StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I've been asked to make a little shuttle type orbiter for a guys animated movie project, and he sent me a little screencap of a ship he thought might fit the bill nicely, so I started making a similar looking ship last night. This is about an hours work, one big Sud-Division mesh for those that are tech-minded. Lots of detail to add, indeed I'll have to refine the basic shape a little more first since it's still not quite right. No prizes for guessing where the design comes from...

Pretty cool, and it only took you an hour? Nice.

Not designed for atmospheric entry without shields, I take it? Drop that hullform into an atmosphere at orbital velocity and it'll come down like Columbia: in pieces.

Hmmm, not sure about the Columbia comparison, from the bottom it looks just like a lifting body shape with very small fins for adjusting course. With the right surface material I think it'd come through all right, although the landing would be a bit hairy. I've been refining the shape since I got a better screencap and I've pretty much got the basic shape set down now. All I have to do now is detailing and colouring/image maps. Updates later...

Cool design. Good work.

Kenny_10_Bellys wrote:Hmmm, not sure about the Columbia comparison, from the bottom it looks just like a lifting body shape with very small fins for adjusting course.

From a pure artistic perspective you don't need to worry about any of this, but if you're after technical accuracy...

Avoid sharp protrusions as they concentrate heat. Concentrating heat isn't healthy when the outside temperature is about 9000 degrees celcius. In your design the nose and canards would have serious heating issues during reentry.

The groove/bulge is a bad idea for several reasons. First and foremost it will will disrupt airflow around the fins, rendering them useless. Secondly it will siginificantly increase drag for no technical benefit.

The fins aren't large enough to have reasonable control authority. Chacnes are they're also too thin to deal with aerodynamic loads. Look at the size of the aerodynamic control surfaces on the real-world X-33 or on the Shuttle; they're neither small or paper thin.

The cockpit window inset is a very bad idea; again, the surface should be as smooth as possible any the window inset should be measured in millimeters (e.g. not visible except in closeups) rather than centimeters.

Thank you for the pointers, I truly have been 'Enlightened'. If I ever get the chance I'll pass them on to the effects guy on Enterprise who designed the thing.

It may be as stated above though, that this is just some kind of orbital transfer vehicle or interplanetary ship that doesn't hit an atmosphere unless everything has gone tits up. I have no idea what the bulge is really for, I thought the whole top might be some kind of door system but from the looks of the better screencap that I got it's just got small square payload doors in the centre of the bulge. Maybe it's for added headroom?

I've refined the Nurb somewhat andfrozen it in this shape, somewhat closer to the one in the start sequence than my previous effort. It now has much more detailed windows (inset is 10mm) and I've made the cutout at the back for the engines. I'll begin adding panel bump and image maps tomorrow and adding the odd piece of detail here and there, but most of the model work will be in the engines and manouevering systems.

That ship reminds me of one of the Space Shuttle concepts, and of the Sanger booster prototype, anyway, the bulge was for a piggyback ship (the real shuttle), the bigger ship is the booster, that, once the shuttle is released returns to the ground.
Loose the appendages, maneuvrability in hipervelocity (reentry speeds) is best achieved by thrusthers, even if the ship doesn't enters an atmosphere. (they look cool, but they increase polygon count...)

how was this in any way for trek fans?

It appears on Enterprise.

kojikun wrote:how was this in any way for trek fans?

I see you're a dedicated fanboy yerself then?

I'm sorry, I'm used to dealing with a bunch of rabid Trek fans who spot shit like this immediately. If you watch the opening sequence of Enterprise you'll see something remarkably like this ship just as the name 'Linda Park' appears during the titles. It's obviously meant to be 21st century tech equivelant of the shuttle, although it's not clear from the design what it's role is.

It has control surfaces (although very small) and heat shielding around the wings, underside, nose and fin. Does it re-enter the atmosphere? It would be a bitch to fly with minute control surfaces, although it does posses a possible 'lifting body' shape. It also appears to have upper payload bay doors, again suggesting it's an orbital delivery vehicle. I'll go with the school of thought that says 'who gives a shit, it's not real anyway' for the moment.

Here we go, almost complete except for a little detailing and the decals the guy's busy designing to fit into his storyline.

im not a fanboy. im a scaper and a gater! :p

Not real technically realistic, but very cool. Possibly feasable with another materials science revolution.

Is that last one CG?

Holy shit, it looks like a real model in those pictues!!

spankys not got a trained eye

kenny, radiosity + skydome?

Yes, I do.

But this one isn't all shitty and shiny like most non film CG is.

I'm impressed!!

most people suck at CGI. :p less spec and more radiosity = aesthetically pleasing

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:But this one isn't all shitty and shiny like most non film CG is.

Ahem. 'Shitty and shiny' is a rarity these days except when looking at stuff done by people who are just starting out. Kenny is pretty damned good but this rendering isn't of a quality significantly higher than what most active active 3D CGI people out on the net turn out on a regular basis.

kojikun wrote:kenny, radiosity + skydome?

I'm thinking radiosity with a plain-old gradient backdrop.

Ambient lighting: JUST SAY NO!

Enlightenment wrote:

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:But this one isn't all shitty and shiny like most non film CG is.

Ahem. 'Shitty and shiny' is a rarity these days except when looking at stuff done by people who are just starting out. Kenny is pretty damned good but this rendering isn't of a quality significantly higher than what most active active 3D CGI people out on the net turn out on a regular basis.

Still, even good amature CGI often looks like it's made out of vinyl or plastic. This think almost looks like its made out of resin or wood.

Easy kids, it's done with the old 'spinning lights and motion blur' trick to give the effect of radiosity without having to sit for an hour while the bastard renders. I've used skydomes and radiosity before, but this method is far more efficient and gives results that are almost indistinguishable from them. As you point out it's nothing special, radiosity renders do tend to look so realistic they make people think it's a physical model.

This is the next update, I've played around with the textures to make it look more like a tiled surface and I've also given it a name. I'll finish the final detailing once I get the plans from the guy I'm building it for, he's making his own logos and suchto fit in with his movie script. Getting the balance of dirt and wear is very difficult to do correctly, and can make or break a model. When I made physical models I always used to go overboard with the washes and drybrushing so that everything looked like it had spent 6 months at the bottom of the Atlantic. It's a tendecy many people have, and I'm trying hard to fight it. I need just enough burning and crap on it to make it look lived in, and not so much or so little that it looks all wrong.

I'm really impressed, Kenny. Tops to ya.

How did I miss this? Very nice. I especially like the detail that the tiles highlighting doesn't pick out an obviously repeating pattern.

Aside from the Aerodynamic stuff others have raised, I would just like to point out that your Cargo bay doors are horribly small, you have all that internal space and a comparitively tiny aperture to take it all out through (which also unneccesarily limits the size of individual payloads this can carry). You could extend the Bulge right upto the Blue area at the front, lessen the taper of the Bulge so it more closely mimics the shape of the body and then extend your doors almost the entire length and widen them as well, making them far more practical, and extending the ships service life.

Now if you'll excuse me I'll go back to drooling over how cool that body-blended design looks.