A little more progress. Starting to detail the power core some more, though need to play about with it to stop the pixelation on the encasing cage.
Also, some progress on the Pursuit Ship. Inspired by what Judge Death said about missiles earlier, I've altered the out-lying modules to be torpedo pods rather than guns - seems more balanced, given the massive particle cannon that takes up most of the forward hull...
Added some missile tubes to the Liberator's pylons (plus some gubbins in the 'mouth' which you can't see anything except the light on in these shots, unfortunately), begun detailing the Starburst and begun building the convict ship 'London'.
I'm rather pleased with where this last one is going - the original London is such a brick that it's fun to take the various bits of the design and squeeze them into something resembling an actual space ship...
BlueNeumann: Please feel free to post them in here! I'd be very interested in seeing what you come up with - and don't worry about my having to hunt your previous sketches down: it gave me the chance to admire your first-rate design sketches! And to address one of your earlier questions, I'm really not sure about windows on the Liberator. I'm edging towards not, simply because I'm not sure the System - computer-centric as they are - would include them on a war ship. It sort of fits with their mentality: total reliance on machinery, not compromising their war vessels for human considerations. However, that has the disadvantage of removing a good scale indicator...
Judge Death: I will be making the System Interceptors, yes, but (and forgive me if I'm getting the wrong end of the stick with what you wrote in your last post) the red ship is a Federation ship, one of the pursuit ships sent to hunt down the Liberator on Servalan's orders. Specifically, this is the 'Starburst' class pursuit ship, one of the most advanced Federation ships (according to the word of the original series). I'm planning to model another version closer to the original style of pursuit ship which, ala BSG, will act as a previous generation of Federation ship.
When I get round to the System Interceptors themselves they will still resemble the Liberator's weapons pods, since I rather like the fact that they reflect a shared design lineage so closely - again, it fits with the System's approach: simply exporting working design elements to another ship.
Oh, sorry, I thought the red ones were the interceptors from the system. The power core at the rear looked similar to the one on your liberator.
I've finally got some armour around the Liberator's 'waist' and have sketched in a few more little greebles. I've also started detailing the Pursuit Ship, starting with the sensors on the wings.
Welcome back, Librarian! Great to see this girl again, I missed her! And I totally forgot about the shuttle I designed, too.
Am I crazy or is the design a little more... I don't want to say simplified, but... okay, if it was a fist, it would be clenched. Does that make sense? Or like it was drawn with a thicker pen than before. Or am I just imagining things? It's starting to feel more like a model I could hold in my hand or see on a stand.
cool panel effect on the liberator, i really like that. spiky sharp shapes also good. the red thing(pursuit ship?) is also interesting and looks rather like a missile of some unusual kind.
BlueNeumann: Thanks! It's good to be working on her again. I'm glad she's starting to look more solid - and a clenched fist is definitely a good association for her! (Actually, it occurs to me that 'it' is probably the more correct pronoun given the Liberator's origin...hmmm)
spacefighter: Thanks Aâ hopefully when I get around to texturing the surface, those panels will seem larger than they do at the moment. The comparison between the Pursuit Ship and a missile is a good one, given its function Aâ I'm aiming for a cross between a homing missile and a flying gun with her.
Saquist Aâ I see what you mean, but I'm keeping to hexagons and other polygons throughout to make it very visually distinct from the Federation craft, which are much more rounded and more traditionally rocket-like. I'm trying to make the Liberator look alien by comparison, the product of a very different kind of technology. However, your comment made me step back and I realised that the flat sections with the hatches on them/where the pylons joined the separate hulls weren't optimal. I'd kept them as a hang over from my original design but now I've gone back and removed them in favour of a single angle. I suspect this won't quite address the blockiness issue, but I think it improved the look of them thing a bit.
Renders below Aâ with a size comparison to the slightly more detailed London model, and a small demonstration of how I envision the missile systems working.
Nice to she her moving forward again. I like the alteration to the pod sections, but I think the central unit looked better in the images from the 24th myself.
I also noticed she seems to be venting something from one of the hatches.
Well now. Quite apart from being distracted by other projects, I had a brain wave and realised that I needed to rebuild the Liberator's entire geometry from the ground up. Which I have done, and am now working on filling out the details again.
For some reason, I don't seem able to settle with this model...ah well! Onwards and upwards. And I am much happier with where the power core is going now.
Incidentally, Pagrin, the stuff venting out of the side/lower gun pod is a shower of missiles. The side hatches open up on to the main drone missile deployment batteries, which I have actually modelled into the new version.
I've liked all your versions of this, and am glad you're back at it. One thing I must ask is how you did the current power section, I'd really like to know how you did the hexagonal glass array around the rear section, knowing how you did that could help a lot with one of my projects.
Judge Death: It's quite a simple method although I'm not sure I'd recommend it since it is extremely time consuming. I started with a 120-face cylinder (or rather, the cement mixer shape of the power core), then sliced through it so that it was broken up into roughly equal width sections. I then deleted everything but a 6-facet length-ways section, which was broken up roughly into square sections thanks to the previous slicing. I then joined the vertexs up and down alternately to give me a web of hexagons that was bent roughly around the same shape of the original cylinder. It was then a matter of duplicating each hexagon in turn, scaling it down and adjusting it so that it was a flat face (the original scaled hexagon is distorted due to each vertex being from a different side of the cylinder). Then I just extruded them along their normals to create the panes. This methods gives two complete interlocking rows of panels, which can then be duplicated and rotated to fill out the entire core.
It takes FOREVER, and creating the web to house them in (which was this weekend's task) is even worse (similar methods, only with much more joining up).
As I said, the method itself is straightforward by it's very repetative and time consuming.
Luckily, I also found time to detail the main airlocks a bit.
I've done a little more work on the Federation Pursuit Ship and the London as well - pleased with how the London's detailing is coming along, actually, since I've managed to get in the 'air vents' from the original.
Also added some fins to the Liberator's power-core shields.
Diggin' diggin' diggin'. Really hope we can see the Lib in action (how great would it be to see the new ship in the low-tech style opening of the original show?)
More greebles and pylons, plus armour on the reactor core shield (this think has various layers of armour, as should be obvious, with the darker sections being much more dense and resiliant).
Thanks. I'm a lot happier with it myself, so I'm glad some else thinks it's going in the right direction!
I'm away from my Linux computer at the moment, and my laptop can't really handle the Liberator itself, so I've been working on the considerably smaller shuttle. Coming along nicely now, though I'm not sure what to do about the rear landing leg. Don't like having part of the hull in contact with the ground but there isn't an alternative with the current set up....
Thanks. I'm a lot happier with it myself, so I'm glad some else thinks it's going in the right direction!
I'm away from my Linux computer at the moment, and my laptop can't really handle the Liberator itself, so I've been working on the considerably smaller shuttle. Coming along nicely now, though I'm not sure what to do about the rear landing leg. Don't like having part of the hull in contact with the ground but there isn't an alternative with the current set up....
i can certainly see the design similarities between this and the liberator, same panelling and use of lots of hexagons. very nice.
I've got the landing gear sorted now, and I'm beginning to detail the hover platform(s) on which the shuttles are stored within Liberator. They're normally housed in a chamber near the middle, stacked as you see below (gravity within the ship points from nose to tail).
Did liberator have shuttles? Didn't they use the teleporter instead? I seem to remember one ep where it was implied she had no shuttles.
Incidentally for a reboot I'd agree shuttles would be a good idea in case the teleport was disabled or something too big to move by it had to be carried.
Posts
Also, some progress on the Pursuit Ship. Inspired by what Judge Death said about missiles earlier, I've altered the out-lying modules to be torpedo pods rather than guns - seems more balanced, given the massive particle cannon that takes up most of the forward hull...
I'm rather pleased with where this last one is going - the original London is such a brick that it's fun to take the various bits of the design and squeeze them into something resembling an actual space ship...
I've finally got some armour around the Liberator's 'waist' and have sketched in a few more little greebles. I've also started detailing the Pursuit Ship, starting with the sensors on the wings.
Enjoy!
Am I crazy or is the design a little more... I don't want to say simplified, but... okay, if it was a fist, it would be clenched. Does that make sense? Or like it was drawn with a thicker pen than before. Or am I just imagining things? It's starting to feel more like a model I could hold in my hand or see on a stand.
spacefighter: Thanks Aâ hopefully when I get around to texturing the surface, those panels will seem larger than they do at the moment. The comparison between the Pursuit Ship and a missile is a good one, given its function Aâ I'm aiming for a cross between a homing missile and a flying gun with her.
Saquist Aâ I see what you mean, but I'm keeping to hexagons and other polygons throughout to make it very visually distinct from the Federation craft, which are much more rounded and more traditionally rocket-like. I'm trying to make the Liberator look alien by comparison, the product of a very different kind of technology. However, your comment made me step back and I realised that the flat sections with the hatches on them/where the pylons joined the separate hulls weren't optimal. I'd kept them as a hang over from my original design but now I've gone back and removed them in favour of a single angle. I suspect this won't quite address the blockiness issue, but I think it improved the look of them thing a bit.
Renders below Aâ with a size comparison to the slightly more detailed London model, and a small demonstration of how I envision the missile systems working.
I also noticed she seems to be venting something from one of the hatches.
Well now. Quite apart from being distracted by other projects, I had a brain wave and realised that I needed to rebuild the Liberator's entire geometry from the ground up. Which I have done, and am now working on filling out the details again.
For some reason, I don't seem able to settle with this model...ah well! Onwards and upwards. And I am much happier with where the power core is going now.
Incidentally, Pagrin, the stuff venting out of the side/lower gun pod is a shower of missiles. The side hatches open up on to the main drone missile deployment batteries, which I have actually modelled into the new version.
Judge Death: It's quite a simple method although I'm not sure I'd recommend it since it is extremely time consuming. I started with a 120-face cylinder (or rather, the cement mixer shape of the power core), then sliced through it so that it was broken up into roughly equal width sections. I then deleted everything but a 6-facet length-ways section, which was broken up roughly into square sections thanks to the previous slicing. I then joined the vertexs up and down alternately to give me a web of hexagons that was bent roughly around the same shape of the original cylinder. It was then a matter of duplicating each hexagon in turn, scaling it down and adjusting it so that it was a flat face (the original scaled hexagon is distorted due to each vertex being from a different side of the cylinder). Then I just extruded them along their normals to create the panes. This methods gives two complete interlocking rows of panels, which can then be duplicated and rotated to fill out the entire core.
It takes FOREVER, and creating the web to house them in (which was this weekend's task) is even worse (similar methods, only with much more joining up).
As I said, the method itself is straightforward by it's very repetative and time consuming.
Luckily, I also found time to detail the main airlocks a bit.
I've done a little more work on the Federation Pursuit Ship and the London as well - pleased with how the London's detailing is coming along, actually, since I've managed to get in the 'air vents' from the original.
Also added some fins to the Liberator's power-core shields.
Some additional detail all round. Really have got to stop procrastinating and get on with some textures....
I'm definitely feeling "old British model" with that little red dart ship in the best possible way.
I'm away from my Linux computer at the moment, and my laptop can't really handle the Liberator itself, so I've been working on the considerably smaller shuttle. Coming along nicely now, though I'm not sure what to do about the rear landing leg. Don't like having part of the hull in contact with the ground but there isn't an alternative with the current set up....
i can certainly see the design similarities between this and the liberator, same panelling and use of lots of hexagons. very nice.
I've got the landing gear sorted now, and I'm beginning to detail the hover platform(s) on which the shuttles are stored within Liberator. They're normally housed in a chamber near the middle, stacked as you see below (gravity within the ship points from nose to tail).
Incidentally for a reboot I'd agree shuttles would be a good idea in case the teleport was disabled or something too big to move by it had to be carried.