Playing about with another commissioned piece, the D-5 Mantis from the Old Republic games. There are going to be numerous modifications to it, so perhaps a D-6 Preying Mantis Here are the design evolutions leading to the final layout.
I always wonder why there is extensible landing gear. If you can vertically land (and we've seen that Star Wars ships can) why not just build a reinforced hardpoint on the ventral side of the hull? Less mass, less moving equipment, less maintenance. Maybe put a synthetic "foot" on the outside so that pebbles or whatever can be accommodated, and you just replace the boot from time to time.
I always wonder why there is extensible landing gear. If you can vertically land (and we've seen that Star Wars ships can) why not just build a reinforced hardpoint on the ventral side of the hull? Less mass, less moving equipment, less maintenance. Maybe put a synthetic "foot" on the outside so that pebbles or whatever can be accommodated, and you just replace the boot from time to time.
The one thing a hardpoint can't do is adjust for uneven surfaces. As superfluous as I think landing gear is (apart from visually) - it might make sense if repulsorlift isn't perfect for stability and to avoid unnecessary off-center stress on the hull.
This one reminds me a little of the Betty from Alien Resurrection :
I love the Betty! Always thought she'd sit right at home among regular GFFA ships - in fact she looks like belongs with them more than the other ships etc of the Alien quadrilogy...
Messing about with starfighter models. Note just how large shuttles and heavy fighters like the Gunboat/TIE Defender are compared to TIE/ln and TIE/sa:
Always love that skipray blastboat. These kinds of comparison renders are great!
Out of curiosity, what do you think about The Force Awakens TIEs being smaller than the originals, according to StarWars.com? They say the 2-seater special forces TIE is 6.69m long, while they have the TIE/ln from the originals at 8.99m long.
30 yrs more advanced tech? Albeit, that doesn't really mean much in a hyper-tech civilization that spans 30,000+ years as an FTL civilization.
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Fractal, have you ever considered challenging yourself to design a SW hull, but one that definitely takes into account aerodynamic streamlining? I don't mean the Naboo stuff (in a word: yuck), but something streamlined and then BLAM, suddenly Star Wars goodies/greebles.
"30 yrs more advanced tech? Albeit, that doesn't really mean much in a hyper-tech civilization that spans 30,000+ years"
Quite the opposite, the rates of technological progress in civilisations increae exponentially over time. At the start of a civilisation not much happens, and there is little done from century to century, but then look what happened with the industrial revolution, at that moment not only had their been a great increase in technological progress there was also a massive increase in the rate of progress. With further technology not only does technological advancement increase, so does the rate of advance. In the last 200 years manking has made more progress than in the previous several thousand, in the last 50 years we've made considerably more progress than the 150 years preceding that, now follow that exponential curve onward to when a civilisation achieves typeII kardashev status, and beyond, to the devlopment of an FTL drive (if one can ever exist), think how fast their rate of technological development will be! 30 years in a civilisation of that kind would be more progress than man has achieved in several hundred years atleast, if the exponential trend continues.
Nice modelling and good to see all those craft together for a nice comparison of size and proportions.
P.S. as far as that stremalined chromed naboo stuff goes, there is a reaon. The director wanted to make it feel a bit 1920s "inter-war", to contrast it with the more utilitarian and greebly designs which appear in films 4/5/6.
There's the danger of over-extrapolating based on a limited subset of information. Using the modern technological growth as a benchmark doesn't fit what we know about the SW universe. Admittedly the old EU's position is unclear (basically it stands until contradicted), but everything we've got so far says that thousands of years ago from the current timeline, the basics of the setting were in place - extremely fast trans-galactic hyperspace travel, sentient droids, turbolasers and shields, etc. The current state of technology (beginning of spaceflight) happened tens of thousands of years before the OTL in SW. If the setting were still in exponential growth, 30yrs would see a completely different setting, but similarly to the OTL/prequel comparison, the OTL/Ep7 comparison shows that the baseline technology is basically stagnant.
That's not saying that implementation can't change, but the principles do seem to be about the same. In other words, the BB-8 is repackaged technology from the R2 series, but doesn't make it completely obsolete in the way a Haswell Xeon makes a 386 obsolete today. More like an Atom in a Surface vs an Atom in a compute stick.
Quite the opposite, the rates of technological progress in civilisations increae exponentially over time...
But you also have to incoporate the mindset of the people and the cost-benefit ratio.
For instance take the romans.
They knew about the steammachine but choose to not use this technology because they already had a good source of working power... slaves.
Or there are hundreds if not thousands of patents of revolutionary technologys lying in safes around the world which will maybe never used because some people choose that the current stuff is good enough or it would be too costly to implement them.
Also we still use technology invented 100 years ago which had been tweak'd here and there over the years but it's still the same technology. Like radio, the car... or most prominent... the wheel.
And I didn't see any replacement for them coming in the next decades.
Yeah, what Fractal said. Basically the understanding is that the tech we see in the SW universe is so commonplace now, the principles of which were discovered thousands of years ago, that technological advancement hit something of a critical mass, where all areas of technology on a base level can't be improved, but the examples of that technology can be made better and more efficient while still adhering to the established principles of that tech. So for example in the same way that though today's car engine is way more advanced than the first, they are still essentially internal combustion engines which must obey the same rules, but the engineering and technology now available makes them far more advanced and efficient.
Just out of curiosity, assuming you are willing to publicly disclose such things, what's the ballpark cost for a commission like the Mantis, and what does the client get for it? I'm assuming multiple high res renders, perhaps a specific composition?
I assume the intended end-use would be for a framed print suitable for wall hanging. I'm curious as to what that would cost as well, assuming one was to arrange for it to be done professionally.
Just out of curiosity, assuming you are willing to publicly disclose such things, what's the ballpark cost for a commission like the Mantis, and what does the client get for it? I'm assuming multiple high res renders, perhaps a specific composition?
I assume the intended end-use would be for a framed print suitable for wall hanging. I'm curious as to what that would cost as well, assuming one was to arrange for it to be done professionally.
I charge $30 an hour, and something this detailed might take 30-50hrs. This output for this one are a set of high res renders to show off the final ship. If you wanted a big item framed, you'd need the highres render. Poster printing and framing might be another $50-100, depending on the size and materials for the frame you chose.
Posts
The one thing a hardpoint can't do is adjust for uneven surfaces. As superfluous as I think landing gear is (apart from visually) - it might make sense if repulsorlift isn't perfect for stability and to avoid unnecessary off-center stress on the hull.
:thumb:
:thumb:
This one reminds me a little of the Betty from Alien Resurrection :
I love the Betty! Always thought she'd sit right at home among regular GFFA ships - in fact she looks like belongs with them more than the other ships etc of the Alien quadrilogy...
Out of curiosity, what do you think about The Force Awakens TIEs being smaller than the originals, according to StarWars.com? They say the 2-seater special forces TIE is 6.69m long, while they have the TIE/ln from the originals at 8.99m long.
-=-=-
Fractal, have you ever considered challenging yourself to design a SW hull, but one that definitely takes into account aerodynamic streamlining? I don't mean the Naboo stuff (in a word: yuck), but something streamlined and then BLAM, suddenly Star Wars goodies/greebles.
Quite the opposite, the rates of technological progress in civilisations increae exponentially over time. At the start of a civilisation not much happens, and there is little done from century to century, but then look what happened with the industrial revolution, at that moment not only had their been a great increase in technological progress there was also a massive increase in the rate of progress. With further technology not only does technological advancement increase, so does the rate of advance. In the last 200 years manking has made more progress than in the previous several thousand, in the last 50 years we've made considerably more progress than the 150 years preceding that, now follow that exponential curve onward to when a civilisation achieves typeII kardashev status, and beyond, to the devlopment of an FTL drive (if one can ever exist), think how fast their rate of technological development will be! 30 years in a civilisation of that kind would be more progress than man has achieved in several hundred years atleast, if the exponential trend continues.
Nice modelling and good to see all those craft together for a nice comparison of size and proportions.
P.S. as far as that stremalined chromed naboo stuff goes, there is a reaon. The director wanted to make it feel a bit 1920s "inter-war", to contrast it with the more utilitarian and greebly designs which appear in films 4/5/6.
That's not saying that implementation can't change, but the principles do seem to be about the same. In other words, the BB-8 is repackaged technology from the R2 series, but doesn't make it completely obsolete in the way a Haswell Xeon makes a 386 obsolete today. More like an Atom in a Surface vs an Atom in a compute stick.
But you also have to incoporate the mindset of the people and the cost-benefit ratio.
For instance take the romans.
They knew about the steammachine but choose to not use this technology because they already had a good source of working power... slaves.
Or there are hundreds if not thousands of patents of revolutionary technologys lying in safes around the world which will maybe never used because some people choose that the current stuff is good enough or it would be too costly to implement them.
Also we still use technology invented 100 years ago which had been tweak'd here and there over the years but it's still the same technology. Like radio, the car... or most prominent... the wheel.
And I didn't see any replacement for them coming in the next decades.
Enjoying watching this develop, you're really lavishing this thing with detail, is fast becoming one of my faves of your body of work.
:thumb:
A 1-to-1 scale 3D replica of the Mona Lisa in perfect detail.
Out of nothing but greebles.
Such is the mastery of Fractalsponge.
Mona Lisa, with turbolasers!
I assume the intended end-use would be for a framed print suitable for wall hanging. I'm curious as to what that would cost as well, assuming one was to arrange for it to be done professionally.
I charge $30 an hour, and something this detailed might take 30-50hrs. This output for this one are a set of high res renders to show off the final ship. If you wanted a big item framed, you'd need the highres render. Poster printing and framing might be another $50-100, depending on the size and materials for the frame you chose.