This is a basic spaceship model suitable to be used in games. It is not a military ship, it does not really do anything special, it is not meant to be a hero character. But it can be a background model, or maybe a colony ship.

Modelling

I started with a few concept sketches (A, B & C), then decided to move forward with a refinement (D) on one of them. Final model is not too different from the sketch but I replaced the fin looking part below with a docking section. I wanted to convey size and that fin was not doing it for me.

Initially I wanted to keep a 5000 polygon budget, but in the end I had 6712 tris on the main model. In addition each engine exhaust is 4 quads (48 tris) and there are bunch of decal quads around the model.

Some of the edge loops may seem unnecessary but to use trims I had to have them.

Texturing

I aimed for a 10.24 px/m texel density. This model roughly fits into a box with dimentions 470m × 470m × 180m. According to my rough calculations I would need at least an 8K texture if I wanted to unwrap everything uniquely. Instead I used a 4K trimsheet approach and UV repetition saved space.

There also a 1K detail texture that uses UV2 (uniquely unwrapped). This second texture has baked in AO from the geometry (which is missing in the trimsheet) as well as some dirt, wear and tear: