Something big

[fractalsponge1]

Ventral side is basically done (and the ship itself approaches completion):

[Alyeska]

If you could borrow some renders on some Rebel ships, you could put together a nice Imperial VS Rebel fleet battle.

Anyway, the work is looking good.

[fractalsponge1]

So I'm back!

Long vacation, moving to a new condo, and no internet yet at home will put a crimp on 3d, but here's the work on the Allegiance so far.

[Rogue 9]

Very nice.

I have a question that is still hypothetical at this point, but might not be in the future. Would you be amenable to letting the Bellator class model be used in a fanfilm, with full credit given of course?

I've been working on some scripts set in the same time period as The Empire Strikes Back, following an element of the Rebel fleet rather than the main characters of the saga, and I'd been imagining an Imperial heavy cruiser to overmatch the Home One type cruiser I'd cast as the flotilla's flagship to lead the Imperial strike group hunting them. It would just be anticlimactic to have the primary Rebel ship be far larger than the Star Destroyers sent after them, which would be the result if I simply used a task force of ISDs as EU writers too often do. The project is still in the concept stages, and honestly might never happen depending on budget and acting concerns, but I'd like to do it and I'm pretty sure I can make it work, if a few years down the line.

[Alyeska]

The Alliegance itself should quality for that requirement. Home-one has similar firepower to an ISD, but larger size and better shields. The Alliegance matches size and shields but has better weapons. The Bellator should be capable of killing Home-One in a single alpha strike.

Anyway, the work looks good fractalsponge1. I mush echo Rogue-9s sentiments. We must see your ships in action in a movie, or some nice combat snapshots that can make a nice wallpaper.

[Rogue 9]

The Alliegance itself should quality for that requirement. Home-one has similar firepower to an ISD, but larger size and better shields. The Alliegance matches size and shields but has better weapons. The Bellator should be capable of killing Home-One in a single alpha strike.

To be quite honest, that's kind of the idea in one iteration of the script. There's another variation that's all happy at the end and everyone gets away. I prefer the former (after all, this is TESB we're talking about; dark is the order of the day), but I'm working on other versions as well since fanfilms are by necessity cooperative volunteer projects, so if the group ends up not liking the idea of a lot of characters getting wiped out, then we'll not do it and I'll use an Allegiance.

Edit: And besides, I would just like to point out: This is fucking intimidating. I love it.

[fractalsponge1]

I thought the Home One was in the 3-4km range. Assuming it is the same power-to-weight as the line destroyer (perhaps a big if given that the Executor didn't seem to scale by volume), should be a close match for the Allegiance. If not, well, then overmatch to the Imperial ship. I agree with the one-alpha kill for the Bellator though, either way.

Anyways, I don't tend to distribute my meshes very widely, after the Force Unleashed trailer debacle. If you get farther along with the project (i.e. into the stages when you need a mesh), we can talk then.

And now:
A compliation of orthos from various sources and for various of my ships (Bellator, Allegiance, ISD).

I warn you, this file is HUGE (7200x7200).

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Anyways, I don't tend to distribute my meshes very widely, after the Force Unleashed trailer debacle. If you get farther along with the project (i.e. into the stages when you need a mesh), we can talk then.

They.. plagarised?

[fractalsponge1]

It's old news now, but I released the first version of my ISD online. It ended up being used for the first Force Unleashed trailer without me knowing until I saw the trailer. Was caught internally after that.

[Rogue 9]

I thought the Home One was in the 3-4km range. Assuming it is the same power-to-weight as the line destroyer (perhaps a big if given that the Executor didn't seem to scale by volume), should be a close match for the Allegiance. If not, well, then overmatch to the Imperial ship. I agree with the one-alpha kill for the Bellator though, either way.

Anyways, I don't tend to distribute my meshes very widely, after the Force Unleashed trailer debacle. If you get farther along with the project (i.e. into the stages when you need a mesh), we can talk then.

That's fine. I wasn't asking for you to give me the file now; I'd have no use for it. I wanted to know if I'd be totally wasting my time if I were to track you down and ask if it came to the point of needing one further down the road.

As for the alpha-strike kill, undoubtedly. But there are several factors that could prevent that from happening, depending on just how much the Bellator's captain knew about the position of the Rebel ships. Besides, as I said, destroying a Rebel cruiser in one go would definitely strike a dark tone, which is what I'm looking for. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Out of curiosity, did the Rebellion field anything heavier than the Home One type? If so, I'm unaware of it.

[Havok]

I warn you, this file is HUGE (7200x7200).

You ain't just whistlin' dixie man. Tried to use it as a desktop background at work and it crashed my computer.

[fractalsponge1]

^Hehe, I actually had some 7k+ width scale ortho renders of an older version of the Bellator mesh, but that scale just got too big to render quickly enough on my machine.

I don't know of any large Rebel warship bigger than Home One, at least before Viscount and (maybe) Mediator. Though really, Mon Remonda would make much more sense as a star cruiser-scale ship. Bellator by reactor volume is pretty much star battleship scale, something like 80 petatons per second output, assuming an ISD is 1e25W. Anything under proper battlecruiser scale is dead meat, especially if they can't match essentially a destroyer power-to-weight for evasion.

And the mesh distribution thing is sad really. Private releases are really the norm; I don't give mine out at all except to people I know or to very promising projects that are well established. It used to be many people put their stuff online, but stuff like the TFU trailer thing is just too common these days. Private distribution is great if you happen to know people, since there's really studio-quality stuff out there for a lot of designs, but sucks for the average user that just wants to start playing around. Though one reason I got into cgi in the first place is because I wanted a proper executor mesh, but no one had made one

[Alyeska]

It's old news now, but I released the first version of my ISD online. It ended up being used for the first Force Unleashed trailer without me knowing until I saw the trailer. Was caught internally after that.

I read a thread about that on one of the forums you frequent. Did you ever hear anything back from Lucas Arts about that?

[Alyeska]

I thought the Home One was in the 3-4km range. Assuming it is the same power-to-weight as the line destroyer (perhaps a big if given that the Executor didn't seem to scale by volume), should be a close match for the Allegiance. If not, well, then overmatch to the Imperial ship. I agree with the one-alpha kill for the Bellator though, either way.

Home One is about that large, but not well armed for its size. EU sources tend to put its firepower about the same as an ISD. So Home One's advantage is its sheer size. It can take a serious beating and still fight. Your Allegiance has a noticeable firepower advantage over ISDs. Its a very close match to Home One. Not so good armor and maybe a little less shields, but considerable firepower to cause damage.

[Vympel]

Just a question about the Imperator-class Imperial Star Destroyer you have on your site, is that intended to be a ship of the Devastator type seen in ANH (i.e. Imperator = "Imperial-class") or something else? Because it appears to be an Imperial II-class, if anything (i.e. the octuple turrets, the ring baffles on the engines, no quad TLs in the trench, etc).

I'm sure you're aware of these differences though anyway.

[fractalsponge1]

Never contacted Lucasarts directly. Talked to someone at ILM about it; apparently even people there knew about it. I heard it was a contractor from Singapore that put it in and no one caught it in time.

The Allegiance I've specced out as putting out better than 12 petatons per second (again assuming ISD = 1e25W and scaling by reactor volume). Purpose-built as a gunship though; probably in Imperial terms equivalent to a light cruiser built for multi-role.

@Vympel

The hull is based on the Devastator model; a glitch mainly due to me not knowing there was a proportion difference between the Devastator and the Avenger models. Everything else follows the ISDII, so, if you want to be really nitpicky about it, I suppose you could say this is Imperator IA2.

[Alyeska]

Never contacted Lucasarts directly. Talked to someone at ILM about it; apparently even people there knew about it. I heard it was a contractor from Singapore that put it in and no one caught it in time.

Sounds like a relatively honest mistake. Someone put your ISD in and ILM is fairly open about the incident. Pity you didn't get credit, but it seems to be they didn't try and snub you.

The Allegiance I've specced out as putting out better than 12 petatons per second (again assuming ISD = 1e25W and scaling by reactor volume). Purpose-built as a gunship though; probably in Imperial terms equivalent to a light cruiser built for multi-role.

I'm not quite in agreement on the current ship classifications thanks to Saxton. According to Saxton, less then 1% of the entire fleet is larger then destroyer size. Anyway, the Allegiance would be quite the brute to deal with. No fighter support to take up room, the advantage of larger size for greater power generation. It seems to be the Imperial equivalent of the MC90 series. Sheer firepower with only moderately increased size over traditional main line capitalships.

[Vympel]

The hull is based on the Devastator model; a glitch mainly due to me not knowing there was a proportion difference between the Devastator and the Avenger models. Everything else follows the ISDII, so, if you want to be really nitpicky about it, I suppose you could say this is Imperator IA2.

Ah k, cool. Any plans to model the turrets of the original Devastator? I've always liked it's heavy ion cannons and the quad guns in the brim trench.

[fractalsponge1]

Nothing as yet, though elements of the twin HTL are in the quads on the Allegiance, and the ball turrets are as close as I have to the trench quads currently.

As for the classifications, way I see it, there's going to be a lot of fuzzy lines. Allegiance might be firmly in the heavy destroyer range for size and mass, but the way the power-to-weight and space allocations go, it's a fair match for a larger, less efficient and focused light cruiser design (at least I envision it that way).

MC90 seems an odd ship - if it's really 1.255km like on SWTC, then it's got to have a phenomenal power-to-weight to be competitive with an ISD, even if it were strictly a gunship, which it isn't. Seems at that size it should be more in the upper range of light destroyer that has a decent chance vs an ISD (or, god help it, a Tector), but isn't quite in a peer group. Unless of course, all the scaling for mon cals is off by a bit, and they're all really ~1.5km for the "cruisers."

[Alyeska]

Gets even better. According to one of the EU novels, the MC90 has more broadside firepower then an Executor can bring to bear in its forward arc.

[Vympel]

Well, in that case, something's got to give- I'd tend to go with the EU novel being the one that should give, since so many are tainted by the under-sized and under-armed Executor disease rather than the ~19km, several thousand turoblasers version that actually makes sense.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Well, in that case, something's got to give- I'd tend to go with the EU novel being the one that should give, since so many are tainted by the under-sized and under-armed Executor disease rather than the ~19km, several thousand turoblasers version that actually makes sense.

This is the book by Aaron.. what's name who did the X-wing novels... Be careful for what you wish for.

[Vympel]

Well the whole book doesn't need to go out. Just the stuff that makes no sense.

[fractalsponge1]

Gets even better. According to one of the EU novels, the MC90 has more broadside firepower then an Executor can bring to bear in its forward arc.

That's amazingly stupid. Even taking into account the Executor may be inefficient, without the power density of an ISD, that's still 100x+ the firepower.

I'm not actually sure where the 1.2km scale comes from for Mon Cals, especially the MC90. The crap new essential guide? I understand Mon Cals seem to stuff volume in all sorts of odd places, but a 1.2km ship being a true match for a 1.6km ship of the same technological level seems a bit of a stretch, especially if both are supposed to be multi-role (MC90 has a not-insignificant starfighter complement). I'm thinking (and this is personal opinion) 1.5km for MC series destroyer-equivalent cruisers, 4km for Home One and 4-5km Mon Remonda would make much more sense. Mediator in that lineup would either be Imperial medium or heavy Star Cruiser equivalent, same as Mon Remonda, and Viscount still dreadnought, match for an Executor. If it were 1.5km, MC90 would be a match for an ISD assuming equal power density, maybe Tector-gunship levels (there's more volume for potential power generation and associated systems than in a dagger).

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Gets even better. According to one of the EU novels, the MC90 has more broadside firepower then an Executor can bring to bear in its forward arc.

That's amazingly stupid. Even taking into account the Executor may be inefficient, without the power density of an ISD, that's still 100x+ the firepower.

I'm not actually sure where the 1.2km scale comes from for Mon Cals, especially the MC90. The crap new essential guide? I understand Mon Cals seem to stuff volume in all sorts of odd places, but a 1.2km ship being a true match for a 1.6km ship of the same technological level seems a bit of a stretch, especially if both are supposed to be multi-role (MC90 has a not-insignificant starfighter complement). I'm thinking (and this is personal opinion) 1.5km for MC series destroyer-equivalent cruisers, 4km for Home One and 4-5km Mon Remonda would make much more sense. Mediator in that lineup would either be Imperial medium or heavy Star Cruiser equivalent, same as Mon Remonda, and Viscount still dreadnought, match for an Executor. If it were 1.5km, MC90 would be a match for an ISD assuming equal power density, maybe Tector-gunship levels (there's more volume for potential power generation and associated systems than in a dagger).

Well, I would point out that a good portion of the volume of an ISD is devoted to carrying 10000 troops, 37000 crew and assorted ground assault vehicles and prefab Imperial bases.