Then what's your point? Games are bad as canon sources? I think Wookiepedia (which along with the Completely Unofficial Star Wars Encyclopedia) beg to differ. I don't mean to start an argument, but let's stay on topic please: criticisms of my Star Destroyer.
Actually there are very few instances of dorsal hangars in large ships. Eidolon, Venator, and... drawing a blank. Trench/forked nose hangars are reasonably plentiful (see Demolisher/Gladiator, the fleet carrier in Giel's armada, and the escort carrier). Almost all of the other large ships have main hangars arranged on the ventral side. Of course, none of this really matters much as long as the arrangement you pick makes sense and looks good.
You might want to break up the shape of the that spine a bit; right now it seems very...monolithic. Try cutting out some bits from the corners, break up the outline, and have a good transition from the panel patterns; right the panels looks like a texture. Also, a key light in your renders will make the details pop out a bit, and help you appraise it better in the WIP shots.
That it's big is not my point; I mean break up the outline of the edges and make it so that it doesn't look like it's actually one piece. No big structure is actually *that* solid - make it look like it's been built up from smaller structures, that it's got internal machinery and, critical to SW ships, greeble detail on the surface. You should be able to look at something like that and not immediately feel it's a slightly tweaked box primitive.
Chopped up the "monolith" (Space Odyssey 2001 anyone). Added a "Sun" in V-Ray, had to dial it back a bit (otherwise it was so bright that no details could be seen). Ship is still the same "dark grey" but apparently putting in the light causes it to look quite a bit lighter. Also remind me that any good critique inevitably increases my render times :P ("add lights," "more greebles," "greater complexity here," "MOAR GREEBLES!!!")
Or not. Hope I won't get rapped for bumping my own thread, but I did a complete render w/lights... (The Monolith changed again, too). All big guns are now superfiring.
MUCH better. The casings for the big spinal guns look a little out of place though. Maybe build a small structure over them, and fair that into the primary hull surface? Easier to detail than two curved surfaces also.
The central spine is taking shape. I think it's reached final form now (minus detailing). I've added escape pods (rounded objects pointed diagonally and rounded-corner square things aimed upward). The only part of the ship that hasn't seen significant work are the engines, unrefined conical-shaped things they are right now. I even fixed the numbering on the hanger doors today.
Well, guessing that the fighter pilots will of course use their fighters and the command module being able to separate (don't they all, even if it's not show? Think of it) that leaves the crew of techs, flight-crew, maybe a garrison and operations officers. That's mayhap only 500-1,000 men destined to die.
Who cares... :P
An ISD's standard crew is 37000. Even a Venator, which is pretty lean-manned, has ~7000. A big cruiser like this, 50,70k?
The philosophy is probably more "kill the enemy first, then you don't need escape pods." No visible pods on Mon cals either (though to be fair for both ships they'd be vanishingly small anyway). Especially odd for Mon Cals, if they were once civilian liners (though I've always thought that was pretty BS an origin). Corvettes and Consulars have pods, but the versions we see tend to be used for VIPs.
The Pellaeon class Star Destroyer only has 7500 crew (efficiency improvement much?) so this ship might actually not have as many crew as you'd think if it is equipped with similar technology.
In other news, at least two days worth of work might be gone and I won't be posting updates for a couple days because my laptop hard drive died (right after the mobo was replaced, hmm...) Dell is insisting on replacing the mobo again, and I'm a dunce and don't have a current image. So when I GET everything fixed it'll take me a bit to get back on my feet (posting this from an Ubuntu 10.10 x64 USB-stic install).
Didn't lose as much as I thought--I'm back to the "Much better" stage of Monolith so all I have to do is regreeble/resume plating. Will update this post later.
The Pellaeon class Star Destroyer only has 7500 crew (efficiency improvement much?) so this ship might actually not have as many crew as you'd think if it is equipped with similar technology.
Pellaeon class...:(
Join the NEW Imperial starfleet and get 35 sqaure acres of personal workspace, bring a horse, it WILL be fun!
Gaaah long time between updates. Annoyance with greebles and being forced into a retail job with its associated crappy hours (my parents kinda made me even though I'm actively searching for things more in line with my capabilities) have both contributed to the lack of updates here.
I only forsee a few details left to add: main reactor, geodesic domes (which I can't for the life of me figure out how to make in Rhino) and minor greebles in any flat spots.
Long, laborious conversion from Rhino to 3ds max completed. I learned that 3ds max has gained the ability to import from .sat files, which Rhino can natively export. No conversion to meshes is required, maintaining the look and feel of the NURBS I used to build the ship to begin with. The problems I had in the past (mainly that Rhino blocks were imported exactly once into max) now are reversed: each block is imported as a separate piece of geometry. In fact, any block which consists of more than one piece of geometry is broken into its component parts, causing massive files and huge import times.
I ended up doing the ship in pieces, and I actually forced myself to "re-arm" the ship (that is, I imported only a single copy of the main gun battery which I then instanced across the ship). The benefits from using max are significant: better lighting (I can do engines now!), faster rendering, x64 application, oddly smoother interface when everything is shown.
By "fast" I mean Quicksilver-fast. Having thrown in a GTX470 I just bought, I pushed out the following 5800x3625 image in 6 minutes, 35 seconds. 8x Antialiasing is applied by the GPU.
The following errors are noted and will be fixed:
- The heatsink for the long range turbolaser on the right (as seen by the viewer) is too far to the left and disappears into the rounded portion.
- There is something wrong with the normals on the Long Range Turbolasers.
Posts
I didn't misread anything.
You might want to break up the shape of the that spine a bit; right now it seems very...monolithic. Try cutting out some bits from the corners, break up the outline, and have a good transition from the panel patterns; right the panels looks like a texture. Also, a key light in your renders will make the details pop out a bit, and help you appraise it better in the WIP shots.
Just like the huge central spine on Fractals one ship, so what?
first-light.jpg
full ship with light.jpg
You expected anything less from me?
beginning the monolith.jpg
I don't see escape-pod detailing on most Star Wars ships aside from the Blockade Runner :P
There aren't enough, not enough by half.
Who cares... :P
Aresius, you really understand the dark side eh?
An ISD's standard crew is 37000. Even a Venator, which is pretty lean-manned, has ~7000. A big cruiser like this, 50,70k?
The philosophy is probably more "kill the enemy first, then you don't need escape pods." No visible pods on Mon cals either (though to be fair for both ships they'd be vanishingly small anyway). Especially odd for Mon Cals, if they were once civilian liners (though I've always thought that was pretty BS an origin). Corvettes and Consulars have pods, but the versions we see tend to be used for VIPs.
In other news, at least two days worth of work might be gone and I won't be posting updates for a couple days because my laptop hard drive died (right after the mobo was replaced, hmm...) Dell is insisting on replacing the mobo again, and I'm a dunce and don't have a current image. So when I GET everything fixed it'll take me a bit to get back on my feet (posting this from an Ubuntu 10.10 x64 USB-stic install).
Pellaeon class...:(
Join the NEW Imperial starfleet and get 35 sqaure acres of personal workspace, bring a horse, it WILL be fun!
Seriously though, cool lookin' ship.
[img]http://www.alliancemodding.com/sovereign/big engines.jpg[/img]
Nice work here.
[img]http://www.alliancemodding.com/sovereign/12-18 star destroyer back.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.alliancemodding.com/sovereign/12-18 star destroyer front.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.alliancemodding.com/sovereign/12-18 star destroyer right.jpg[/img]
[img]http://www.alliancemodding.com/sovereign/12-18 star destroyer top.jpg[/img]
I only forsee a few details left to add: main reactor, geodesic domes (which I can't for the life of me figure out how to make in Rhino) and minor greebles in any flat spots.
I ended up doing the ship in pieces, and I actually forced myself to "re-arm" the ship (that is, I imported only a single copy of the main gun battery which I then instanced across the ship). The benefits from using max are significant: better lighting (I can do engines now!), faster rendering, x64 application, oddly smoother interface when everything is shown.
By "fast" I mean Quicksilver-fast. Having thrown in a GTX470 I just bought, I pushed out the following 5800x3625 image in 6 minutes, 35 seconds. 8x Antialiasing is applied by the GPU.
The following errors are noted and will be fixed:
- The heatsink for the long range turbolaser on the right (as seen by the viewer) is too far to the left and disappears into the rounded portion.
- There is something wrong with the normals on the Long Range Turbolasers.