Never used/heard of lathe or rail before. Everything I ever attempted with curves before turned out terrible.
I created the base hull for this with mass FFD boxes on a sphere and went from there....
People seem to like my organic shape models... low poly and soft curve... in wings3d, you have a simple tool called "magnet"... and it work like real magnet... in place of a lot of bla-bla-bla, simply look at the following video :
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRhgsLWgHsI
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMLdPWnX5tQ
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3E1KZ8ZhE8 ( this one is very interesting, it show various magnet effect on a single model )
Magnet don't add poly, only deform the original mesh... Vorlon ship posted up by Tobi and the Minbari ship i have made for him use these magnet system... pretty sure that 3DS max and other software have the magnet thing too, maybe hidden somewhere ( in wings3d, it appear in menu only in expert mode )...
I cannot imagine what model IskatuMesh will create if he was knowing all function/plug-in from his 3D software... actual result is already wonderful !!!
About the Vorlon ship posted by Tobi, the interestin thing is not the model itself but the "blue area" who are producing light... light are not only casted on the model but on nearby model too ( can create projector by example )... the ship is in fact two mesh, blue section using the sins sun FX shader via a particule file... it is possible to make moving part, moving texture, stealth mode, etc ... using the various FX from sins...
I was long away due to real life but in around 2 week, i am back to school and will have plenty time for model/texture again...