you neatly aligned the holes you drilled, this contributes a lot to the look when the lights are turned on.
How much has all this cost?!
3 hours ago, LTuser said:How much has all this cost?!
Do I really need to answer that?
Well okay, just don't tell my girlfriend 🙄
The kit was 75 euro. The other stuff (GreenStrawberry and Shapeways) close to 300,- euro
And then there is always the 'normal' stuff I put into models. Paint, plastic card, wiring, extra LEDs... But I don't smoke or spend money on other useless stuff 😇 so once I a lifetime, I'm allowed, right? 😃
I was more on, about all the fiberoptic work.. That has to have cost a pretty penny!
2 hours ago, LTuser said:I was more on, about all the fiberoptic work.. That has to have cost a pretty penny!
😅 ow did you mean that. Hehe he
The lighting set is from GreenStrawberry and had a retail price of around 90 euros. However since I bought a lot of different sets, I was granted a nice discount.
And the lighting kit contains everything. Really nice set!
7 hours ago, Noosart said:And the lighting kit contains everything. Really nice set!
I wished they had included a fourth plug on their board for an led strip to accurately light the sides of the two hangar bays. You need to get a lot of light there, which is not possible through fiberoptics. I solved this by adding an LED strip which backlights the whole model and using the Greenstrawberry kit only for the engines.
It's a neat kit, but with the addition of another plug for a short LED strip it would be perfect.
4 hours ago, Fourtytwo said:It's a neat kit, but with the addition of another plug for a short LED strip it would be perfect.
Yes that is true. I will feed that back to them. I have already contacted them on another small issue with the photo etched stuff. They are very open to suggestions. 👍
I'm also planning to some LED strip lighting for the hangar bays. To do so I will tap into the main power input. Never worked with electronics on this level, but Google and a technical friend have proven very helpful so far 😃
For today I'm hoping to get some of the fiberoptics in on the upper deck.
Hey, looks like we had the same idea at roughly the same time 😀 I am pretty much done with all the preparation work( fiber optics, electronics, and assembling the main modules) and am now getting ready to get the airbrush out. I just can’t make up my mind how much weathering I should apply.... do you know which color you are going to paint yours in?
A few differences I noticed and a few infos for the interested:
If you are interested I will see that I can downsize my pictures and post them here 👍
Hey, looks like we had the same idea at roughly the same time 😀 I am pretty much done with all the preparation work( fiber optics, electronics, and assembling the main modules) and am now getting ready to get the airbrush out. I just can’t make up my mind how much weathering I should apply.... do you know which color you are going to paint yours in?
A few differences I noticed and a few infos for the interested:
Yeah... that is a reall cool project too!!! I would like to do an Arduino build once... but this is just my second build using lights and already a big leap forward than my first project.
I'm almost ready with the upper deck. Once that is done... I've probably done about 300 optical fibers and the main hull still left to be done 😵
And the sun hit the optical wires by accident, giving a small dose of light to the bridge. This view nevers gets old
Hi Noosart, the Arduino takes a little while to get used to but in the end it is cheaper and more flexible than a fixed lighting kit. Google was my best friend for the first couple of days working with the Arduino 🤪 😉
So, I used the rainy weekend and finished the Star Destroyer 😊 It was definitely worth the time and money and I can only recommend this to anybody wanting to build a larger Star Wars model!
Enjoy the rest of your build, it looks great so far! I look forward to seeing some pictures of the small TIE fighters 😉
Take care and stay safe everybody!
Yeah very nice indeed. Cool to see that everyones Star Destroyer is slightly different. Each has their own uniqueness to it 👍
Finally I've got all aprox 300 fibers in place on the upper deck. So now I'm about 33% done
😲
And of course a quick check if all is working
After painting when the fibers are nicely trimmed, the entire thing will look a lot less cluttered.
For now I'm glad that everything is working and I can pick up a different task for a while. All these hours pulling fibers using tweezers was really demaning a lot of concentration.
(and I can only work on the model just some spare minutes at the time, as I'm doing major renovation work on my house...)
Arno
Edited by NoosartOn 10/6/2020 at 9:13 PM, Noosart said:(and I can only work on the model just some spare minutes at the time, as I'm doing major renovation work on my house...)
Arno
So, you're turning the house into the bridge of the Star Destroyer? And running fiber optics through your house for lighting (and superfast computer connections!).
After a slight pause, but here is another update...
By now all holes on the mid deck have been drilled.
And, as can be seen in the second picture, I've started drilling holes on the raised area's on the main deck.
I still need to do the other 2 raised panels before I will move on to the 'trench'.
When all's said and done with the lighting, are you going to add turrets to the surface?
Will you be picking this thread up elsewhere once the FFG forums go away? This is some impressive work
