Something big

[fractalsponge1]

In lieu of actually rendering a proper gallery of the Juggernaut, I've been playing around with the animation of the AT-SE. Mainly getting it to kneel properly. The animation itself is still far from done, but the basics are in place:

[Bellosh101]

Looks like you've been given a shout-out in the latest Star Wars Insider (check issue 125, page 11). Congrats!

[Norade]

Just a quick question, and one I'm sure that you've answered before, but do you do this professionally or are you just an extremely talented hobbyist?

[fractalsponge1]

Looks like you've been given a shout-out in the latest Star Wars Insider (check issue 125, page 11). Congrats!

Nice catch - thanks! Good to be noticed, once in a while

Just a quick question, and one I'm sure that you've answered before, but do you do this professionally or are you just an extremely talented hobbyist?

Hobbyist. I'm actually a microbiology postdoc in real life :p.

In other news, I'm completely unmotivated at the moment, which means I can't be arsed to do the new galleries for the Juggernaut, AT-SE, or the (still-unnamed) corvette. Also, having some kind of creative block, so can't figure out what to do next (hence no new stuff). Hoping to get something going...soon.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Just a quick post here.

I bumped into this thread accidentally this afternoon and I've just burnt a good two hours admiring all the stuff in it. These ship and fighter designs are about seventeen shades of awesomeness. Fantastic work!

[Knife]

You've pretty much run the gambit of Imperial ships, ever think to try a Rebel one? Love to see your interpretation of Mon Cal ships.

[Bellosh101]

Perhaps you can finish up that Imperial Fleet Carrier you worked on a while back?

PS: Have you ever considered inserting stats and short descriptions in each vehicle page on your website? I think it would be handy to check up on the intended firepower of a Bellator or an Assertor without having to dig through this entire thread.

[Tanner]

You can always try something easy and simple like the Tector SD.

[fractalsponge1]

Yeah, I really need to finish the carrier, and render galleries for the corvette, and for the juggernaut, and some more renders for the walker Tector is on the to-do list, just don't know where.

No idea if this is going anywhere, but Anonymous Cruiser 3 mockup. Allegiance-ish volume on a 3.9km really thin hull. Basically playing with a different sort of dagger shape, plus mini wings. Pursuit cruiser concept.

[Crossroads Inc.]

OOOOOOOO!!!

I LOVE Mini wings! Its one of the reasons why I love the Victory ISD so much!
That ship has a certain "Cruz-Mobile" look about it that I am very fond of!
Not so sure about the "Hook nose" overhand half way down, looks a bit off.

[Azron_Stoma]

I'd love to see an XQ-2 or XQ-5 some day, as well as the random freighters/Cargo containers and Boarding shuttles from the X-Wing series, I remember something based on that a while back, with the X-7 Factory, Modular Deepdock and other station stuff.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I agree with Crossroads, that cruiser is looking good!

I would remove the boxy thing towards the nose though, kinda breaks up the smoothness somewhat.

Also, if it has that "cruise mobile" vibe, would we get a render with some random racing stripes?

[fractalsponge1]

Behold, the unassailable truth of my awesome references! reference.
http://theforce.net/swtc/Pix/comics/de/cruiser3.jpg

Yeah, that's all I got. I wanted to play around with dagger shapes, and this seemed fun. Very slender, so either thin and fat or thin and...thin. I started with almost a rhombus cross-section, flattened it eventually but kept the narrowness. The sense of "fast" with the tall and narrow superstructure that it gave was really cool, so I kept it. Stuffed the back end with engines. I'm thinking late Republic design for pursuit ship, really long but relatively little volume. All in all, Allegiance-sized, but tiny frontal cross-section (makes sense for a pursuit ship). Big hangar, long, not broad - I'm thinking mini executor hangar setup, with ISD-style side-launch bays all along the edges, and a shallow centerline protrusion that's armored keel/power trunking. Speaking of power, Allegiance output, before it was fashionable to say "screw everything else and make a ship-killer-doom-mobile." The stepped aft edge of the reference screamed wingtip to me, so I interpreted them this way. It'll probably end up being radiator detail (makes sense, very high power density but low hull volume/surface area for radiator, so wings). Allegiance is only as small as it is (thus barely qualifying as a destroyer) because it cuts away almost everything besides the stuff you need to kill other large ships. This trades survivability and some firepower for massive speed and a big hangar for sweeps/recon/hunting.

The little overhang ventral side was going to be reactor bulb, and it still may be, but I haven't decided if it made sense to put the bulb in that really shallow exposed area. Thought it might also work as a cobra-judy style gigantic sensor block, maybe with stacked rear-facing hangars.

All in all, if this moves forward, I'll probably use it as a test-bed for some ISDI-style greebling, and to play around with weird (for a SW dagger) shapes - maybe a main battery with all ball-turrets and some large-hangar detailing exercise (though I think the hangar might only be about the size of the Assertor's, so maybe not). Also a chance to build a proper inset hex module - which would be useful if I do another cruiser, as they all seem to have something like that.

[Rogue 9]

What happened to the latest images? The embeds aren't working and the links are dead.

[fractalsponge1]

My site hosting is currently down, for some unknown reason. Will be back up eventually, hopefully.

[fractalsponge1]

Hm, so it appears that I may have lost my website data. The hosting company I use had a server failure that required a backup, but discovered in the process that the data on their backup server was corrupted. Right now I have no idea how much needs to be uploaded from my home computer. No meshes or any irreplaceable data were lost, but WIP shots and stuff needs to be uploaded, and I'm not sure I will even re-upload the really old stuff. When I get back ftp access to the server, I'll put up galleries and latest projects first. Some of the links to old stuff will probably be broken, which is unfortunate, since I've tried to keep those constant over the years, but what can you do?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ok that is some Serious suckage :<
Those links have been in archives for years, and to think they are lost is something else.
Is there anything we can do to help? Between those members who have good Web experiance, is there anything we can do to help in terms of hosting or rebuilding data?

[fractalsponge1]

Not really anything to be done, thanks though. The problem was with the webhosting company (they gave us 6months free as a "sorry", so not a complete loss).

I still have all the data on my hard drive, and I don't usually rename something on the server from what it was on my hard drive, so it's mostly an issue of figuring out the original directory structure and re-uploading. *Most* links should work afterwards, but there might be some that get forgotten/screwed up along the way. I have server access now, so over the weekend most of the stuff will start re-appearing.

[fractalsponge1]

Got most of the latest stuff and a good chunk of the galleries back up. I'm re-rendering bits and pieces of the Bellator, so that gallery will be doubled in size when I'm done. Going to try and render the as-yet-unnamed corvette and juggernaut, and update some of the really old galleries this weekend. Of course, ftp goes down this morning, so nothing goes back up till that's fixed anyway .

[fractalsponge1]

OK, most of the recent stuff and major WIPs are back up. If there's something you want to see that isn't up, let me know.

I took the opportunity to re-build the Bellator gallery, and more will get updated in the future (currently, AT-SE gallery is still down, and the corvette and Juggernaut don't even have galleries yet).

Additions to the Bellator gallery:

[fractalsponge1]

Juggernaut gallery is up with some new walker comparison renders:

[Crossroads Inc.]

Awesome work, much in there to be used as new WallPaer I'm sure Also good to see the new Jugger on the page as well in the Gallery.

You now seeing all of these brings up a question... Have you thought about ever doing more "real' pics of your ships? Such as fleet shows, in orbit, or in a station? Maybe something just to add a bit of color to all of that Imperial Grey

[fractalsponge1]

Awesome work, much in there to be used as new WallPaer I'm sure Also good to see the new Jugger on the page as well in the Gallery.

You now seeing all of these brings up a question... Have you thought about ever doing more "real' pics of your ships? Such as fleet shows, in orbit, or in a station? Maybe something just to add a bit of color to all of that Imperial Grey

Thought much, done little

I keep thinking a good dockyard scene over a planet would be good, but it involves modeling an actual dockyard. That's more difficult to plan than to do, but I still haven't gotten around to it yet. Besides, I'm not very good with the non-modeling sides of 3d. It'll come, but I find it more enjoyable just to build things for now.

Speaking of:

I've been playing with this thing lately. Might even finish it.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

Sweet, a Blastboat, always liked those things.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Sweet, a Blastboat, always liked those things.

I could never for the life of me figure out how the aerodynamics are supposed to work. It irks my 'Kelly Johnson' sense something fierce! Nice ship otherwise.