Bay 12 Games Forum

Finally... => Creative Projects => Topic started by: Bien on December 16, 2010, 10:05:40 am

Title: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 16, 2010, 10:05:40 am
So, I've been a little bored after school. I drew up some concepts in my head and transfered them into 3ds Max. These are still WIP, as I'm thinking of adding turrets and textures and such.
Here's the Dreadnought class, which is around 495 meters long.
(http://i52.tinypic.com/2iwafjk.jpg)
And her top silhouette:
(http://i56.tinypic.com/2saibn4.jpg)
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Digital Hellhound on December 16, 2010, 12:59:25 pm
That's pretty cool, I hope you do add some textures and such.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 17, 2010, 09:21:52 am
So, this isn't really groundbreaking but:
1024x768 Clay Render.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Boksi on December 17, 2010, 10:35:46 am
Those ships are pretty neat but they really need textures.

Also, whenever I see your name I'm reminded of someone else (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9D4JmbgqDc). That's rather annoying :P
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Shoku on December 17, 2010, 05:11:09 pm
Can you describe why it is that shape? Any advantages or even just considerations-
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 18, 2010, 01:17:47 am
It's big, it's intimidating. From a tactical standpoint, it will also offer near 360 degree weapons coverage. Other than that, it's cool to my eyes.

And, I told UV mapping to frak off for the while and applied colors to the polygons themselves.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

BTW: Boksi, this is my first name. So I guess it's unintentional.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Nivim on December 18, 2010, 02:29:55 am
 Why do you describe the ship in meters rather than a measurement that applies to a 3d model? I mean, I could create a 6 triangle cone and call it a 10,000 meter tall mountain. I guess it's fine for describing the style you're after, but doesn't say anything about the detail. Could you add the tri-count next time you update it?

 Also, if you want to take a look at some great spaceship models (for inspiration), and make some that would be seriously appreciated, go check out the Infinity (http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php), and their contribution forums (http://www.infinity-universe.com/Infinity/index.php?option=com_smf&Itemid=75&#3). Your ship reminds me extremely of two of the carrier ships that have already been fully modeled, textured, and accepted for the game. Although last I checked, they needed texture artists far more than they needed modelers ("Aww, but texturing's hard!"), like you can see from the art gallery/stockpile (http://www.infinity-universe.com/Concepts/index.php?gallery=.) (concept, modeling, modeled, texturing, ready for game).

Edit: Fixed color relation list.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 18, 2010, 03:45:06 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Update, 4692 polygons.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Nivim on December 18, 2010, 10:34:46 am
 Thanks, although polygons do lose a bit of accuracy over triangles.
 Could you tell what the greeble hanging out/off of the engines is for? They seem too thin to deflect thrust efficiently, but too wide to be sensors or emitters. Also remember that since this kind of ship isn't built to ever land, it still needs both shuttle ports and some carrier-like capacity (this could be greater or lesser because of its half-kilometer length; would need more supplies, but would be better able to recycle things).
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 18, 2010, 11:33:19 am
Those things? Well, they're there for the same reason people put stripes on sportscars. Though I was prepared to explain them off as secondary EM containment field emitters for the plasma drives. The ships' got docking ports on the ventral surfaces, and behind, and under the wings. There's a pair of drone retrieval bays too, one on each 'wing'.

Progress so far: 7874 Polys, 17872 Triangles. The little blue thing's a 1 meter tall by 1 meter diameter cylinder for reference.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, from 4600 to 7900 polygons? I cut some polygons apart and applied colors to them, lol.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Heron TSG on December 18, 2010, 11:44:05 am
This is looking fantastic!
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: rarborman on December 18, 2010, 11:46:21 am
I've got to say its nice but I'd like to see it from the back...or engine facing towards camera angle.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Nivim on December 18, 2010, 12:01:48 pm
 If your using that many polygons, I think you aught to add a more spatial detail; little places that could be vents or minor-adjustment thrusters. Or perhaps...how old is this ship? Brand new, or has it seen multiple stars? There might have been additions or subtractions along the way, and neither they nor the original would have needed to be symmetrical or streamlined.
 Being symmetrical only really matters for center of mass, which can be recalculated easily enough and thrusters can be moved to match. Being streamlined only matters for atmosphere (not applicable here), dust (instead requires either science-fiction fields or low speeds to prevent too much wear), and rocks (must be dodged, or science-fiction fields).

Predit: I think he isn't taking screenshots of the bottom or back because he hasn't really messed with it yet.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 18, 2010, 12:05:25 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Well, here's the shot you've requested. And Nivm's right. I'm planning on putting in some maneuvering thruster arrays and I'll have to mess with my material settings to get dust onto them. But the ship's technically fresh from the dockyard, and hasn't seen a single battle yet. I've got plans for modular hardpoints too.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Nivim on December 18, 2010, 12:39:01 pm
Are you sure you didn't read a certain design document and are making this for something specific? :⌡
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Shoku on December 18, 2010, 03:17:08 pm
What good would 360 degrees of weapon coverage be? With people above and below you you'd still need to turn to line things up and if you're firing so many guns you're going to stick out like a sore thumb allowing anyone with a stealthier ship and just one big cannon to punch you full of holes while you beat up some unmanned drones or whatnot.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Heron TSG on December 18, 2010, 03:19:30 pm
You don't need to turn to line things up if your gun turrets (with at least a moderate swivel capability) cover every access point to your ship.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Boksi on December 18, 2010, 03:56:35 pm
Quote from: Barbarossa the Seal God on December 18, 2010, 03:19:30 pm
You don't need to turn to line things up if your gun turrets (with at least a moderate swivel capability) cover every access point to your ship.
Perhaps, but it's nice to be able to conentrate firepower into a broadside by making the turret coverage somewhat lopsided and compensating for it with maneuevering thrusters.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Sheb on December 18, 2010, 04:11:30 pm
Anyway, spaceship are illogical: swarm of robot or just plain old missiles are much more efficient.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Shoku on December 18, 2010, 08:30:35 pm
Quote from: Boksi on December 18, 2010, 03:56:35 pm
Quote from: Barbarossa the Seal God on December 18, 2010, 03:19:30 pm
You don't need to turn to line things up if your gun turrets (with at least a moderate swivel capability) cover every access point to your ship.
Perhaps, but it's nice to be able to conentrate firepower into a broadside by making the turret coverage somewhat lopsided and compensating for it with maneuevering thrusters.
Yeah but there's no reason to say but there. I was already talking about how you want lopsided turret coverage and to turn, you know, in response to the claim that the design was good because they covered 360 degrees.

What I was actually interested in though was not so much guns but what the internal structure is like. On a space ship it is easy to image guns scaling to practically any size but so this 500 meter claim doesn't mean anything in regards to that but living quarters, the bridge, and so forth- well those have to be scaled to humans and thus the size is really about how those fit into the ship's design.
How big are the engines and how much fuel storage space is there? How long could this fly around based on that, how much more fuel is used during combat maneuvering...
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Nivim on December 18, 2010, 09:03:10 pm
Quote from: Shoku on December 18, 2010, 03:17:08 pm
What good would 360 degrees of weapon coverage be? With people above and below you you'd still need to turn to line things up and if you're firing so many guns you're going to stick out like a sore thumb allowing anyone with a stealthier ship and just one big cannon to punch you full of holes while you beat up some unmanned drones or whatnot.
Quote from: Sheb on December 18, 2010, 04:11:30 pm
Anyway, spaceship are illogical: swarm of robot or just plain old missiles are much more efficient.
Kinda, that's why military vessels are so often flat or diamond shaped (remember that Star Wars Imperial ship? Too much random junk sticking out, but a well chosen shape), and have decreasing height as you go from the back end to the front end; so they get one direction where they can use all their guns, and can use half their guns in all side directions. This does, however, often put such ships at a disadvantage from behind, but the fact that they always want such monstrous, quaking engines makes this already the case. (Heh, I remember exploiting exactly that in the ICP.)

Predit: I was "ninja'd" so easily.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 18, 2010, 11:20:41 pm
Quote from: Nivm on December 18, 2010, 12:39:01 pm
Are you sure you didn't read a certain design document and are making this for something specific? :⌡
I recall just getting bored and extruding faces from a box, no design document. I'm just bored.
Also, I had in mind my previous ship which I didn't post:
http://i54.tinypic.com/2h56teh.jpg
http://i53.tinypic.com/15wkzkm.jpg

[/quote]
How big are the engines and how much fuel storage space is there? How long could this fly around based on that, how much more fuel is used during combat maneuvering...
[/quote]
The engines are fusion plasma based and are a derivative of the VASIMR engines. I guess the ship could fly around for as long as it wants as long as there's a viable source of fuel around, though it could last six months cruising around and a week or two of combat maneuvering.

Also, the ship's geared towards broadsides with an opening punch from its spine mounted main gun.
ED:
Since when did a modeling thread become a science thread?
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Rysith on December 19, 2010, 08:45:49 am
Quote from: Bien on December 18, 2010, 11:20:41 pm
Since when did a modeling thread become a science thread?
Since you admitted that you were trying to make a spaceship that was trying to be realistic, rather than a more space-opera-y battleship-in-space, and then moreso when you started mentioning things like VASIMR.

As a side note, that's an enormous amount of fuel. Remember that most 'realistic' spaceflight is spent drifting, especially since you've got the spinal gun and thus you'll want to be able to approach a target to within firing range[1], engage it, and only then rotate to decelerate. I remember Atomic Rockets (http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/) being a decent resource for working out as many of the realistic space flight issues as you care to (and I also fully support handwaving at least some).

[1] Firing range is going to be dependent on whether it's a beam weapon or a projectile weapon, but is basically defined as the point when the target cannot shift itself enough to avoid a hit in the time that it takes your sensors to find them and then your projectile to reach them. Lasers are a bit more complicated because, although they are faster, they also have focus issues, but the principle is the same as long as you aren't shooting at large and/or low-acceleration things.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Sheb on December 19, 2010, 08:52:04 am
Also, I don't know how you intend your starship to be used, but some sort of bombing bay would be nice also.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: rarborman on December 19, 2010, 08:58:10 am
I just figured out why your ship looked familar to me...

It looks very similar to this ship (http://www.mariowiki.com/File:Brawl_Stages_-_Lylat_Cruise_Ship.jpg), although you can say that about many of the long blockish ships out there...

Looks good though dont get me wrong.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 19, 2010, 09:23:39 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Well, if you do a barrel roll. It looks a lot like that ship from beneath. Note that the thing with windows isn't the bridge, it's the recreation deck.
Also, the weapon's an ion beam cannon (like the one from Homeworld).
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: rarborman on December 19, 2010, 10:13:09 am
Ok, now I want to see a, at least basic, diagram of the internals, cut top down to view at least one deck with outline of total ship...standard would be blueprints for ship building, but without all that  technical stuff like realistic plumbing and wiring.  :)

Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Shoku on December 19, 2010, 06:26:10 pm
Oh so it's a 99% firepower straight forward thing with just some short range stuff in all directions to deal with little fighter type things that might swarm it?
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 19, 2010, 11:36:19 pm
Quote from: Shoku on December 19, 2010, 06:26:10 pm
Oh so it's a 99% firepower straight forward thing with just some short range stuff in all directions to deal with little fighter type things that might swarm it?
Not at all. I'm still making the primary turrets and their mounts. But those little holes are VLS arrays.
ED:
Question: Is this large enough for a heavy gun battery? The cylinder is 1 meter in height by 1 meter in radius.
(http://i53.tinypic.com/2nbehdy.jpg)
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Heron TSG on December 20, 2010, 01:03:02 am
The barrels seem a tad undersized for a weapon that shape, but I suppose you could justify that by wanting to reduce the 'kick' as much as possible. Is there a reason that the turret is shaped like that in particular, though? One meter tall doesn't allow anyone to be inside, so it's probably unmanned. If that's the case, why add the details and not just make the whole thing one big armored block?

Just trying to help with 'realism'.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 20, 2010, 01:40:22 am
Those barrels are placeholders actually. But the weapons mounted in the turrets are going to be railguns. And an unarmored block isn't going to look cool?
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Heron TSG on December 20, 2010, 02:21:51 am
Quote from: Bien on December 20, 2010, 01:40:22 am
And an unarmored block isn't going to look cool?
I'm not saying it would, I'm just wondering why that shape specifically. It could be to avoid radar detection for all I know. That aside, your question was about the size of the battery...

I don't know how big your railgun will be, but if it's about the size of those barrels there... It'll definitely be able to crush smaller ships, but I'm not sure how effective it would be on larger ships such as the one you're designing. It might make some dents, but it wouldn't break a decently armored hull of sufficient magnitude.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Cthulhu on December 20, 2010, 05:00:07 am
Quote from: Barbarossa the Seal God on December 20, 2010, 01:03:02 am
The barrels seem a tad undersized for a weapon that shape, but I suppose you could justify that by wanting to reduce the 'kick' as much as possible. Is there a reason that the turret is shaped like that in particular, though? One meter tall doesn't allow anyone to be inside, so it's probably unmanned. If that's the case, why add the details and not just make the whole thing one big armored block?

Just trying to help with 'realism'.

The part of the turret outside the ship isn't necessarily the entire thing.  There could be a cage extending from the bottom of it with a seat for the gunner.

Also, a block is really bad, because there's more surface area and it would allow for straight-on hits by missiles.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 20, 2010, 11:12:21 am
And: 32 Inch Railguns
(http://i56.tinypic.com/2aieagn.jpg)
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: xtank5 on December 23, 2010, 12:17:28 am
32 inches long or wide?  Also, nice.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Shoku on December 26, 2010, 06:49:14 pm
And suddenly the size of the ship has some actual meaning.

But if the turrets are all along the top like that (and presumably along the bottom) it seems like there is a large blind spot right above them. You'd need wide sides so you could have a side row (given how much it seems like these could pivot) and then instead of a roughly diamond shaped cross section you would instead have an octagon. That much more reason to not even try to have full turret coverage but rather be able to turn quickly to bring the strong line of cannons into alignment and if you're doing that I don't see why this shape for the ship helps.


I can't understand where the "ion beam" weapon you mentioned is though.
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on December 27, 2010, 12:16:25 am
Well. You've got rule of cool. I won't try to explain it as anything else, it's just that. Rule of cool. The ion beam's also built into the upper half of the bow, haven't gotten around to modeling the actual projectors though.
And:
(http://i51.tinypic.com/2dqlfkj.jpg)
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Shoku on December 28, 2010, 07:11:37 am
Because this isn't a ship in water I can't tell where the water line would be so I've got no idea wh-
ok, know what? I think this is the gun:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v59/reikahyou/ship.png)
Title: Re: Bien's Less Than 500 Meter Starships!
Post by: Bien on March 23, 2011, 01:46:47 am
Damn. Been a while since I posted here. And yeah, that's where the cannon's supposed to be.