3DVorlons!

dwl

This was a model I wanted to build ages ago but never got round to it. It's really just meant for establishing a scale of other ships and as such its not particularly detailed. Total build time till now is 6 hours I think. I went through a few revisions of the sails and plating. I'll go back to this to detail the sail hinge mechanism later. I tried a few muscle/sinew type shapes but couldn't quite decide on anything.

Transport coming next.

[Deleted User]

Great!

Haturod

Looks good!

Although I think the ships in B5 are more sleek? unless this is a new ship your creating?

commandersozo

wow. awesome stuff! look forward to see more....

dwl

This was an old model which I'm updating. I was never happy with the sails in old mesh and I'm hoping to resolve that. Not much to say really, NURMS mesh with procedural materials.

aylaa12

Great work on these vorlon ships these are the best models I've seen online yet I wonder if you'll give the other races of the b5 universe a try as well?

Scotchy

Really cool stuff here. You have a good eye for design. Good job not making the cruiser look like an elongated fighter.

Skaro

Awesome, they look way better then the ones we saw in the series

frostrubin

Great work. I always liked the floating organic design of the Vorlons.
Hope you give other races of the B5 universe a try.

sumisu55

Glad to see some B5 ships. Love them.

homerpalooza67

nice! big B5 fan myself!

sorceress21

Very well done! You've captured the Vorlon ships with perfection!

dwl

Thanks everyone!

I have a soft spot for B5 as it fixed me on the path to a love of modelling space related objects. At the time it was quite amazing, I often forget just how new CGI it was back then. How things have changed!

I don't think I'll do any more B5 ships at the moment. I blocked out the Vorlon Heavy Cruiser but its 9 times bigger than the transport and I haven't come up with a scalable way to detail it yet. I always loved the Shadow fleet; giant space spider ships... genius! The problem I had with them is they're all black. Any detail that you can make out gets obscured by the rippling surface texture. I have 5 shadow ships I think, mostly simple NURMs meshes with an animated procedural. If I could come up with a way of making them more visually interesting I'd probably do one or two but to be honest I kinda like them just as they are

I made some progress on the sails today. I tried a few overly animated shapes but I didn't like any of them. I think they disrupted the silhouette too much. I also rebuilt the materials. I had a lot of crazy blends and mix maps before. I've collapsed them all into a few composites now, which allowed me to add an AO map. I was trying to get more emissive light from the blue material but everything I tried turned blue into white. Compromises, compromises....

More tomorrow I hope.

aylaa12

wow great work pal these ships make me wanna see a remake of the whole series with your ships

dwl

After reading the feedback this idea planted itself and took root. I'm not sure it was a good idea or not but I wanted to let it play out.

At this range the traditional shadow material looks a bit odd, but it was sized for the larger cruisers and I'm not sure what increasing the detail level will do at this stage. The new materials have brutalised the render times. Like, in the face...... I'm not sure if anything can be done about that at the moment.

As far as design goes, well, its almost heresy but I kinda like the way it turned out and it would make an interestesting red-glow vs. blue-glow scene. Any opinions?

I'll get back to the Vorlon transport soon, I was stumped for detail ideas and then this shadow thing loomed in and refused to withdraw.

somacruz145

I like the red color for black ships more if you ask me but I don't know a bit about B5 The new ships are looking really cool and the transport is awesome, even though the texture seems a bit blurry to me.

BolianAdmiral

How awesome! I miss the Vorlons! Such cool aliens, and their ships rocked! Good to see someone making some!

dwl

I managed to get time for some minor updates today. I tidied up the front end and added a few bulges and pods to give a bit more mass to that area. The large sail arm is almost finished now; it required some extensive remodeling as I'd been lazy when I first created it.

I also tweaked the skin materials. I replaced the bump and gloss/spec maps and modified the diffuse map with an ambient occlusion mix to give a little extra color saturation in the corners and sunken edge. Its very subtle though, I don't think it would be particularly noticeable in the renders. I finally got the membrane over the blue glowing materials the way I wanted!

frostrubin

wow. The texture looks great. Have you thinking about animating it?

dwl

It can be animated relatively easily, I'm not sure I'd want to for this ship though. If I did I would probably focus on just animating he dark patches, which would just mean some keyframes or perhaps a controller on a few of the mask properities.

dwl

Sails finished, materials tweaked, plating added and smoothed off overall, added a few details and removed the extra part I added last update.

Knight26

Gorgeous, makes me want to see a B5 reboot.

Bartolomeus

Outstanding work! I like the vorlon ships in B5. But your ship looks really awesome!!

Haturod

Nicely done!

Evanescence

Bartolomeus wrote: »

Outstanding work! I like the vorlon ships in B5. But your ship looks really awesome!!

FULLACK !!!

@DWL

Any change to get the skin more organic?

jutau

That's a beautiful ship.