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3DHonorverse stuff
MaxxRush180
Posts: 168Member
Some of you may remember me posting my attempts to depict ships several years ago from the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Then I abrubtly dropped the work, and of course, now it's all gone. Well, I can finally take the lid off, somewhat, of what I've been doing for the last 6 or 7 years.
I've been under an NDA on this, but now have permission to show some stuff. The majority of what I've done so far is still under wraps, but at least I can show *some* stuff now.
What I have been doing is "working" for a group called BuNine (short for Bureau Nine, which is a play on Weber's use of "Bureaus" for various departments of the Royal Manticoran Navy). We have a website: http://bunine.org/ but, at least for me, it's just the main splash page, but it explains more about what we do and how official our work is. More or less, what we come up with is canon in the Honorverse, because it all receives Weber's blessing(s) at some point. There's supposed to be other stuff there, but for some reason, I can't access it. I may need to clean out my cache...
The latest Honorverse book is House of Steel, which contains the novella, I Will Build My House of Steel, by David Weber, detailing King Roger's military buildup prior to the Havenite War(s). That's the first third of the book. The other two-thirds is The Honorverse Companion, written by BuNine, and containing detailed history, government organization, ship information, rank structures, military awards and decorations, and more for the Star Kingdom (Empire) of Manticore and the Grayson Protectorate. We're hoping to write at least two more companions that will cover the Solarian League, Haven, the Anderman Empire, Silesia, and maybe a few other Star Nations.
So, after all that, yes, I actually have something to show for all my verbiage. First up is a composite picture that my boss worked up. My work is the middle version, followed by a few renders from my own files:
I've been under an NDA on this, but now have permission to show some stuff. The majority of what I've done so far is still under wraps, but at least I can show *some* stuff now.
What I have been doing is "working" for a group called BuNine (short for Bureau Nine, which is a play on Weber's use of "Bureaus" for various departments of the Royal Manticoran Navy). We have a website: http://bunine.org/ but, at least for me, it's just the main splash page, but it explains more about what we do and how official our work is. More or less, what we come up with is canon in the Honorverse, because it all receives Weber's blessing(s) at some point. There's supposed to be other stuff there, but for some reason, I can't access it. I may need to clean out my cache...
The latest Honorverse book is House of Steel, which contains the novella, I Will Build My House of Steel, by David Weber, detailing King Roger's military buildup prior to the Havenite War(s). That's the first third of the book. The other two-thirds is The Honorverse Companion, written by BuNine, and containing detailed history, government organization, ship information, rank structures, military awards and decorations, and more for the Star Kingdom (Empire) of Manticore and the Grayson Protectorate. We're hoping to write at least two more companions that will cover the Solarian League, Haven, the Anderman Empire, Silesia, and maybe a few other Star Nations.
So, after all that, yes, I actually have something to show for all my verbiage. First up is a composite picture that my boss worked up. My work is the middle version, followed by a few renders from my own files:
Post edited by MaxxRush on
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Before anyone asks, no I don't intend to texture this or anything else I do. For one thing, I still haven't learned how to even draw using Paint Shop Pro (or GIMP, or any other software like that), and secondly, none of this stuff is really meant for anything more than proof-of-concept, and reference for David Weber to work from.
BTW, I will be at HonorCon this year in Greenville, South Carolina in November. I'll get to meet David Weber, Eric Flint, David Mattingly and some high-ups from Evergreen films: http://honorcon.com/
Edit: This thread will probably be updated fairly slowly, as I am 1) a slow modeler, and 2) not currently working on the pinnace itself. I plan to do some more with it, and hopefully, I may be able to show other things I'm working on, so will make this thread basically a repository for my Honorverse work.
Also, I want to thank those who are running this board. If it weren't for SFM, I wouldn't have been "discovered" due to my earlier Honorverse work, and wouldn't be working with BuNine.
Thank you.
If you're talking about the underside shots, yeah, they're a little dark, but I like the effect. If I wanted to have the renders show more detail, I would have added more fill lights, or brightened up the one(s) I had. As it was, I wanted something a little closer to realistic, where detail would be somewhat difficult to make out. Keep it subtle, y'know?
Thanks. I kinda wish some of my stuff was in there as well, but I'm not upset about it. From what I understand, Baen and BuNine went with all 2D artwork for the sake of a consistent look. I'm fine with that. Besides, in a way, my stuff *is* in there. The Mk30 Condor II pinnace is a paintover of one of my Mk28 renders, and my job is to do concept stuff, with no real intention of ever finishing it in the sense that I could put it up here in the Finished Works forum. I mainly try to get things to fit according to any textev relating to whatever subject I happen to be working on, and if there are moving parts, I try to make sure they could actually work, given Honorverse tech.
That's mainly why, even after six years or so of working on it, the Mk28 still isn't actually "finished".
I've even got a few animations (and not just of the pinnace
Thanks. I've read all the customer reviews at Amazon... you can tell which ones aren't interested in technical, political, or military organization background info - or which ones never bothered to read that there was only a single story in the book and the rest was a Companion, despite it saying COMPANION right there on the cover.
BTW, dunno if anyone else has seen or heard this but (just announced at ComiCon this weekend):
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/07/20/tales-of-honor-from-top-cow-and-matt-hawkins-from-the-david-weber-honor-harrington-novels-ahead-of-a-film/
Edit: I really ought to make some new renders. These were all done with my old comp, and are only 1024x768. I do all my current rendering at 1920x1080.
Yes. The film is slated for a 2016 release and is being made by Evergreen Films. They will be at HonorCon November 1-3 in Greenville, SC (where I will be on a couple panels). There's a little info at IMDB, but unless you have a premium membership there, you won't see much more than what I've just told you. No announcements of cast, writer, director that I know of.
However, you can see a list of higher-ups (including the Art Director) that will be at HonorCon here: http://honorcon.com/
From the HonorCon website:
Evergreen is a technologically-innovative studio that combines the best of Silicon Valley technology with Hollywood storytelling to create characters and worlds whose stories unfold over multiple distribution platforms, including films, webisodes, gaming applications and digital comics. Focused exclusively on creating global content franchises, Evergreen has developed technology to quickly and cost efficiently create digital assets that can be deployed across multiple platforms. This immersive transmedia entertainment experience provides fans “what they want, when they want it, where they want it”. Besides Honor Harrington, Evergreen is also co-producing three films with BBC Earth, with the first releasing this December. Visit www.WalkingWithDinosaurs.com to experience a film 100 million years in the making.
http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4411
My first publicly shown video of *anything*:
Nothing special really.
Well, not really new. I've been working on this for several years now, but, as with the pinnace, I was unable to post anything until now. Since a lot of this stuff was shown at HonorCon, it's fine for me to post now.
So, here we go:
Thanks.
What are those faint square hatches? At first I thought they might be energy mounts, but then I realized that's what the midline hatches are. Also, is it just me, or do you have an extra broadside missile launcher?
Thank you.
Heh... just got done answering this on David Weber's message board. Someone mentioned that in one of the books, the pinnace was described as being the size of a pre-space jumbo jet. But of course, that was before The Great Resizing™. For a heavy cruiser like the Star Knight class (which the Fearless is a member of), that's about the smallest warship one can fit that many parasite craft into. CLs and DDs would probably have one pinnace, and just the cutters, and most likely have them pointing fore and aft. We haven't gotten around to doing anything other than the Fearless, because we're using it as a baseline to develop layout and everything else before we move on to other classes.
As for fitting the missiles in a downsized podnought, we've already got them (both missiles and pods) designed and built in 3D, and worked those numbers against post-resizing dimensions and they fit rather well. Can't show any of that stuff yet, though.
Those are the armor plugs for the weapons mount crew capsules. In the event of an evacuation order, the plugs blow out and the crew capsules eject in their entirety to act as escape pods. One of my better ideas I contributed, since I had the F-111 ejection system in mind. I used to load bombs on those when I was in the Air Force, and the entire cockpit ejects, rather than individual ejection seats.
BTW, the weapons configuration for the broadside is (aft to forward M=Missile G=Graser L=Laser):
Upper deck - M-G-M-L-M-L-M-G-M-L-M-G-M
Lower deck - M-L-M<big space>M-L-M-L-M
If you mean the hatch just below the gravitic array blades, that's the decoy bay.
Yeah... having the missile tube and magazine built helped a lot when it came to placing the weapons ports. I ended up having to change them from the original drawing because where they had the ports, the launchers and mags wouldn't fit.
I'm aware of the problems that many of you will no doubt point out, but at this point, I don't really care. I'm not trying to make a demo reel, and I don't expect I'll ever get an actual job doing this. It's also only my second public video, and my fifth video ever, so I don't expect perfection.
Anyway, here it is: [video=youtube_share;uEiGEeq8SiI]
Thank *you*.
Thanks.
Good animation, but a few crits: The Fearless is too dark on the initial approach, it's really hard to make out the ship. The sense of scale is really hard to judge, a parasite like a pinnace should be quite a bit smaller relative to the ship. Otherwise, nice job!
Keeping the Fearless in the dark was intentional. I wanted to use the "headlights" of the Condor to give an initial taste of the ship (including the "spotlighting" of the ship name), followed by a better lit "full reveal" once the flyaround was finished. I also wanted to get across that the docking was taking place in deep space, and not in orbit, so there wouldn't be much in the way of bounce light to lighten up the dark areas. From your comments, I guess I didn't quite get what I wanted, though, but I'm not about to start over again, not after 2 months of rendering.
I suppose I got a little caught up in some things when I was setting up the render. Knowing what the ship looks like (since I modeled it), I wasn't really thinking about those who might not have seen the designs before. I *thought* I was showing enough for people to get a general idea, but maybe not. Of course, there's also the fact that I posted still renders of the Fearless, so maybe thought that that would be enough to "fill in the blanks" when watching the video(s). That only works for those that have seen the stills though.
As for the sense of scale, I don't really see the problem. The Condor's size can be inferred by the hatches and windows, and it fits in the boat bays just fine, which also have hatches and windows to give *them* a sense of scale. I don't see why the parasite craft "should be quite a bit smaller relative to the ship". The Fearless is only a heavy cruiser, not a superdreadnought, and light cruisers and destroyers are even smaller, with even less of a size difference between their parasites and themselves. Yes, the size ratio is much less than that of Trek ships, but then, this isn't Trek. Once you get to BC and SD or SD(P) size ships, then you'll get your smaller-looking parasites, although assault shuttles are roughly twice the size of a pinnace.