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Thoughts on these designs?


DarkNovation

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Thought i'd share my own (first attempt, work in progress). I'm going for the star citizen banu merchantman style, with a modern twist and sleek stealthy lines. I'd like a frigate sized ship that handles more like a fighter. I have a dream ship in my head - this kind of resembles it :P

 

 

ship.png

 

cockpit_ext.png

 

cockpit_int.png

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, you guys made motivated me to have a go at something. It turned out to be a semi-fail, and I thought I'll dump what I've done so far here in the spirit of things. It's the base model - still semi unfinished (I'll get to that at the end)

 

I'm kind of trying to go for an exploratory VTOL carrier deal. The concept is primarily an exploration and long range recon carrier, with atmosphere vtol and planet landing capabilities. 

vtol%20carrier%20front%20mesh.jpg

vtol%20carrier%20topdown%20mesh.jpg

vtol%20carrier%20leftside%20mesh.jpg

vtol%20carrier%20frontleft%20smooth.jpg

vtol%20carrier%20frontright%20smooth.jpg

 

The front "control bridge" is exclusively for long range scans, anomaly detection and recon using the array of antennae and the "mushroom" dish on the front of the ship. The precision of long range capabilities allow this ship to use the inter-system long range cannon located below.

 

The main bridge is located above the hangar and the runway - which is not necessary in space, but since this ship is supposed to be able to launch small craft inside atmosphere of unknown planet gravity / density origins, as well as in space, it seemed like a sensible addition. The main bridge consists of two levels - top for main ship operations, and lower functioning as small craft control tower. The ship is sloped in an attempt to maximise 180+ degree of visibility from the main bridge. 

 

The lower hangar houses most of the cargo as well as any land vehicles required for exploration.

 

Things I'm unsure about - manned turrets look funky. Here's the one at the bottom.

 

mannedgunlower.jpg

 
 
I tried to move the cockpit of the crew manning the turret forward, so that the view isn't obstructed by the turrets for them. Practical and effective, but it looks ugly as sin. So not quite sure what I can do here.
 
My other dilemma is what I will do with the arse end of the ship. I can put another large engine in the middle, perhaps even one that retracts up into the body for atmosphere flight (and landing), and comes out for warp / cruise modes. Alternatively I can put large fuel tanks there for reserve fuel to power the whole thing. Or lastly, and what I was planning from the start, is have a few hardpoints to retrofit it for purpose (for example, replacing VTOL engines and landing gear hubs with missile bays, which removes the ability of atmospheric flight and landing, but gives it more combat capabilities. Would love some suggestions in that regard.
 
And no, I know the VTOL engines themselves currently look like shit - still working on those :P
 
EDIT:
Also forgot to disable field of depth. My apologies. It does make the proportions look a bit off from what they are. 
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Nice designs.

 

Will we be able to bring Blender designs (poly/texture) into Dual (dual contoured voxels)?

 

Doubt that would be possible. Doing that would create a bunch of server security issues that would be too easy to exploit for starters. 

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I seriously doubt it. It could be possible with a process converting your polygons into voxels (I mean reproducing the shape out of coordinates), as for the texture it's even more difficult to export them all at once with the polygons to stick onto voxels.

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"Blender! A friend of mine told me to learn it instead of Google Sketchup. I started learning Sketchup, but I'll switch to blender: in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word is established. Thank you.

"

Blender is going to be much more robust than sketchup and probably serve your purposes better in the longrun.  The learning curve can be a little steep, but they have a great community and there is alot of help out there getting up to speed with the product.    I know people the use it for their meshes and swear by it.

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Blender is going to be much more robust than sketchup and probably serve your purposes better in the longrun.  The learning curve can be a little steep, but they have a great community and there is alot of help out there getting up to speed with the product.    I know people the use it for their meshes and swear by it.

"

A wonderful day to you, PetdCat. I have been using Blender now since the last time I posted on this thread. Thank you for the confirmation. One more thing that I'm doing right.

"

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OP, are you using Google sketchup for your drawing? Of so there is an awesome rendering program that you can use to give then a tall life look. It's called Thea Render. You can download for free but you have to buy a subscription to unlock the advanced features. However if you're lucky you can find a key generator to gain free access. Not that I condone the use of such progs.

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@Dygz_Briarthorn:

You may be right if it's only about small craft, but for the larger ships you will be able to use voxels for almost everything. You will most likely also be able to use voxels to cover or hide elements. In his ship-building-video, JC Baille said that wings are only decorative elements for players that aren't so much into building and that you could also use voxels if you like. The voxel tools that are shown the newest update video also look quite promising in terms of creative freedom :)

A thing that I've been missing so far, but which will hopefully be added, is some kind of glass / transparent material. The control room of the large station that's been shown in the trailer didn't seem to have glass windows.

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This. If you know 3DS Max, how hard/easy is it to learn Blender?

I always thought blender was more community oriented and easier to handle with less buttons all over the window. I haven't tested blender I can't say but 3DS is way hard at the beginning. It took me tens of hours before being relevant and not too slow, still I am not a genius. But I find ships/structures are still easier to make than characters, and you don't have to skin and animate over all that.

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@Dygz_Briarthorn:

You may be right if it's only about small craft, but for the larger ships you will be able to use voxels for almost everything. You will most likely also be able to use voxels to cover or hide elements. In his ship-building-video, JC Baille said that wings are only decorative elements for players that aren't so much into building and that you could also use voxels if you like. The voxel tools that are shown the newest update video also look quite promising in terms of creative freedom :)

A thing that I've been missing so far, but which will hopefully be added, is some kind of glass / transparent material. The control room of the large station that's been shown in the trailer didn't seem to have glass windows.

In terms of game design, we could opt for an easy strategy here. If you have the required number of engines in the right direction (no matter where they are), and you check the list of instruments needed, it would “magically” fly. With this approach, all ships would fly the same. Trying to put more engines, or optimizing their position would be more or less useless. Hoping to have an AI helping with automatic navigation would be up to the engineers of Novaquark only. Fancy a new way to drive your ship? Impossible. How about the weapons system? How about drones? All this would be predefined and more or less rigidly identical for all players. That’s not what we have in mind for Dual Universe. While we will provide basic templates to start with, you’ll be able to engineer your construct the way you want. Engines are real (they physically push your ship where they are, with the power they have), gravity is real, weapons have to turn and target (which also requires a targeter). If you are smarter than others, you can get the job done in a better way, get an edge in battle, or in trade by launching the new Falcon X-42 superfighter and change the balance of game combat with new tactics and possibilities. It’s not only about how you can use the predefined capabilities of ships within a predefined classical game setting, but it’s also about how you can redefine these capabilities. We call it: emergent gameplay.

https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2015/09/18/lua-script-and-distributed-processing-units/

 

I feel you, but...

I think the placement of elements, like engines and wings and thrusters and weapons, is going to be more strategic than you anticipate.

You will be able sculpt a ship with wings and thrusters and landing pads anywhere you want them. That doesn't mean that sculpted ship will fly or land properly.

 

But, what's most important is that you're having fun.

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Inspiration thread coming through... https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/categories/the-next-great-starship :)

 

PS. Since Chris mentioned DU as a really good project, I think it's ok to link Star Citizen's forum topics, right? :)

Yes, anyway DU followers won't leave to play SC only they are here for some reasons.

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Inspiration thread coming through... https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/categories/the-next-great-starship :)

 

PS. Since Chris mentioned DU as a really good project, I think it's ok to link Star Citizen's forum topics, right? :)

Actually I backed SC a long time ago and we have a lot of SC people who backed DU.

I think as long as we dont devolve into bashing games, there is no problem in linking and mentioning SC.

 

Both games that deal with space but completly different in scope and approach.

 

Different strokes for different folks. ;)

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Actually I backed SC a long time ago and we have a lot of SC people who backed DU.

I think as long as we dont devolve into bashing games, there is no problem in linking and mentioning SC.

 

Both games that deal with space but completly different in scope and approach.

 

Different strokes for different folks. ;)

 

 

That. I've backed both, and I'm expecting myself to be playing both. Unless one fall severely short of expectations - but it's good to have options :)

 

Of course I would likely play a different role in each game to keep things fresh too, which would keep things entertaining and unique - on top of the two games being completely different in nature.

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