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View Full Version : WIP : Rune X13 heavy space freighter

nulll-void
01-24-2005, 03:02 PM
I've been working on this model for quite a while now, various stuff came in between (school, hack attack, etc). With school giving me a bit of a break and the problems with my sites now solved it's time to continue this model. The ship is part of an animated sci-fi series i'm working on, of which the storyboard is being placed online in a slightly altered form so it's somekind of comic/story hybrid.
You can find it at http://4thmoon.nulll-void.com (http://4thmoon.nulll-void.com/) - the 'introduction' is intended as a test, when i was still working with Bryce & Wings3D some 6-8 months ago, since then i got into 3Ds Max 6 and never went back to Bryce except to make some landscapes or skies as backgrounds. The first episode has already a few pages, and a couple of images which are in fact test renders of the models i'm working on. Since i'm still quite new to 3Ds Max my models are improving quite fast and so the models you see there probably no longer exist in that form but have been updated one way or another...

I summarized the work i've done until this point on this Rune X13 model in a small 'making of' file on my site : http://www.svc.nulll-void.com/visuals/wips/runex13/index.htm - it contains several pictures of the ship in various stages of progress and close ups of several sections of the ship.

http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/big03.jpg

At one point the ship was 1.3 million faces, but then i decided to remove most of the unnessecary random 'details' and add some more 'functional' elements, that's basically what i'm doing right now : i'm modelling seperate panels, some with thruster engines, some with small laser turrets, some just various kinds of technology/wires/tubes and so on. Then i'll just insert these seperate panels where they're needed and duplicate them. Making seperate panels allows me to quickly duplicate certain areas of geometry (one or more panels) instead of remodelling it somewhere else and stuff like laser turrets and thruster engines can easily be used for future models since i made them as seperate files/objects.

At this point the ship is about 680.000 faces, the most left and right hand sides of the green section of the ship will be covered in these 'panels'.

Some big (2000 by 600 pixels) images :
http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/big01.jpg
http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/big01wire.jpg (wire)
http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/big02.jpg
http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/big02wire.jpg (wire)
Swizzle
01-24-2005, 06:26 PM
Dang, that's neat! I really like all the little details you've managed to include, and it all seems fairly practical (chainguns in space=terribly dangerous for the bad guys). Are you going to put some big shipping containers in the middle section once you've finished all the rest of the stuff? I hope to see some more soon; this is cool!
TIMTHESORCERER
01-24-2005, 09:36 PM
inseting and extruding square faces is not terribly impresive. spend a bit of time creating non-square greebles.
nulll-void
01-25-2005, 12:02 PM
The laser-turret panel is finished. The picture shows what it looks like with lightning.

http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/laser_panel01.jpg

Here's what the textured version looks like :
http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/laser_panel_big.jpg
And 2 images of 2 panels already attached to the side of the ship :
http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/laser_panel_big2.jpg
http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/laser_panel_big3.jpg

Dang, that's neat! I really like all the little details you've managed to include, and it all seems fairly practical (chainguns in space=terribly dangerous for the bad guys). Are you going to put some big shipping containers in the middle section once you've finished all the rest of the stuff? I hope to see some more soon; this is cool!

Glad to hear you like it, it's my biggest model so far. Most of the detailing stil has to be done tho, except for the engine bay part which is basically finished.
The middle section is indeed intended to hold several huge containers, which can be easily removed... f.i. the ship just finished a 3-month mining run and drops of the containers at the refining satellite while getting refueled, a 'fresh' crew gets installed and a quick systems check is done and it gets a load of new empty containers in stead of having to wait for the previous containers to be emptied - within a day the ship can take off again on another long mining run.
If the ship is of to a mining site which is far away from any storage or refining satellite, it can replace one of its containers by a small refining platform, so it can process some of the raw ores on the way back home.
Another possilibity is to replace some of the containers by a small laser-turret platform in case they fly along a dangerous route, or they could take an additional vector-miner bay with them, for when they need to mine a certain amount of ore real fast.

(later on in the story one of these ships is stolen by some pirates, who replace all the containers with self-made weapons and turn it into a huge battle cruiser).
nulll-void
01-26-2005, 08:14 PM
Been working on the docking platform for a smaller cargoship, this platform is part of the vector-miner bay. I decided to add a robotic arm on which i've been working most of the day, but it's finished now :

http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/fullbotarm.jpg


I made an animation with this arm, picking up a box, nothing fancy, just a test to see if the arm is capable of moving in all possible directions and it looks cool so far, it'll take a few hours to render, so i'm gonna let it render overnight and put it online first thing tomorrow.

This arm is placed along the docking platform to load/unload the small cargo ships, i will probably place it on some rails so it can move along the platform. Here's what the platform looks like at this moment :

top view :

http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/docks.jpg


Another view also showing part of the (also unfinished) crew and control section (in blue) :

http://www.nulll-void.com/misc/docks2.jpg
warthog
01-27-2005, 12:44 AM
cool ship design, i like it!:bounce:
nulll-void
02-01-2005, 03:45 PM
Little update : the frontbay supports 2 Nagato fighters, this is what those look like :

http://4thmoon.nulll-void.com/epilogue/epiship004c.jpg

http://4thmoon.nulll-void.com/epilogue/epiship004d.jpg

http://4thmoon.nulll-void.com/epilogue/epiship004e.jpg
nulll-void
02-10-2005, 08:18 PM
Another update, i already started texturing. The modelling is about 75% done now.

This image shows the 3 parts that are finished and textured :

http://www.svc.nulll-void.com/visuals/wips/runex13/100205_small.jpg

Big version of above picture here :

http://www.svc.nulll-void.com/visuals/wips/runex13/100205_big.jpg


Several close ups :

front bay :

http://svc.nulll-void.com/visuals/wips/runex13/008.jpg

engine module :

http://svc.nulll-void.com/visuals/wips/runex13/013.jpg

crew compartiment/bridge :


http://svc.nulll-void.com/visuals/wips/runex13/011.jpg


At this point (some 1.250.000 faces) this model is getting a tad too heavy to be able to model/texture comfortably... My PC is not heavy enough (1400 Mhz, 512 Ram). Wonder what it's gonna be like to animate this model together with som 15+ other smaller ships flying around it. Should be fun but i might need to upgrade my PC first...

A few more pictures and some background info at http://svc.nulll-void.com/visuals/wips/runex13
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