Old concept for a destroyer model; the last shot shows the protective doors, which also provide a handy way to reduce the polycount for certain missions by substituting a closed-door, hangerless version. The green box is the approximate space for a larger bomber, and the yellow lifts are intended to raise/lower ships from above (the hanger was slung 'under' the main ship body for mostly aesthetic reasons).

Obviously never finished, the model is since abandoned. Learnt a few things though. I have no idea how I'd map it, either - it's too complex to do single-maps for these things (I'm not sure it's of much real benefit to do maps the way I used to make them), so I guess I'd have rigged and baked it.

Oooh nice - I've always been a big fan of these and the details in them.

I like the fighter lifts especially - though I'm definitely getting a smaller sense of scale than that green box implies. 1-2m diameter rods on the lift sure, but if that bomber represents something the size of an ursa at about 50m, then the rods would have to be a minimum of 20m thick!

Looks great though, and by the sounds and looks of it you intended to be able to use it in capital ship in-game models as well as a mainhall background?

If I didn't know better I'd have thought it was a mainhall concept. It would rawk.

Vasudan Admiral wrote:Oooh nice - I've always been a big fan of these and the details in them.

I like the fighter lifts especially - though I'm definitely getting a smaller sense of scale than that green box implies. 1-2m diameter rods on the lift sure, but if that bomber represents something the size of an ursa at about 50m, then the rods would have to be a minimum of 20m thick!

Looks great though, and by the sounds and looks of it you intended to be able to use it in capital ship in-game models as well as a mainhall background?

Yeah, absolutely - I kept adjusting the scale of the destroyer model and somewhat neglected to check the hanger scale until it was modelled too. That said, you probably would need massive hydraulics to support a platform that size, so it's defensible.... but probably something I'd have revisited later to fix.

This is the destroyer itself, BTW, so you can see the scale. Note the 6 fighter tubes (the tube model itself seems to have got corrupted, so no renders) - they were originally per side, until I decided it'd be better to have 6 in case I put it into FS2 (better to launch a wing from the same side). IIRC that's why the whole thing was upscaled, after the hanger was done.

The reason I abandoned it is perhaps made clear by the last shot.

(EDIT; oh, and the 4th shot is a little mistake. I detached the engines to further detail & texture, and somehow the bottom set got a little offset.)

Wow crikey - that's very impressive, and obviously very BSGesque. Was that what it was destined for?

I love the rear shot BTW. The engines look spectacular. The whole ship just looks like a warship built for combat, which is great.

About the hydraulics, a more efficient system there would probably be a pully arrangment of some kind (hydraulics that big are just not practical, and for something that would require very long ones like a lift, any kind of lateral motion would be a disaster), and even then I doubt it would actually have to be all that strong. In space all you'd need to do is not waste time generating artificial gravity the lift would be otherwise be fighting against, and then the lift would only need to overcome inertia.

Anyway it seems a huge shame that it won't be completed - but with the amount of work I know is involved, I can totally understand why that's the case.

That said, have you considered releasing it to the Diaspora dev team/fans to see if any of them would like to finish it? BTRL and Diaspora have definitely attracted some excellent model/texturers to the FS community in the past.

And I do wonder what other unseen beauties you have lying around?

Vasudan Admiral wrote:Wow crikey - that's very impressive, and obviously very BSGesque. Was that what it was destined for?

Nothing in particular, really. I think I started it purely because I got Razor on DVD and liked one of the rear shots of Pegasus turning. I've been wanting to do a BSG homage for a while now - the difference between a homage and a ripoff is, hopefully, only taking the sensible and iconic design ideas like defensive ribbing, minimal windows, etc...

Arguably it turned into just dropping the side landing bays, and I'm not sure that having those wouldn't have balanced the model out more.

Vasudan Admiral wrote: I love the rear shot BTW. The engines look spectacular. The whole ship just looks like a warship built for combat, which is great.

Ah, that's the problem right there - the engines. I took ages to sketch and model those, the problem is that I had to do so first. So the rear section is built more or less purely to hold those engines, and is rather curvey as a result. Then the front section is less vertically symmetrical, and a lot more boxey and hard-edged, so it looks like two pieces of a different ship glued together.

Also, my missus kept remarking it looked like a cock.

About the hydraulics, a more efficient system there would probably be a pully arrangment of some kind (hydraulics that big are just not practical, and for something that would require very long ones like a lift, any kind of lateral motion would be a disaster), and even then I doubt it would actually have to be all that strong. In space all you'd need to do is not waste time generating artificial gravity the lift would be otherwise be fighting against, and then the lift would only need to overcome inertia.

Yeah... the whole anti-gravity thing was somewhat of an issue in that I could really just have a hovering platform, but that would look too science-fictioney. The nice thing about hydraulic cylinders, though, is that they're piss-easy to draw textures for

If I'd thought ahead and left more room under the deck, and at the sides, I could have sidestepped the whole issue.

Anyway it seems a huge shame that it won't be completed - but with the amount of work I know is involved, I can totally understand why that's the case.

Well, it's really down to the aforementioned design issues....

That said, have you considered releasing it to the Diaspora dev team/fans to see if any of them would like to finish it? BTRL and Diaspora have definitely attracted some excellent model/texturers to the FS community in the past.

I don't think it's quite BSG-ey enough in some respects. Plus I think the effort getting this up to scratch would be better spent in making something new from start; there's a lot of stuff needs improved IMO, particularly the hull-plating (I deliberately made it non-uniform in depth and size, but I'm not happy with that any more).

And I do wonder what other unseen beauties you have lying around?

Absolutely zip...

I can definitely see what you mean about the two pieces of separate ships, but a big portion of that look I think would be caused by the textured vs untextured aspect.

Of course the two parts could obviously go together *better*, but I think they each look functional (and tough) enough in their own rights to suggest logic behind putting them together to form one ship. Not the prettiest of part unions, but still very much a warship.

BTW, why did you go for the non-mirrored hull plating approach? To my mind that close to doubles the work and halves the available texture res!

Vasudan Admiral wrote:I can definitely see what you mean about the two pieces of separate ships, but a big portion of that look I think would be caused by the textured vs untextured aspect.

Of course the two parts could obviously go together *better*, but I think they each look functional (and tough) enough in their own rights to suggest logic behind putting them together to form one ship. Not the prettiest of part unions, but still very much a warship.

BTW, why did you go for the non-mirrored hull plating approach? To my mind that close to doubles the work and halves the available texture res!

I decided it'd look better, particularly as the model isn't easily splittable along a single vertical seam. The one issue is mapping every single one of those plates individually, which is technically simple but repetitive as hell. I did actually do some mapping on the frontsection as well, before stopping and going back 2-3 versions to try and improve the appearance a bit more.

EDIT; also, it makes it easier if I decide to go back and add some damage - uniform damage is highly jarring. I'd probably have scapemarks, etc, in any case. Oh, and the engines at least would have shared the same mapping.