Big Spaceships 004 - Columbia Class Carrier - Part 2 (of 2)

Pew Pew Die Lenin class carrier!

OK, lets get this one finished in short order!

The reverse of the last shot in the previous article, superstructures are busy as always.

I'm sure this ship, like many of my others generated tons of criticism, debate and arguments years ago at Scifi-meshes.com. Those looking at the first pic in this article, showing opposing carrier fleets might be wondering why in sci-fi the big ships get so close its like they need to use cannon balls, like its 1750 and the spacecraft are made of wood.  Well, its perhaps not realistic as we might imagine space combat today but that kind of thing makes for far more exciting looking effects - its always just more fun to put opposing spacecraft within spitting distance so sometimes you have to let it go and enjoy the film.

Note the baffles/sheilds and the recovery crane for larger vehicles.

  The Allies employ a much cleaner type of propulsion than the Soviets, and pilots might be expected to land by passing directly through the engine plume - or possibly the engines are turned off for spacecraft recovery, after all this is space and not the sea; hey, lets mix and match our realities as much as possible, its Sci-Fi, baby.... If we assume more realism, to offer some kind of protection from off-but-still-hot nuclear engines an array of baffles and shields are built between engine modules and flightpath/landing bay.

Getting much closer to completion, surfaces looking a little bland.

Totally ripping off Joe Haldeman here, sorry Joe.

A splash of colour lifts it a bit, bit of a 'Republic' scheme.

Makes you want to rotate your head or something.

All too obvious themes from nature here.

250! I don't know... seriously i've forgotten, meters?

Test firing the heating and cutting beams, it heats with some kind of focussed EM beam and cuts with a particle beam, nasty.

Now you know how big this big ship is, its pretty big.

 

Another space battle test render, similar to the one at the top of the article...

 I started making some images with these models but they rarely amounted to much - my compulsion was generally to start another project, the renders, animations to come later as all these models did have a purpose to tell a story, as yet untold! nnnnn

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the images, even if its all a bit old.  More, better, exciting, thrilling action to come folks, if you liked it, or even if you didn't but are feeling generous please hit the share buttons, and feel free to leave a comment!

Big Spaceships 002 - Sol - October Class Frigate

It's been just over 10 years since I began showing my work publicly, and really working at improving it.  I have made 3D models since 1993 and grew up drawing pictures of aviation, birds, cars, people... Sometimes even spaceships.

But there never seemed much point to it, no one bar a few mostly disinterested friends ever saw my work but I suddenly found an outlet with internet forums.

I had wanted to show my first ever big spaceship, as it would have been just over 10 years old this month, but having gone through all my backup disks I can find no trace of it.  So I thought I'd show the first capital ship built for my Sol project.   Sol is a cold war type scenario between planetary forces, constrained mostly to our solar system, broken down into two factions, essentially a Soviet type regime on a partly terraformed Mars and everyone else who stayed on Earth after the cataclysm.

I had already produced the Foxhound fighter/bomber (anti-capital(ist) ship warfare) as shown elsewhere in the blog.  But I needed to find a way into a larger ship design so I chose the 'boat in space' style as used in shows like Starship Troopers.  Working it entirely in 3D (not a concept sketch in sight) I refined a shape down to the finished model as depicted below, please click for a marginally larger resolution.

A rendering from 2003, hence the hon-HDness of it. I clearly had a thing for pink dust clouds - which were perhaps pollution from mining operations, obviously there are no pink nebula around our solar system so I had to come up with some explanation. 

To get there I used a Pentium 3, something or other with a tiny amount of ram compared to today and probably a very early nvidia card.  So it's not like a model I'd build today in that its very simplistic but on a par with the types of models that my peers were building at the time. The simplicity means its probably a nice one to study the method with.  

Roughing out and refining the base hull and superstructure shapes, if you don't get this right then whats the point in detailing? 

Adding and refining secondary shapes to the design, the turrets are designed for around 100 degrees of elevation change, meaning they can shoot straight up and attack the weak point for massive damage.  Note the horribly overexposed lighting here, this was always trial and error for me before i began to understand these things. 

Ah, much better lighting Coolhand, maybe a bit gloomy... 

Increased the fill lighting to get more clarity in the shadow side - nearly looks like a spacecraft, or something. 

Panelling and detailing the superstructure, the little indent on the side of the bridge is probably an airlock, in the heat of battle the crew would be located further inside the ship, this tall bridge being used for navigation - akin to the sail of a submarine, while it may have some windows the control centre is usually somewhere in the middle of the ship instead. 

Since I seem to be missing a few WIP pics (if anyone has copies please let me have some copies back!) We'll skip ahead somewhat, getting very close to the finished model here, topside is nearly done. The dome on the front is probably the main fire-control and radar. 

A closeup on the upper foredeck, some exposed structural elements imply a layered structure and depth.  My main turret designs are sometimes compared to BSG's but this project pre-dates it by about a year, it's counterpart on the opposing faction even has a similar ribbed appearance to the nu-BSG Galactica but was also shown online before the new Galactica model... Jus' sayin'. 

Enlivening the sides of the ship, still not quite interesting enough, note the same airlock structure as shown on the bridge earlier.  Look near the three large windows on the right, human scale features like windows and airlocks are essential for creating a sense that we're looking at a large structure of some sort..

Ah, thats better, what could be more appropriate for a futuristic spaceship than a set of fixed, sideways firing cannons - perfect for delivering an 18th century style broadside.

finished pic showing the stern detailing. Stern, stern but fair.  

Another view of it, the rear is particularly well covered by anti-aircraft type guns. The vents behind the turret became a recurring theme, in this case bad luck for the turret operator who's in the rear enclosure when the reactor is purged. 

Key lighting is nicely balanced on this one, but the blue fill is horribly inky and awful looking - probably a result of too much saturation in the fill lights.

For the Motherland! (umm, Mars) Another nasty inky looking rendering, but at least it has a rough propaganda poster look - or something, not sure if I was going for that look or not. 

Probably the best image I made with this model, has a sense of speed and emptiness, which is well, space travel in a nutshell if you're doing it right. The pink clouds actually looking fairly natural combined with the glow from the sun, backlighting a model against a pretty background is aaaaalways a good idea, imho.

I guess i just about got the blue looking akseptibull in the end. I must have switched to an area filter or something as this render looks so blurry compared to the rest.

And thats all folks, final analysis, I still think this design works pretty well, Its modelled and smoothed in a very simple way, detailing could be better and the textures are only procedural but I prefer it to some of my later ships... Which will be detailed in future blog articles, so join, ooh at least 10 other people and hit the subscribe button on the right tabs or add me to your reading list so you don't miss out!

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.

-Steve.

Caiman APC

Previously previewed on the blog, now masterfully brought to production by Khurasan Miniatures.

Production mini, Painted by Dwartist 

Pre-production render. 

High-Tech Human Hover Tank

or, HTHHT!

Gesundheit!

Production model, Painted by Dwartist

Original "Quickie" concept painting

3D pre-production rendings.

Parts breakdown rendering

Available from Khurasan Miniatures as XM6 superheavy grav tank.

Heavy Metal

Since these images are probably no longer online (And the project is not one thats abandoned, just on a long list of stuff to-do) I'll repost them here for old followers of the project and new alike. Hopefully i'll make some more progress on this vehicle this year.

Its your one way ticket to midniiii.... umm, Mars.

It is intended to be a 50+ years future spacecraft: Powered by Helium 3 fuelled Fusion engines it can take off from a (very long - like Area 51 long)  runway built as a custom spaceport.   As you can tell, the vehicle is huge and is needed to take a lot of passengers on journeys between the earth End Mars.

Once at Mars there are perhaps several options:  Docking with a spacestation and shuttling down to the surface; the spacecraft in its entirety could land on the surface using VTOL engines or the front section itself could detach and take all passengers and crew to the surface. This feature might save weight due to less VTOL engines required or increase safety.  During all manoeuvring passengers are contained in the front section, as well as a landing module this could also serve as a lifeboat.  A requirement if Zapp Brannigan is at the controls. 

Docked at a mockup spacestation with centrifuge deployed.

Landing would be tricky at high speeds and high angle of attack (AOA) so the pilot would need extra assistance.  When complete the model will be usable in Orbiter and perhaps other applications as it is designed as a real time model to be used in real time applications, despite its large size.  This is accomplished through extensive use of texture tiling.  I would like someone to be able to stand on the hull and not see the pixels so the approach to detailing is more along the lines of an environment than a vehicle in traditional terms.  Along similar lines of approach is the Normandy SR1 and SR2 from Mass Effect.

As with any high AOA landing vehicle, this will land fast and nose high. 

A fully (or perhaps limited to couple of decks) explorable interior, including flight deck/virtual cockpit and access to the centrifuge is planned.  Since lighting will have to be all in the textures themselves, 'baked' into the texture tiles a day/night cycle is accomplished by flipping the texture sets on a regular interval in flight, satisfying the primitive hu-man need for sleep.  Personal entertainment is probably more likely over the traditional two week long inflight movie but the occasional classic might be broadcast on the decks info panels. 

this area, a zero g zone within the forward hull, might be full of seating, a concern for a real time model due to the vast amounts of seats that could be fitted in the cavernous hull! 

Any further development of this project will be shown in its entirety in this blog, thanks for reading. 

McQuarrie inspired oldies.

All of these were built pre-2005-6: While I consider them original designs in their own right, the influence of mcquarries style, looking back is evident.  

Originally completed in 2002 its all engines and guns and little else other than a frame and skin holding the parts together; I have been often told it would 'fit right in' with Star Wars.   Curiously this is my most often copied design. Someone recently had the cheek to build a copy of it and enter it in a deviant art contest, while I complained at the time I was more annoyed that he didn't win.

BTW rather than copying it vertex for vertex he could have saved himself a LOT of time and simply bought a copy of it from my 3D02 store: http://www.3d02.com/3d_model_index.aspx?OptSearchType=1&TxtAuthor=coolhand 

(Infact blog readers can get a copy for slightly cheaper - leave a comment on this webzone if you want a pizza roll, sorry, I mean copy of the 3d model.)

BSG Viper-ish leanings below (the clues in the name!)

^ Infact the shape was more inspired by the 60's lifting body experimentals like the M2F2 etc.

All Textures for this one became lost in a cumbersome misfortune involving a thunderstorm and exploding powersupply.

Thats all for now.