Elephant Container Cargo Ship

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programmerandrew
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Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by programmerandrew »

I was bored and sick of studying for quarter exams so I came up with this... Nothing Compared to Fendorin or Oblivion of course , but... I tried.
Needs Texturing
Perspective
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Top
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Left
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Front
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Rendered against Space Background
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If this gets accepted, how do you convert Rhino 3D Files into the required format?
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by pyramid »

I cannot comment on the pics as they are blocked by firewall at work.
To get the models in-game, export them to Wavefront obj and then follow the instructions for the UnitConverter.
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by loki1950 »

Nice basic utilitarian design but where's the cockpit and when you get to texturing add some lateral thrusters so it can manoeuvre in close to bases.

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chuck_starchaser
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Andrew, that's nice for an experiment, but if you make an open frame ship like that you need to, first of all, do something more sophisticated to
represent the engines, than just a cone. In a closed frame ship, you can get away with just exhaust cones, because the players can imagine there
must be a lot behind those cones, inside the ship; but with open frame you should spend at least a couple of thousand polygons on each engine.
Maybe not 100,000 polygons, as I did here, but that ship is single-engine; but 2k to 5k polies per engine would be a pretty low budget and would
look much better.
Also, as JackS tires of saying, ships MUST have thrusters in more directions than just at the back: They need retro thrusters for decceleration, lateral
thrusters, maneuvering thrusters, etceteras.
Finally, is this a ship that was requested? Does it follow a concept art sketch? If so, it's a good idea to show a pic of the original sketch and a render
from the same perspective as the sketch, to show how closely it matches the concept art. If it's your own concept, a concept proposal must precede
all else, and such proposal could use some explanations, like what race/faction the ship belongs to, and a bit of justification for the design choices.

EDIT:
And, "meta-finally", if you are a programmer, as your handle suggests, vegastrike is about 100 times more desperate for programmers than for
artists, at this junction ;-)
programmerandrew
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by programmerandrew »

And, "meta-finally", if you are a programmer, as your handle suggests, vegastrike is about 100 times more desperate for programmers than for
artists, at this junction ;-)
Nope, thats just a name I signed up with, don't know an ounce of coding outside of HTML and Basic PHP Editing

This was made from scratch... No concept art. Con someone guide me through the proper procedure for submitting models to this project?
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by programmerandrew »

Caution:Never attempt to dock when the ship is in the process of performing any maneuvers that might involve the use of the forward thrusters. The Confederation Navy is not responsible for any injuries sustained by in the performing of dangerous stunts by those who are too stupid to not take heed of this warning. :D
The Elephant v2
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Last edited by programmerandrew on Wed Nov 12, 2008 6:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
chuck_starchaser
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by chuck_starchaser »

That's all in the wiki.
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/media ... Contribute
I don't want to discourage you, but the model looks ridiculous, as a model and as a concept; it lacks artistic value, as well as technical sense. It also shows that all you know so far in modeling is how to place cylinders and cubes, and are trying to make the best of it.
We get a steady stream of people here who want to contribute ships while learning to model, and this never works out. It takes a long time to learn 3D modeling, and once you do it typically takes a month or two to model and texture a ship. If you're serious about modeling, you should start small, like modeling and rendering ship upgrades, or mines or missiles, then proceed to the smallest or easiest ship concept available to model.
Better yet to start with texturing. There are many models in vegastrike that are missing the specular texture. Most models don't have a normalmap. None have an ambient occlusion bake. There's a lot of work that needs to be done, and nobody wants to do it; but new ship proposals are almost a negative priority, yet it's what we get all the time. Working with existing ships would probably be the best learning experience, ironically.
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by programmerandrew »

Oh well... thought as much, I just found it on my computer and tweaked it to look like a ship :P :oops: ... OK well not exactly.
It was modded from a failed attempt to make a spaceship when I was learning Rhino back in 8th Grade...
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by chuck_starchaser »

It's always best to start by conceptualizing the purpose of a ship and how it might be best served; --form follows function--, rather than start with a form and then try to justify it --or not even. Tubes and pipes are a safe choice, as probably any race or civilization would independently discover the need for conduits in general. But making an entire ship out of pipes is a bit too much. And when every pipe has repeating, abrupt changes of diameter at regular intervals the question of purpose begs itself. Now, I'm sure you have some answer waiting, but I'm not asking the question; reason being that it does not matter; if the purpose is not self-evident it doesn't help that there be one. Self-evident purpose is not a general requirement; it's a bit of a judgement call. Greebling is the art of adding detail that looks like it has purpose, often without having it. Judgement comes in in proportion to how much attention a feature draws to itself. If you have a jumble of pipes of different diameters coming in/out of some complex piece of equipment, a single instance of a short pipe section with diameter enlargement might look like it's a filter or solenoid, without demanding conscious thought; but a ship entirely made of identical pipes with identical diameter enlargements calls a lot of attention to the feature, and owes it to the viewer to provide some visual hint for what they are, what function they serve, and why is that better than a single, big pipe.
The worst case of pipe exaggeration I've seen is our own mod (PU)'s Tarsus ship:

Image

I don't like it, but we have to live with it, for (Privateer) canonical reasons. A ship made entirely of (identical) pipes would certainly take away the world prize in this particular hall of infamy, and be nick-named "Pipo".

EDIT:
Also, when I said "spend 2k polygons on each engine", I didn't mean adding 20 rings of 100 polygons each. Seems you were trying to do with the least amount of manual labor, and although laziness is a rightful instinct, --nature's way of seeking efficiency--, too much of it won't work in modeling. What I meant was 2k polygons of painstaking manual editing, involving a lot of complexity with seeming purpose. You could still keep 2k polies' worth of rings in addition to the non-repeating complexity, but not instead of. The complexity could be smooth, semi-smooth (like an aluminium engine cast), anisotropically smooth, like using a lot of pipes, hoses or cables or wires, cubistic, sheet-metal-istic, or like networks of interconnected spheroids, or combinations of the above, whatever you fancy, but it must involve a lot of work (days), rather than count on repetition, folding and too many symmetries. What makes people go WOW! when they see a model is their (even subliminal) appreciation for how much painstaking detail work went into it; and there's no substitute. Even something automatic but more sophisticated, like Discombobulator... its random boxes output may be good enough for starwars fans, but it won't do for most gamers.
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by Fendorin »

i imagined the elephant ship mor than a "movable station"

some "Structure" the CMT use for poor or not yet develloped system or dangerous space

but not design like a bulk cargo _what about this idea_?

for render this effect the thruster should be realy numerous and "small" compare to the rest of ship

something like: headquarter_stockyard_exchange platform_capable to moove
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by programmerandrew »

Fendorin wrote:i imagined the elephant ship mor than a "movable station"

some "Structure" the CMT use for poor or not yet develloped system or dangerous space

but not design like a bulk cargo _what about this idea_?

for render this effect the thruster should be realy numerous and "small" compare to the rest of ship

something like: headquarter_stockyard_exchange platform_capable to moove
Yeah... I was working on actually going through the whole process... I actually drew concept art this time around, and I'm modeling from scratch. The concept art is kinda like a mobile station... with attachable modules such as fighter bays, communication modules, in-flight refueling modules, etc.... Kinda looks like a train tho :cry:
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by Phlogios »

chuck_starchaser wrote: (tarsus picture)
I don't like it, but we have to live with it, for (Privateer) canonical reasons. A ship made entirely of (identical) pipes would certainly take away the world prize in this particular hall of infamy, and be nick-named "Pipo".
Especially when the pipes go from the engine STRAIGHT TO THE COCKPIT! Great idea! Kill the pilot!
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Re: Elephant Container Cargo Ship

Post by chuck_starchaser »

I think they might be sewage pipes :D
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