I worked a little on the Spaceship Corridor last night, using the tips by Andrew for adding the control panels and it lowered the file size considerably from 10.2meg to 2.6meg. This was done by duplicating the mesh using <alt> + “d” rather than <shift> +”d” and NOT joining them to the mesh. I also changed the location of the control panels by placing them on the vertical wall and will create some new ones for the lower surface. These panels will all be the same with monitors and key pads for the ‘people’ residing on the spaceship. I am not sure what to do with the upper surface yet.
I was using the Release Candidate of Blender version 2.64 and noticed an increase in speed along with other intangibles I can’t really seem to put my finger on but the experience was a good one. I will put this release candidate through some gyrations I had found to crash the other versions and see how stable this is.
I was able to blend only ‘briefly’ last night because I had downloaded the movie Avatar from iTunes intending to watch just the beginning but it was such a great movie I watch in its entirety and LOVED it!
Screen Shot after changing the control panels.