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ShapeWright.Com- cool place for ship design ideas

NightShadowNightShadow10 Posts: 0Member
edited February 2013 in General Discussion #1
I dunno if any of you have seen this or not, but a friend of mine introduced me to this site and it's been a blast coming up with some really cool ideas for ship designs with absolute ease:

http://ship.shapewright.com/

All you have to do is type in a word or string of words into the field and their 3D generator employs a custom algorithm that spits out a low-poly/res design that's unique to that word (or letters or numbers- anything you type in, really). Some of the results are a little weird or useless, but MANY of them are pretty eye-catching. If you find a design that you like, you can download a VRML (*.wrl format) copy of the model, import it into your 3D proggie and use it as a base for embellishment or reference. Here's a few pics of some design ideas of my own that I might tinker around with in the coming days, just so that you get an idea of what it does (all ships shown are named after the word I used to create the design):
Anvil01.jpgAnvil02.jpg
Avenger01.jpgAvenger02.jpg


For those of us who get stumped on ideas or are just looking for some inspiration, this could be an invaluable tool!
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Post edited by NightShadow on
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  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    every time i have typed in a phrase or word i have come out with some very ugly/ridiculous/stupid designs. i think that site could be interesting if you had a bit more control over the parts and how they come together. you seem to be much luckier with it than me, some of the parts that that site constructs the ships from are quite nice but the whole ship always makes you think "i could have arranged them better", besides it takes the fun out of designing it.
  • NightShadowNightShadow10 Posts: 0Member
    The trick is to throw out all kinds of different types of words. Don't try to follow any particular pattern or rationale behind which words you use, just go random with it. It'll take names, sentences, compound words... pretty much anything you can type. For instance, I just typed in the word "blasphemy". The basic design that it came up with looks pretty cool, except for this sort of gun-barrel-looking piece at the very front of it. So I can just save the VRML model, import it into 3DS Max, select the mesh, go into sub-level Element and select the piece I don't like for deletion. If I don't like how some of the pieces are arranged, I can detach them to their own objects and fiddle with them to my heart's content.

    The point is not to let ShapeWright *build* the design for you, but to give you some ideas and suggestions on what you CAN do if you want a new ship design that'll be completely unique.

    Seriously, though- play around with as many words as you can think of, no matter how absurd. They don't even have to be words- try a jumble of letters or made-up words like "akamshi" or "glomtickle" and see what comes up. Real words like "fairy" or "fallen" work well, too. You just have to play around with it and see what happens.
  • CoolhandCoolhand283 Mountain LairPosts: 1,294Member
    yeah its a bit like making a really messy sketch and picking the design out of the 'noise' very nice find NS.
  • DannageDannage236 Posts: 634Member
    The most fugly scribbles usually have beautiful lines in there somewhere. Awesome stuff!
  • spacefighterspacefighter2 Posts: 0Member
    the best i have got out of it yet is "fatty" and that still needs some work.
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