They're not *that* big, only about a kilometer... positively puny compared to what I started out building. :-) On the other hand, the size of these things is easier to appreciate, I think.
Here's the preliminary results of an idea I've had for a while but never sat down to model - my equivalent of the 20 mm Oerlikon gun that served as the main light AA weapon of WWII:
Looks like a manhole cover...
...until it pops up...
...and deploys, ready for action. The cover is a phased array radar disc, rather than a gun shield. Since this is mainly a proof of concept, I haven't detailed it or even beveled the edges yet, so the whole thing is only 124 polys at this point, though I expect that to rise a bit. I also haven't made the hole in the deck that it retracts into, that'll add a bit more. I don't want to go too overboard, since the original ships had a *lot* of 20 mm AA and I'll be adding similar amounts to both sides of my ships, and the guns themselves aren't more than two meters in length at this point so they're not very visible on an overall shot:
Those holes (there's six of them) were supposed to be foundations for the medium AA guns, which I just haven't gotten around to (re)building yet. Right now I'm not sure if I'm keeping them, though. At least not at that size...
It's time I got to work on those AA guns though. Cheers!
That's the idea, sort of, only bigger and badder! I love WWII ships, but I'm not good enough yet to make accurate models of them. By sticking to "interpretations", I get to play with the designs I love without anybody complaining about accuracy. Also, space is a much easier environment to model than the ocean - water is a pain in the butt to model, let alone render...
If by the last two pictures you mean the closeups, maybe that's because they're lit differently than usual. I switched the key light to an area light again for the darker of the two, sized big enough to make the shadows really fuzzy. The other was made in Maxwell, which is a slow way to make really pretty clay renders, with my current skills with it. :-)
There's a further render in that series, with the bridge lights added:
Now that I've gotten the need to animate something out of my system (sorry, haven't been able to shrink it to a portable size yet, so no upload), I *think* I'm going to be able to spend some time creating some detailing for the superstructure - other than more turrets... :-)
Moved some turrets around to better match the drawings (the secondaries are supposed to be evenly spaced, I must've messed the spacing up when I stretched the superstructure), added some EW gear (under the edge of the big platform), and built some basic ship's boats and pads for them. I'm going to move them forward a bit, and then I need to figure out how to represent the boat cranes that the Montana-class would have had about where the stern of the boats are right now. Any ideas for that are welcome... :-)
Lots of updating today, must have something to do with all the replies I'm getting. :-)
I moved the shuttlepads and shuttles, and got started on the crane, using a de-gunned secondary turret scaled down to 60% for a base. The arm is fairly basic, I've discovered that to get the reach I want out of it I'll need to make both the current outer sections into telescopes (neccessary to reach the planned third shuttlepad on the centerline, where smaller shuttles are parked), but that shouldn't be much of a problem. The business end of the arm will be a magnetic grip pad, with a receptable on the shuttlecraft. Nothing complicated. Now, the big question remains, what the heck do I do with the underside? :-)
Whew, what an afternoon. First, modeling was interrupted by
...who insisted on walking all over my keyboard. Then I had to go for a walk with
and
in what's shaping up to be a rather large storm. At least it wasn't raining, though the winds were pretty strong and gusting. When we got home, I had to sit down with
and calm her down, since she's scared of dogs...
In other news:
I did manage to finish up the boat crane, for now at least. I think I'll need to move some parts of the superstructure again to make better room, or even shrink the shuttle some. We'll see what happens.
Also,
Cheers,
SP
(Oh, and in order of appearance, the cast of this message was Smulan, Jerry AKA Dad, Tompa, and Spludd AKA Explorer. No animals were harmed during the making of this post. Well, not much, anyway.)
nice pets. my cat tends to like annoying me at the pc too heh. likes to sit over the mouse and lick my fingers or poke at me when i touch it cos im not putting the attention on her lol.
ur ships continue to improve. has a fearsome loadout.
Oohhh, I love cats and especially white dogs!
Too sad we're lodgers and our landlord doesn't want any animals in the house, after the previous lodgers had a big doberman who was anything but calm... :?
LOL, it seems like everyone except the dog likes shed his hair on your furniture while you're toiling away behind the computer.
Nice shuttle by the way!. Well and for the underside you could have large cargo hatches and perhaps on the bigger ships, why not some concealed but deployable arms so the larger ships can also function as a rearming, repair and refueling point for it's larger ships? Or how about a small asteroid processing plant in order to recuperate fuel, oxygen, raw materials etc etc?
I rearranged the funnels a bit, centered and raised the boat pad, and rearranged the crane arm some. Now the arm will fold down to fit nicely along side the edge of the pad. I'm going to add another pad between the two upper turrets for smaller craft - the present shuttles are quite big, and smaller transports have their uses too....
Basically, this is a light cruiser hull, with everything except the wings, engines and spinal guns stripped out, and a flight deck added to the top half. The USN did something similar during WWII at one point where they had too many cruisers and not enough carriers under construction, and converted several cruisers in the middle of construction into carriers instead.
The present shape is pretty easy to work with for the top half - all I really need is to add the island and some elevators, and I'm basically done. The bottom is a completely different proposition, if I'm going to stick to the present idea of having the ships be atmosphere capable. Not much point in a flight deck on a surface where stuff will fall off...
The simplest solution would be to stick with the light cruiser underside, turrets and all, making this effectively half a light cruiser. On the positive side, besides simplicity, the ship would have decent direct fire capability while operating in the close support role. On the other hand, I'm not completely certain about the present underside structures as is. I've been contemplating both a much lower-profile structure to allow landing the ships directly on the ground or in relatively shallow water (as opposed to class-specific docking cradles or hundreds of meters of water); and a taller version that'd provide more of a counterweight/deep keel look to keep the center of gravity on the ship's axis of thrust. Either way, I need to reduce the symmetry more than I already have...
Like the cruisers and battleships, I plan on doing more than one class, with various differences in size and layout, based on the different classes of WWII. Each carrier is supposed to operate a hundred to a hundred and fifty fighters, depending on the carrier and type of fighter. Eventually I'll have to sit down and design those too... :-)
I especially like this one: http://asvlabs-gamedev.ucoz.com/ra2yr/units/naval/CVN-95/futurecarrier.jpg
Notice how the middle part is raised for landing and the launch catapults are on the side? Makes so much sense and also provides capacity for hangar's close to the flight deck. Could work on your design and it does provide an opportunity to add some more interest to an otherwise just flat top.
Thanks Meph! I actually like all of those, including the powered iceberg. Some guy on another forum I visit from time to time was building a 1/700 scale Habakkuk out of wood a while ago, it was big enough to use as a table...
I have a few inspirational images already, thought I'd share the links so you can see where I'm coming from :-)
Had an idea I wanted to test out for the propulsion units, so I stripped off the wings (as usual, they're just disabled) and built some swivel mounted engine pods...
This should allow the main thrusters to be used for maneuvering and decelleration, in addition to just accelleration. The pods fold flat along side the hull in either forward or rear thrust configuration when traveling, depending on whether the ship has "turned over". The only problem with the arrangement that I'm having so far is that the engines look a little too small for the ship...
Long time no updates. Can't believe I had to track back to page four for this... :-)
Ditched the rotating engine pods, and put the wings back for now. Have toyed back and forth with a bunch of ideas, but nothing looked like it panned out until the day before yesterday, when I decided to start working on the deck lights. I made a bunch of progress on that and the masts, so I thought I'd share... :-)
The new foremast/fire control tower. I still need to populate it fully, there's a bunch of communications and navigation gear in the works, and a bunch of little lights and stuff. Slowly getting there, though.
The deck lighting, in fully lit condition. There are a little over a hundred light fixtures per side on the superstructure so far, with two floodlights and a flourescent light bar each. After many failed experiments at making decent floodlights with pure radiosity, I decided to give in and use Lightwave's luxigon functionality to spawn a bunch of spotlights. The total count so far is 428, just on the superstructure, and I still need to add lights to the upper sections of the forward structure. Also, getting them to render without stray samples and leaks was a pain in the ass. Currently using 20% intensity, with inverse distance falloff and 10 m nominal distance (the lights are 3 m above the decks they're aimed at). Inverse square falloff looked nicer on the deck, but the light sources were so intense they caused insane leakage...
They're not windows, they're light fixtures. They're spaced so that they light up the walkways on the deck (which I haven't marked out the edges of yet). The only windows so far are the big ones on the day bridge...
I don't know if I'll be adding much more in the way of windows at all - as the hard scifi folks say, there's not much point to it, since there's normally nothing except stars to see. Cheers!
i do like the designs of these ships man, but i do have to add that they need a bit more variety. i understand they are apart of the same fleet but they each need differences that set them apart from eachother.
other then that man they are lookin pretty baddass :P
Posts
Here's the preliminary results of an idea I've had for a while but never sat down to model - my equivalent of the 20 mm Oerlikon gun that served as the main light AA weapon of WWII:
Looks like a manhole cover...
...until it pops up...
...and deploys, ready for action. The cover is a phased array radar disc, rather than a gun shield. Since this is mainly a proof of concept, I haven't detailed it or even beveled the edges yet, so the whole thing is only 124 polys at this point, though I expect that to rise a bit. I also haven't made the hole in the deck that it retracts into, that'll add a bit more. I don't want to go too overboard, since the original ships had a *lot* of 20 mm AA and I'll be adding similar amounts to both sides of my ships, and the guns themselves aren't more than two meters in length at this point so they're not very visible on an overall shot:
More to come,
SP
It's time I got to work on those AA guns though. Cheers!
SP
Now for the medium AA gun...
SP
Looks very good I might add:thumb:
Though the whole wet navy angle is not my way it is pretty nice to see how you have developed it:thumb:
SP
I can't quite put my finger on it, but the last two renders look a lot better than the previous pictures. Nice work, however you did it
There's a further render in that series, with the bridge lights added:
Now that I've gotten the need to animate something out of my system (sorry, haven't been able to shrink it to a portable size yet, so no upload), I *think* I'm going to be able to spend some time creating some detailing for the superstructure - other than more turrets... :-)
Cheers,
SP
Moved some turrets around to better match the drawings (the secondaries are supposed to be evenly spaced, I must've messed the spacing up when I stretched the superstructure), added some EW gear (under the edge of the big platform), and built some basic ship's boats and pads for them. I'm going to move them forward a bit, and then I need to figure out how to represent the boat cranes that the Montana-class would have had about where the stern of the boats are right now. Any ideas for that are welcome... :-)
Cheers!
SP
I moved the shuttlepads and shuttles, and got started on the crane, using a de-gunned secondary turret scaled down to 60% for a base. The arm is fairly basic, I've discovered that to get the reach I want out of it I'll need to make both the current outer sections into telescopes (neccessary to reach the planned third shuttlepad on the centerline, where smaller shuttles are parked), but that shouldn't be much of a problem. The business end of the arm will be a magnetic grip pad, with a receptable on the shuttlecraft. Nothing complicated. Now, the big question remains, what the heck do I do with the underside? :-)
Cheers,
SP
...who insisted on walking all over my keyboard. Then I had to go for a walk with
and
in what's shaping up to be a rather large storm. At least it wasn't raining, though the winds were pretty strong and gusting. When we got home, I had to sit down with
and calm her down, since she's scared of dogs...
In other news:
I did manage to finish up the boat crane, for now at least. I think I'll need to move some parts of the superstructure again to make better room, or even shrink the shuttle some. We'll see what happens.
Also,
Cheers,
SP
(Oh, and in order of appearance, the cast of this message was Smulan, Jerry AKA Dad, Tompa, and Spludd AKA Explorer. No animals were harmed during the making of this post. Well, not much, anyway.)
ur ships continue to improve. has a fearsome loadout.
Too sad we're lodgers and our landlord doesn't want any animals in the house, after the previous lodgers had a big doberman who was anything but calm... :?
And despite the "distraction", nice work.
Nice shuttle by the way!. Well and for the underside you could have large cargo hatches and perhaps on the bigger ships, why not some concealed but deployable arms so the larger ships can also function as a rearming, repair and refueling point for it's larger ships? Or how about a small asteroid processing plant in order to recuperate fuel, oxygen, raw materials etc etc?
I rearranged the funnels a bit, centered and raised the boat pad, and rearranged the crane arm some. Now the arm will fold down to fit nicely along side the edge of the pad. I'm going to add another pad between the two upper turrets for smaller craft - the present shuttles are quite big, and smaller transports have their uses too....
Basically, this is a light cruiser hull, with everything except the wings, engines and spinal guns stripped out, and a flight deck added to the top half. The USN did something similar during WWII at one point where they had too many cruisers and not enough carriers under construction, and converted several cruisers in the middle of construction into carriers instead.
The present shape is pretty easy to work with for the top half - all I really need is to add the island and some elevators, and I'm basically done. The bottom is a completely different proposition, if I'm going to stick to the present idea of having the ships be atmosphere capable. Not much point in a flight deck on a surface where stuff will fall off...
The simplest solution would be to stick with the light cruiser underside, turrets and all, making this effectively half a light cruiser. On the positive side, besides simplicity, the ship would have decent direct fire capability while operating in the close support role. On the other hand, I'm not completely certain about the present underside structures as is. I've been contemplating both a much lower-profile structure to allow landing the ships directly on the ground or in relatively shallow water (as opposed to class-specific docking cradles or hundreds of meters of water); and a taller version that'd provide more of a counterweight/deep keel look to keep the center of gravity on the ship's axis of thrust. Either way, I need to reduce the symmetry more than I already have...
Like the cruisers and battleships, I plan on doing more than one class, with various differences in size and layout, based on the different classes of WWII. Each carrier is supposed to operate a hundred to a hundred and fifty fighters, depending on the carrier and type of fighter. Eventually I'll have to sit down and design those too... :-)
OK, that's it for now, cheers
SP
Well, since it's quiet at the office, here's what google coughed up as inspiration
http://www.strategycenter.net/imgLib/20090310_10.jpg
http://s3images.coroflot.com/user_files/individual_files/featured/featured_102246_nZhMxMhM8ZBukB0m3ptzWIxZe.jpg
http://www.swath.com/History/Seadrome.gif
http://www.stratfor.com/files/mmf/7/7/77e112fe04353b19ccdb3f1f9be5e2f61b58aa57.jpg
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/images/SHIP_CV_PA2_Concept_2006-06_lg.jpg
http://navy-matters.beedall.com/cvfimages/CVF-trimaran.jpg
http://navy-matters.beedall.com/cvfimages/cvf-tri.jpg
I especially like this one:
http://asvlabs-gamedev.ucoz.com/ra2yr/units/naval/CVN-95/futurecarrier.jpg
Notice how the middle part is raised for landing and the launch catapults are on the side? Makes so much sense and also provides capacity for hangar's close to the flight deck. Could work on your design and it does provide an opportunity to add some more interest to an otherwise just flat top.
And of course, the weirdo of the all, the USS Habbakuk, was to be made from ice mixed with wood fibers...
http://lh3.ggpht.com/abramsv/R3cTI0KUe7I/AAAAAAAACIE/APiKhiv3YTU/TEST-80G702435.jpg
I have a few inspirational images already, thought I'd share the links so you can see where I'm coming from :-)
New Macross Class Colonization Ship
New Macross Class Colonization Ship (Island Cluster Class - Macross 25/Frontier)
(Ship mode only)
Uraga Class Escort Battle Carrier (CV)
Uraga Class Escort Battle Carrier (CV)
Saratoga II CV-565 Macross 13 Fleet Carrier
Guantánamo Class Stealth Carrier (CV)
Guantánamo Class Stealth Carrier (CV)
(Note that the above two have four flight decks!)
CV-9 ESSEX Class - Plans / Schematics
CV-9 ESSEX Class - Pictures
CV-22 Independence Class
Back to work for me, I think. :-)
SP
This should allow the main thrusters to be used for maneuvering and decelleration, in addition to just accelleration. The pods fold flat along side the hull in either forward or rear thrust configuration when traveling, depending on whether the ship has "turned over". The only problem with the arrangement that I'm having so far is that the engines look a little too small for the ship...
Cheers
SP
Like the joints shouting SHOOT ME...
Ditched the rotating engine pods, and put the wings back for now. Have toyed back and forth with a bunch of ideas, but nothing looked like it panned out until the day before yesterday, when I decided to start working on the deck lights. I made a bunch of progress on that and the masts, so I thought I'd share... :-)
The new foremast/fire control tower. I still need to populate it fully, there's a bunch of communications and navigation gear in the works, and a bunch of little lights and stuff. Slowly getting there, though.
The deck lighting, in fully lit condition. There are a little over a hundred light fixtures per side on the superstructure so far, with two floodlights and a flourescent light bar each. After many failed experiments at making decent floodlights with pure radiosity, I decided to give in and use Lightwave's luxigon functionality to spawn a bunch of spotlights. The total count so far is 428, just on the superstructure, and I still need to add lights to the upper sections of the forward structure. Also, getting them to render without stray samples and leaks was a pain in the ass. Currently using 20% intensity, with inverse distance falloff and 10 m nominal distance (the lights are 3 m above the decks they're aimed at). Inverse square falloff looked nicer on the deck, but the light sources were so intense they caused insane leakage...
More to come, in time. :-)
SP
I don't know if I'll be adding much more in the way of windows at all - as the hard scifi folks say, there's not much point to it, since there's normally nothing except stars to see. Cheers!
SP
other then that man they are lookin pretty baddass :P