I’ve been working on taking my modelling skills to the next level by learning how to work with subdivisions properly. As a hard-surface modeller who’s only really worked on Archvis projects before, working with organic shapes has always been somewhat of a challenge, and because I like making life difficult for myself I’ve designed a ship with a lot of flowing, organic architecture.
I’m also a bit of a fan of parametric design, so I figured it would be a good test of my newly learned skills to make an organic parametric shelf for one of the offices. I’m probably not going to keep it because it does look a bit weird/out of place, but for my first ever attempt at a subdivision model I think it went fairly well 
I then thought I’d challenge myself a bit more to see if I could model a whole desk using this technique, and I have to say I’m really pleased with the result. It was quite the change of mindset to start working exclusively with quads when modelling, but I’m really starting to love the new workflow. It makes modelling organic shapes a breeze, and I think the results really do speak for themselves.
I really need to get a new test build out for the backers to poke around, but other than some new rooms there isn’t really any new interaction to speak of. To fix that I took a break from design work to add a couple of new toys to play with, the first of which is the ability to polarize the windows.
I still need to model the control panel properly, but there will now be a little slider next to every window that will allow you to control the amount of light entering the room. This will actually become a bit of a gameplay mechanic, because if you warp up to a star it will be bright, and you’ll absolutely need to polarize the windows.
Default, which is actually 10% polarizing already:
50% polarization:
90% polarization, which is the current maximum to stop the glass from going fully opaque.
In addition to this I also added the controls to raise and lower the blast shield on the Bridge:
I’m keen to have this density of interaction all over the ship, so no matter where you’re standing, there should always be something interactive within your field of vision. And now, it’s time to polish up the latest additions and prepare for a new build!