SeanP

I haven't posted anything or even visited these forums in quite a while. I just finished my fourth book and I am currently rewriting my first three books to improve them and apply what I have learned since writing them. As part of the rewrites I am working on new covers as well. To that end I created two new ships in 3D over the past few weeks. The original battle carrier is 1.5 miles long. The second generation battle carrier is twice the size at 3.0 miles long. The dreadnaught is 4.5 miles long. One thing I learned from making the original covers is don't overdo the detail on the 3D ships because it just doesn't show up. All it does is greatly increase the time it takes to render the final image. Here are a few images of the old and new ships together for comparison, without any special lighting, special effects, texture maps, or environment.

A little more progress on the new ship. Still lots of detail to add and I need to decide on a color scheme. This is a private space ship, not a military ship, so I think I want to give it some color instead of military gray. To save myself some time I fit the sub-light thrusters from the battle carrier in the back. I'll make some changes to make them unique to this ship in a bit. Still need to ad the thrust cones for the jet engines and the FTL drive assembly - which I'm still brainstorming on. Anyone have suggestions on the color scheme?

Blocked in the intakes for the in atmosphere jet engines today. Modeled them after the intakes on my favorite fighter the F-14 Tomcat.

I am almost finished writing my fourth book and I've also been working on the main character's new spaceship for the cover. I have the shape all hammered out so now I can start adding all the small detail, weapons, engines, landing gear ...etc.

Great work lewisniven! It looks amazing so far! This thing will look amazing when it's finished!