This is it, Kangaroo. Now you have no excuse...
http://deeplayer.com/dan_w/WCUships/WCs ... ntop1k.jpg
http://deeplayer.com/dan_w/WCUships/WCs ... side1k.jpg
You can almost see the rivets...
Sorry, Snow Cat; these were in the "Previous" link in Photobucket, off the page of your chart, on the other thread, and I couldn't resist.
EDIT:
Actually, hold on, Kangaroo; let me get the station started, 'cuz I think I understand some things about it that I couldn't explain in words...
EDIT2:
Here, this is what I wanted to say:
Sort of like what I'm seeing in those 6 balls around the station.
It's wrong, though.
Very wrong; --the cover armor should be a bit rounded along the length axis, corners should be rounded, there's two more sheets of armor underneath... and even if not visible, the armor sheets should have a thickness...-- so I won't even bother saving the blend file. I'd start again from scratch, myself, anyways. But you get what I'm trying to say, right? There's a lot of details that one can see there, if one
wants to see...
EDIT3:
And you might as well go to town on it. Even as high as 100k polys is justified for a space station. The diameter of it is 1.2 kilometers...
http://www.wcnews.com/ships2/wc2starbase.shtml
Which is almost twice the length of a Bengal carrier.
And there should be meter-sized details on it, for visual scale reference.
But Blender won't play well with things smaller than 0.01, and the recess of windows should be less than their height, so I'd make 0.02 Blender units = 1 meter, such that the diameter would be 24 Blender units.
But, actually, you'll need details smaller than half a meter... like antenna sticks, hand rails and cables probably should be 10 cm diameter max...
Okay, I'd make 0.1 = 1 meter, and so the full diameter would be 120 units.
EDIT4:
The goal is, --or I should say, "my goal would be", but I'm hoping to make this a standard for all future WCU work--, to make it such that, from the right distance, or at a given "blur factor", it looks
exactly like the reference illustration... As if the illustration was a photograph of the model. BUT, such that, as you get closer or zoom in or focus the camera, the amount of detail you see increases. In other words, the extra greebles should be so small and subtle that if you were to take that photo a bit out of focus, you wouldn't see them, but instead you'd get the reference image. IOW, I'd first make a model the resembles the image !00%, and then proceed to add details, but only tiny details; --details so tiny or faint that one could reason they "wouldn't have shown on the picture, anyhow". Or you can have larger than "tiny" greebles, but only in areas that are hidden in the picture. That way, there's no canon conflict.
And it doesn't have to be
many details. Rather than a homogeneous distribution of greebles, I prefer small clusters, myself. And only greebles you can't do with the texture are really warranted: --i.e.: non-superficial; --e.g., cables that cross space, masts and beams, radar dishes; but not rivets, say. And only windows near the outer rim, like on the balls, need be geometrically recessed. Windows on structures inside the pan, you could never fly too close to them, so they might as well just be in the texture. Also, greebles that are smaller than a pixel are well justified: Textures for a station would be 2k by 2k, including all sides unwrapped, so assume we'll get about 1 meter by 1 meter texels. So a hex nut half a meter in size *must* be represented using geometry.
And as for the "value" of a greeble, I'd say the most important question is, does it help tell the size of the thing? So, things that look familiar, like windos, doors, scaffolds, terraces, hand-rails, etc. would be first priority. Functionality comes a close second: Dockings surrounded by docking facilities, like spotlights, a little control tower... maybe fold-out grapples that can grab a ship in an emergency, etceteras. Would be interesting to come up with a purpose for the outer balls, say, and then greeble them with consistency to that purpose.
EDIT 5:
Hey! Maybe the balls are guns that can turn like eye-balls. It would be very easy to make them into "turrets", just specifying a 30 degree azimuth cone for them, in units.csv; so they don't turn too much, and that's it. That would mean that the "armor sheets" are actually what holds the moving part of the turret, and what's really attached to the rest of the station.
(Actually, if you look closely, it seems that they are: The main station disc looks like it's made of a bottom half that is like a hollow "frying pan", and the lip of it seems to attach to the bottom edge of the second "armor sheet" on the balls.)
and it would mean that these "armor sheets" contain the motors and mechanics that move an inner ring, only visible at the bottom; and which inner ring turns the "eyeball" in azimuth.
If you like the idea, you only have to include one ball in the mesh file, as we'd eventually separate it into another mesh, call it a turret type unit, and add 6 of them to the station as subunits, in units.csv.
Well, not really; you'd have to copy it 6 times anyways, for the radiosity baking; but you don't want to unwrap the ball onto the same UV map; it would have its own texture; just want to have them there to cast shadows onto the main station during the ambient light bakings.
EDIT6:
Actually, this picture,
shows some details missing in the other, like it looks like the eyeball has a circle of "things" around the "iris"... huge nuts or attachments of some sort? Donno. The stats say 4 flak cannons, btw; but going to 6 isn't too much of a stretch, is it? There's definitely an inconsistency between the in-game pic, having 4 balls; and the manual pic having 6. I leave it up to you: If you want to give it just 4 balls, and make it look like the in-game model, instead, go for it. Might help the modelling, as you could then use X and Y mirroring, and only model one quarter of the station.
Or make one of each: One with six, for the big Star Base,
http://www.wcnews.com/ships2/wc2starbase.shtml
and one with four for the lowly "Space Station"...
http://www.wcnews.com/ships2/wc2candar.shtml
And then, when you're done, there's the Supply Depot...
http://www.wcnews.com/ships2/wc2supplydepot.shtml
EDIT 7:
Here you go:
And I could almost swear, at the top and bottom ends of the station, that I see eye-ball turrets, also...
And don't forget launch bays for station defense escorts. More like launch tubes, or catapults... I'd say about 20, --like 5 on each side of the squarish structures underneath the "frying pan".
And missile launchers...
By the way, the purpose of the "frying pan" we could assume is to protect the living areas from ships coming for docking but straying slightly off course, which would lead me to believe that the dockings are in those squarish structures under the pan.