Mule

[nphillips]

Alright...I'm nowhere near as fast as chuck with my models But here's my slow start on the Mule.

I'm putting up comparison shots for the time being, to keep myself true to the original design, before I start adding my own touches (of which I have many in mind)

Fore: Side-by-side


Fore: Overlay (mine in green)


Profile: Side-by-side


Profile: Overlay (mine in green; blender's camera scaled oddly. I don't know why)


Clearly, I haven't touched the aft of the ship, yet

[chuck_starchaser]

Got the priorities right; the shape's coming along nice and smooth.. Eventually you can go to town with the greebles. (At 200 meters it is?), some 100k polygons is not farfetched.

[nphillips]

Pretty much done, with regard to the shape of the original...







Only 63k polies right now, and a big chunk are either inside the main section, or will be invisible to the player...so probably 40-50k? I'm in good shape for serious greebling

EDIT: just noticed I don't have the bay doors on the sides. Easy enough to add.

[Deus Siddis]

Looking very nice already.

[chuck_starchaser]

Looking good!
What parts are you planning to weld and/or not?
Been thinking about it for like 20 minutes, and my conclusion would be to weld everything.
Reason being, "wings" *have to be* welded, always; otherwise they look glued-on,
I thought "leave the engine housings un-welded, but weld the bottom section with the
windows to the larger section", but that bottom section IS also the housing for the middle
engines. So, I'd either weld them together, or separate them by a gap; and of the two I'd
favor welding.
And if one engine housing is welded, they might as well all be.
For something this size, anyhow, assembly details are better shown as grooves, with
the normalmap.

[nphillips]

Well...I do agree with your assessment regarding welding.

However, I have some greebling/detail ideas that negate some of that. My thought was to have the upper half appear to be "removable" with the fins and such coming through openings. Inside the openings would be wiring/greebles that match the exposed underside.

[chuck_starchaser]

Ahhh; that sounds really good.
I think that JackS had decided a while ago to turn most wings into radiators, At least I remember
him suggesting more rads, and that it was happening in the context of discussing wings; but I
could be wrong. Rads would indeed need thermal fluid connections and greebles, and would
not look (or be) welded.

[nphillips]

aah...that would make for some great greebling! didn't realize radiators were supposed to...well, frankly, I didn't think they existed in VS.

I'll do that, then.

[chuck_starchaser]

Yep; and I'm planning MetaBlackTM patches for the llama's skin.

[nphillips]

ROFL...I was thinking about that, earlier.

Heat-related texturing isn't in the engine is it??

[chuck_starchaser]

Heat-related texturing isn't in the engine is it??

You're dreaming...

[nphillips]

You're dreaming...

...duh. You know me

But it did just cross my mind: Would MetaBlack be considered canonical?

[chuck_starchaser]

Nope. I guess we'd have to include it in every ship.
But then again, what's really canonical in VS?
I look at the llama in-game, for example, and the texture is a mixture of:

• recessed areas with a shiny gray metal and darker stripes
• non-recessed areas are a dirty-brown material
• random grooves everywhere, where the bottoms are shiny metal

All of which seems to suggest that it is a metal hull that is covered with something
like tree-bark, but some of the tiles fell off. I don't think there's any chance of stumbling
on a rationale for the texturing. I've seen ships covered in what looked like a circuit board,
like a matte background and copper lines all over it. I've seen ships looking like cement,
or varnished wood or blue plastic or ... anything except wicker. I don't think people would
look at metablack patches and ask "what's that?", because if they did they'd have to ask
the same question 7 million times.

[nphillips]

Nope. I guess we'd have to include it in every ship.

At least then we'd have some technological consistency

... anything except wicker.

you know, something's been nagging me about the Mule. I think that's just what it's missing!

[Fendorin]

Look good
but look also as you just applied a subsurf to the first meshes
it' can be good if the plain hull can have some detail as seams, joint hull , rivet and other it was my understanding fo more detail

[nphillips]

Oh, don't worry. I'm getting there My first post said I was first recreating the basic shape before getting into the heavy details.

[Deus Siddis]

Ahhh; that sounds really good.
I think that JackS had decided a while ago to turn most wings into radiators, At least I remember
him suggesting more rads, and that it was happening in the context of discussing wings; but I
could be wrong. Rads would indeed need thermal fluid connections and greebles, and would
not look (or be) welded.

Yes that is my recollection too.

I have been using that idea myself of radiators in place of wings, with the radiators having some kind of angle on at least the leading edge for very limited aerodynamics and deflection of kinetic ordnance.

The radiator structures on the tie fighters from star wars I feel might be a good inspiration here- a reinforcing lattice work of metal alloy with black radiator surfaces in between.

As for texturing the radiators, in the past chuck you have suggested black, gold and metablack as possibilities, so I wonder if each of the three major species could use one of these consistently for its radiators, to further art style direction? Like black for human radiators, gold for aera radiators and metablack for rlaan radiators, for example.

[chuck_starchaser]

As for texturing the radiators, in the past chuck you have suggested black, gold and metablack as possibilities, so I wonder if each of the three major species could use one of these consistently for its radiators, to further art style direction? Like black for human radiators, gold for aera radiators and metablack for rlaan radiators, for example.

Good idea! We should evaluate the pros and cons of various permutations of it. I'm thinking that the Rlaan already get the most eye-candy attention of any faction. Maybe we could give MetaBlack to some race whose ships look too plain. Another consideration is retconning ourselves: If there's any one faction whose ships have a near-monopoli on wings, perhaps they'd be the more adventageous recepient of MetaBlack. Last but not least, there's enough factions in VS that we could divide them approximately into thirds, and so a number of factions get each technology for rads. So perhaps we could give MetaBlack to the ugly AND the wingful... (but NOT to the low-tech).
EDIT:
There's also possibilities for variations. The original MetaBlack textures I implemented used a honey-comb pattern (damn! That's why you were thinking of the Rlaan...), but for the Aera we could have the same basic technology but with the conduits following tree patterns, like branching fractals. And if we use honey-comb MetaBlack for the Rlaan, we could have a square grid pattern for some human faction.

[nphillips]

Before my thread gets too hijacked....(but i do like distributing radiator types)



and a closer detail of the back (thrusters...I don't like the look of)

[chuck_starchaser]

Groovy!
I do like the look of the engines; I just think they need to move back, like, the edge of
the nozzle coming up to the edge of the housing; --otherwise the housing would melt.
Same thing with the smaller engines further down; even if it's not canonical; common
sense of this magnitude ought to override canon.
But also because you'll want to show off the greebles...
Shuttle Engine

[nphillips]

Yeah...I was thinking about the housing, too...but then again, the underside would get torched as well I just had them there to keep it somewhat similar to the original.

But, definitely -- moving them out will make much more room for greebles. thanks for the pic, too. I was looking for that one.

[nphillips]

Update pic for the thruster greebling i've done for the evening...



But, i worked too much out of context, and forgot how much of this WON'T be seen...and I ended up 30k polys for ONE thruster. That's bad.

Chuck just reminded me to turn off subsurf for the greebles; that brought me down to 9300 polys; I have a lot more I can do to clean those up, too.

[Phlogios]

VS is lucky to have you guys

[chuck_starchaser]

VS is lucky to have you guys

Thanks! It would be lucky to have you, too.
Where's the Jackal?!

[Phlogios]

I'll send you guys the Jackal tomorrow, so you can laugh at it. But I won't finish it - now is the worst time for me to work on VS. So busy with college and career.