Big ship idea (3 versions)

CoD · Post by **CoD** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 3:05 pm

Here are 2 very small sketches I made last night.

It's a big ship (capital vessel) in its 2 versions: cargo version and military version.

Cargo version
http://cod.altervista.org/_altervista_h ... /idea1.jpg
In the cargo version this ship has 2 big hulls.
You'll notice that the design is focused on maximizing cargo space, while crew rooms are all placed in the 2 small "wings" (up and down) between hulls.

Military version
http://cod.altervista.org/_altervista_h ... /idea2.jpg
In the military version hulls are replaced with a hangar + multiple small ship launcher (on the left side of your screen) and with a smaller hull-like structure, containing tactical bridges, miltary bridges and advanced sensors (on the right of your screen)

These are just sketches: I would like to start planning interiors and organizing volumes.
If anyone is interested in modelling these ships and if you think they can be added in vs once finshed, I could provide vectorial charts of these ships to help 3d modelers.

It's your turn: tell me everything you are thinking about

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 12:12 pm

These are just sketches: I would like to start planning interiors and organizing volumes.
If anyone is interested in modelling these ships and if you think they can be added in vs once finshed, I could provide vectorial charts of these ships to help 3d modelers.

It certainly looks great and quite easy to model geometrically. I could try. But VS sched still full right now.

To me, It's certainly a merchant carrier/heavy equipment freighter, in contrast to the mostly small cargo by Clydesdales.

They're big, right? I'll try to give some untextured renders this weekend.

One thing though, I'm not too keen on the thruster's corrugated look. Makes it look too much like a small office bric-a-brac.

But thrusters are not that significant, nor that difficult to change.

Love it.

Post by **klauss** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 3:06 pm

What if the forward sections (in the cargo version) were corrugated, container-style?

Cockroach · Post by **Cockroach** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 7:56 pm

Could you do some sketches of the starboard and atf?

I may play around with one of them later.

CoD · Post by **CoD** » Fri Aug 18, 2006 10:21 pm

If you want I can design an accurate project of this ship, so you can render it later, with no hurry and having a precise chart to use... vectorial of course

I'm completely agree with you, Oblivion: I don't like thrusters, but I had no ideas when I designed them.
Feel free to modify my sketches: let's make this ship altogether

Klauss: do you mean something like corrugated as there were big doors on hulls frontal surface?

Cockroach: sorry but I didn't understand what you said

My english-italian dictionary translates "starboard" with the term we use in ships to indicate "right side". Are you talking about this?
And... what is an "atf"?
Sorry but this is neither in my dictionary nor in my english experience

Post by **loki1950** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 12:32 am

CoD aft is just old marine term for the back area of a ship as in "for and aft" front and back.

Enjoy the Choice

Cockroach · Post by **Cockroach** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 3:38 am

Played around with the design. Added thrusters to the main hull and toyed around with a tanker variant.

[/img]

CoD · Post by **CoD** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 2:18 pm

Wonderful!

loki1950, thanks for the explanation.

Well... I could make more sketches but... I don't know how to design the aft.
Any ideas? Maybe we can add big powerful thrusters (to move this big ship).

I'll try to organize my ideas

CoD · Post by **CoD** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 5:44 pm

I made 3 vectorial sketches of cargo and military version (I love the tanker version, indeed) but... I rasterized them without checking dimensions: I'm afraid I got some very big JPGs

Here they are:
http://cod.altervista.org/vegastrike/sc ... .php?img=6
http://cod.altervista.org/vegastrike/sc ... .php?img=7
http://cod.altervista.org/vegastrike/sc ... .php?img=8

There's a little error (but I'm too lazy to fix it

) the main hull (the grey one) has a V ending shape in top view (frontal part), while it should be flat, according to images posted by Cockroach
I didn't place Cockroach thrusters not because I don't like them (I think we need something like that) but just because I was trying to vector-trace my old sketches.

I really do like the 3 version ship (uhmm... I'll correct the title of this topic) because it's pretty natural that a good ship has different version, as it happens with cars and trucks.

We MUST find a good name for this big flying thing

geoscope · Post by **geoscope** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 6:02 pm

Just my 2 cents (not an artist): I like the idea of a modularized ship. It'd be even more interesting if VS eventually had the ability to say, have the main hull jetison it's units and then maybe attach new ones. If ever, that is likely to be long way down the road though.

CoD · Post by **CoD** » Sat Aug 19, 2006 11:05 pm

Well... I never though this ship to be a modular ship, I was just talking about different versions.

Yes modular ships could be nice in game (especially when adding more and more cargo capacitance) but I don't think that a simple module could change a cargo-oriented ship into a military vessel.

First of all we have different hull widths, because I bet that military vessel come with a strenghtened hull.

Additionally I think that even space allocation is different. For example: in the cargo version we have to lunch rooms and medical rooms in the central hull, in the military version we could move something to the tactical control center hull (the shortest one) and we could use some space to fortify the bridge.
Same thing could happen for the ammunition storage: we have to put it in the central hull in the cargo version, but in the military version we have a very big space we can use also for a bigger ammunition storage warehouse.

But, yes: I would like to see modular ships too

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Sun Aug 20, 2006 10:36 am

But, yes: I would like to see modular ships too

Not quite that long a way.

Turrets are already attached to the ship by appending their meshes together at target vertices. JackS did mention some plan about modularized stations. It's already possible, I think, but still too difficult to be tried (at least difficult for me).

But with appended meshes, it's already possible to destroy one part of the ship without harming the others (i.e. Turrets explode). This could be tweaked so that it could be used also for ship parts.

@CoD

Sorry, hadn't gotten around to making the meshes. I've been busy all weekend trying to get the darn Gaozong ingame. And I got a better idea now of how it works (I found out the reason for why my mesher keeps choking) Cockroach seems to have done a great job.

@Cockroach.

Good work. The tanker variant could do with smoothing of the tanks tho, otherwise they just look like armored cargo bays.

Any plans of texturing this?

I could use it to try texturing them if you can post the .3ds here.

Cockroach · Post by **Cockroach** » Sun Aug 20, 2006 11:29 pm

Cargo:

Military:

To Do:
Detailing - working out thrust, docking, etc
Smoothing
Texturing - Oblivion, you are more than welcome to

P.S. How would I go about uploading the models to the forum?

Post by **loki1950** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 1:05 am

Cockroach for uploading you will probally need to link to your file on a hosting service of some kind. Oblivion is in a simalar situation.

Enjoy the Choice

CoD · Post by **CoD** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 2:17 pm

Uhm.. now I have no excuse: I'll do a quick interior design asap (just to decide where we should put turrets, docks, doors, etc..)

I'd like to ask you, guys, a question: how "big" should this ship be?
I though that in the military version the space between the 2 sections of the "quick launcher" hull should be as high enough to let small ships enter.

I supposed that the quick launcher hull is used in 2 ways, as you can see in this sketch:
http://cod.altervista.org/vegastrike/sc ... .php?img=9

Little combat ships (red squares, not in scale) are parked, ready to flight, along this orizontal "bridge", while the main hangar door is located at the end, between the 2 sections.

What do you think?
I could extract the shape of a ship (llama, gawain, pacifier... which?) to use as reference for scaling the space between sections.
If you were a star admiral what would you want from a ship like this one?

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 2:29 pm

CoD wrote:If you were a star admiral what would you want from a ship like this one?

I'd wish it to be a military capship with long range beams...

I mean, I would like it to be a mobile military capship that can carry some light fighters and could strike down static enemy targets (mining bases, outposts, other capships) from large distance.

Btw, nice designs

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 5:31 am

@Cockroach

P.S. How would I go about uploading the models to the forum?

I need .3ds format files to open them in 3dsmax. Artworks forums doesn't allow attachments. Try posting a new thread with the moels in future development thread. Attach the zipped or rarred file at the bottom.

@loki

Oblivion is in a simalar situation

@CoD

I could extract the shape of a ship (llama, gawain, pacifier... which?) to use as reference for scaling the space between sections.
If you were a star admiral what would you want from a ship like this one?

Hey! That gave me an idea. How about making a ship scale chart, CoD? it would help a lot. I mean comparing sizes of a llama, a shundi, etc.

@Kangaroo22

I mean, I would like it to be a mobile military capship that can carry some light fighters and could strike down static enemy targets (mining bases, outposts, other capships) from large distance.

nah. A carrier and a sniper at the same time takes a lot of strain on crewing and the capacitators.

It's a primarily a civvie ship (cargo hauler/tanker) and only has a secondary combat role (carrier modified)

Cockroach · Post by **Cockroach** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 5:42 am

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v484/ ... tion08.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v484/ ... tion09.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v484/ ... tion10.png

I played around with scaling the flight deck to some fighters. Settled on just enough to squeeze a Plowshare through. Is there going to be a recovery deck seperate from the main one? Also, I put a Mule along side with the same scaling as the ingame model...it seems rather small compared to the fighters..

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 5:56 am

Great. Now we can see how big it actually is.

I put a Mule along side with the same scaling as the ingame model...it seems rather small compared to the fighters..

come to think of it, teh station too looks way too small than is right. I guess devels should think fo scaling some of the larger ships/installations up.

CoD · Post by **CoD** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 8:29 am

I love those little ships on the bridge

but it's... big!

What about scaling it just to fit small combat ships like gawains?
The plowshare is not a combat unit, so it could dock at the docking point in the lowest "wing", like all non military vessel (mules, llama, etc)

Oblivion, I love the idea of the scaling chart.
I have just a question for you: is it possible to extract a vectorial shape of a ship from wings 3d?
I'd need just top and side shapes of each starship... can I extract them or I'll need to make a screenshot?

Cockroach · Post by **Cockroach** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 10:04 am

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v484/ ... tion11.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v484/ ... tion12.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v484/ ... tion13.png

I scaled it down to roughly 50%. Better?

The only way I could think of to make the chart would be to screenshot the models.

geoscope · Post by **geoscope** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 11:11 am

Given it's primary role as a hauler, and that it was converted to a secondary role as light carrier, the new scale looks good. Mind you, I'd love to see a full blown carrier, the size of a fighter barracks, or even bigger.

Someone mentioned a scale chart. Might be a good idea to do one for the various bases in game too... and then cross over charts, say of the 5 biggest ships and 5 smallest installations. Not at all a graphic artist here, so I don't know how the programs work -- would it be possible to create some sort of autogenerating script to create such a chart, so that as ships are added or removed from the game, the charts could be automatically updated? It would be a useful developer tool.

Zeog · Post by **Zeog** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 11:17 am

Your third picture looks strange. The Clydesdale is much too small compared to the station. It is supposed to be some kilometers long. Did you take into account that all the units models are differently scaled in game. You can find the scaling factors are in the "units/units.csv" file.
Scaling factor for Clydesdale: 9.44
Scaling factor for fighter Barracks: 3

CoD · Post by **CoD** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 11:39 am

I don't know how to create a dynamic scale chart, but I could do it manually.

I'll use screenshot but I have another question for you before I can start: is there a repository of obj or 3ds files or do I have to convert all of bfxm files manually?

CoD · Post by **CoD** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 4:09 pm

I opened a new thread for the scale chart work.
You can find it here: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... 0486#70486