Something big

[FSTargetDrone]

Beautiful work, as always, but I have one "issue."

In the above, it looks like parts of the hull are being illuminated from external spotlights or something. Specifically, above the group of 3 thrusters to the extreme port side, and also to the right of the cluster of 4 thrusters. The light doesn't look at all like it's coming from within the ship. Is this intentional?

[fractalsponge1]

^I wanted to replicate the lighting scheme for the Executor in some distance shots - I think for the movies they just overexposed the standard light pass, but I chose to use volume lights right at the surface of the hull. I suppose I can put in an obvious "light bulb" as a source for these, but they don't look that bad as is, imo.

Ventral center-spine detailing. Hangar areas will be inset in the open patches to either side.

[fractalsponge1]

Update:

[Thanas]

^Well, what can I say except "well done" and "I can't wait to see the finished project."

[fractalsponge1]

Update: the spine on this end is mostly done.

[fractalsponge1]

Update:

[Ketan]

hi,

what is about the next project?any news?

[fractalsponge1]

hi,

what is about the next project?any news?

No

Updates:
Hangar area blocked out, ventral spine largely complete.


There will be hangars built into the outer wall of the recesses, under the lip of that big armored plate. Since they can hardly be seen, I'll just be doing atmospheric pressure curtains and some surface details, the interiors can be added in a separate file for close-ups if I feel like it.

This one is big:


With those updates, I am very close to being able to show a complete port side ortho render. Some more preparations before I set that going, but expect it early this week

[Thanas]

Now that is a real super dreadnought if I ever saw one.

Very lovely.

[fusion]

Ohhh!!!! It is almost done... Now my plans for total domination is one step closer
I hope you make a large enough ortho to do the details justice...

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

This one is big:

She's a beautiful beast, that's for sure! There's no "Stay away from the topside heavy turrets!" with this ship!

[fractalsponge1]

8000 pix wide ortho:

Bit at the prow, bit about the stern, bit at the bridge left unfinished, and the hangars, which are not visible in this shot. Otherwise pretty much complete render.



I'll get an updated armament list up tomorrow.

[Torben]

Phenomenal! I may have said it before, but this is what I envision when I think of a Star Wars battleship, guns mounted everywhere, and just the overall sense that the ship means business. Not the same feeling I get when I watch the movies and see the Executor, mainly because you can't see any weapons in any of the shots.

One question: the little hemispheres on the dorsal and ventral surfaces, are they gravity well projectors, shield projectors, tertiary reactors? Didn't really even notice them in any of the other shots.

Keep up the stellar work!

[fractalsponge1]

Armament count:
376x 720-teraton HTL (188x2)
2132x 240-teraton HTL (533x4)
2048x 40-teraton HTL (256x8)
280x 240-teraton ion cannon (70x4)

5x 250-m diameter Dominator-style gravity well projectors.

Maximum simultaneous volley: 931520 teratons, ~373x ISD.

[Thanas]

Well, this certainly looks very, very impressive both on paper and on the render.

[fractalsponge1]

Been filling in some of the minor blank spots. Areas left to do:

1) Hangars (mostly hidden, but the big protective armored plate needs to be detailed at the very least). The area is largely blocked from view in all but some ventral angles though.
2) Bridge area (considering small changes, but nothing huge - still, there's the top part of the spine right behind the bridge to do, and little gaps in detail right next to the hex module itself).
3) Prow spine - need to plate the sides of it.
4) Assorted small gaps in the engine area, minor stuff.

After that, a massive organizing binge of layer-shuffling, organizing details, and a huge-ass clone operation to get the detail instanced on the other side. Will be fun (NOT).

Dreadnought renders:



----

Also, been playing around with my Procursator kitbash: put proper, standard-sized sensor globes instead of the custom cut-down ones there previously. Some new renders of that.






And, since I had the mesh out, I thought I'd actually try to get a proper turbolaser bolt made; for once, I think I might have gotten close to the right look:

test shot

[Thanas]

I don't know. Somehow, the new sensor globes turn a sleek, dangerous craft into...some whale.

[Torben]

I have to echo Thanas on this one. The new globes are far too large...makes me think of Mickey Mouse of all things. Just my .02, though. It is your model, however, and if you like it, then so be it.

[Thanas]

BTW, Fractalsponge, what is that thing in the prow? Is it a small-scale superlasor or auxillary fire control or....you said you hadn't decided about that in the last message.

Also, my apologies for the whale comment. It is pretty dickish to tell that to someone who spents his free time on this. So my apologies for that comment.

[fractalsponge1]

BTW, Fractalsponge, what is that thing in the prow? Is it a small-scale superlasor or auxillary fire control or....you said you hadn't decided about that in the last message.

Also, my apologies for the whale comment. It is pretty dickish to tell that to someone who spents his free time on this. So my apologies for that comment.

No apologies necessary I only get offended when someone tries to tell me what to do without a good reason; good critics will tell me how to improve things, bad critics I have no problem with telling to fuck off.

No thoughts on the turbolaser effect?

I'm now leaning towards the globes being too large myself; there was a reason I did custom small globes when I built the thing in the first place (and it really was supposed to be a speed-test kitbash). Just seemed more...intellectually honest to put the full 46m things on. The more I look at this ship the more I think I should actually spend some proper time on it and do it justice. It's a very nice, simple, convenient hull to base all sorts of interesting variants on. Interdictor, EW ship, light multirole complement to the ISD, etc.

As for the prow assembly on the dreadnought, I'm thinking small-scale superlaser. When I finish detailing the area I'll put something vaguely emitter-like in the hole. Nothing like a Sovereign's - maybe a single shot 50-100 petaton thing, more an overgrown turret in construction than a true integral spinal mount. Much less powerful than a Sovereign's/Eclipse's but much less time between shots, and much less problematic from a structural or tactical standpoint. I still have 25-30x ISD generation left as margin from my initial reactor arrangement; with some capacitor space I can see it doing one (relatively weak) full-power shot every few seconds. Useful for siege work and long-range focused fire against peer opponents (>=Mandator), but otherwise more of a heat and surge power sink for the power system. Possibly not every ship of the class would have one; space for but not fitted with perhaps (though even with a smaller system than the Sovereign had, it's still might be big enough that modularity would not make very much sense).

[Thanas]

BTW, Fractalsponge, what is that thing in the prow? Is it a small-scale superlasor or auxillary fire control or....you said you hadn't decided about that in the last message.

Also, my apologies for the whale comment. It is pretty dickish to tell that to someone who spents his free time on this. So my apologies for that comment.

No apologies necessary I only get offended when someone tries to tell me what to do without a good reason; good critics will tell me how to improve things, bad critics I have no problem with telling to fuck off.

No thoughts on the turbolaser effect?

Wanted to comment on it, then got an important PM and became distracet.

I think it looks fine, but you may want to use a different angle. Also, The bolts are too long.

Maybe if they are rapid-fire (the ship exhausting its capacitator banks) there should be more breaks in the bolt line.

As for the prow assembly on the dreadnought, I'm thinking small-scale superlaser. When I finish detailing the area I'll put something vaguely emitter-like in the hole. Nothing like a Sovereign's - maybe a single shot 50-100 petaton thing, more an overgrown turret in construction than a true integral spinal mount. Much less powerful than a Sovereign's/Eclipse's but much less time between shots, and much less problematic from a structural or tactical standpoint. I still have 25-30x ISD generation left as margin from my initial reactor arrangement; with some capacitor space I can see it doing one (relatively weak) full-power shot every few seconds. Useful for siege work and long-range focused fire against peer opponents (>=Mandator), but otherwise more of a heat and surge power sink for the power system. Possibly not every ship of the class would have one; space for but not fitted with perhaps (though even with a smaller system than the Sovereign had, it's still might be big enough that modularity would not make very much sense).

Well, that makes a lot of sense.

[fractalsponge1]

I'm working off the 200-ish meter bolt length from the TESB asteroid chase. Assuming that length of bolt is correlated with bolt strength, and those were point defense/mediums; these are heavies even bigger than a Venator's (though I suppose ROTS didn't have >100m bolts; I'll have to check the Guarlara v. Invisible Hand scene on the DVD).

[Azron_Stoma]

I seem to recall Turbolaser bolts of that scale in a scene in RotJ, being fired from the approximate location of where the heavy octuple turrets were.

looks awesome to me, can only imagine what a Bellator or Dreadnought look like when they fire all weapons!

maybe Illuminator class is the best choice for the name

[Raesene]

Depending on what's the desing period of your ship, it also make sense for the Imperial Navy to have a field model of a (mini-)superlaser for evaluation. Spoiler

I will borrow your dreadnought design if the Sarlacc-battleship from the module is not to my taste- or has no superlaser, I mentioned one when my players found the ship specs.

Regarding the turbolasers, I like the colour, but perhaps a bit less scatter glow (?) around the bolts ? Also, put a corellian corvette there as a target drone

[evillejedi]

The Turbolaser shot render makes the ship look like it was built out of legos :-p I believe the specific reason is the specular highlighting is intensely green on the panel edges and is near the same overall brightness as the hull gray and the shadows so the specular is washed out rather than being highlighted, try reducing the saturation of the light coming from the beam. The complete uniformity of the surface texture, making the lighting look flat, also adds to this (a lot of times I use a faint galvanized metal texture that is scaled to a few dozen meters and tiling as the specular map) another specific item is that the muzzle glow is composited on top of the beams, so that the lowest turret glow is actually shown over the top most beams(take the blue channel only and look at how everything is being darkened). The beam glow itself seems a bit much, If I recall most depictions of TLs define the bolt rather tightly with little surrounding glow, around a single diameter of the bolt on either side with a rapid fall off.