Time to mark it up

[Zentrandude]

when you said older (universewise) i thought you meant your tech design for the era of your craft.

but that doesnt matter.

what i mean by small enough is since its part of a swarm of others with it to defend the mother ship while big enough to semi relisticly hold todays tech if i could. the basic design is cannon fodder with cheap parts and stuff .

[Knight26]

ITs hard to tell much from your picture, but if the craft is strictly exo-atm I would chop the nose back a bit if I were you, maybe give it more of a bullet nose then beak you have on it now, unless there is a reason it sticks out so far.

[Knight26]

Getting close, but still not quite there. Ok, I redid the stub wings, I think they look much better now and moved around the guns. Something about their positioning doens't sit right with me though. I also changed the torpedo packs slightly, making them angled so that they fire away from the craft, this allows for the under nose weapons, also it should make the crew more comfortable as the upper pack torpedoes will also have more vertical seperation above the cockpit after launch.

[Knight26]

THis shot more clearly illustrates the problem I am having with the weapon mounts. I am now considering moving the Plaser cannon back under the wings inboard of the engines like they were originally. I would then move the Narfic Cannons (the energy weapons) under the nose in a dedicate chin turret, this would also allow for the canard to be an all fly canard, meaning that the whole thing moves. THoughts?

[Lynx7725]

Why not just actually pack the guns into the nose? You seem to have a preference for having externally mounted guns, but in this case seems like an internally mounted, fixed-front nose weapon would look good.

Wonder where the sensor equipments are supposed to go now though..

The stubs looks better.. overall I think this rough outline is the way to go, what remain are the itsy-bitsy details.

[Knight26]

The Dragon has Teeth:

OK I bit the bullet and buried the Plaser cannons in the nose, with only about 1/3 of the barrels and the main heat sump still visible. I will add doors around the cannon though for easier replacement. I then recountered the nose and ventral surface forward of the torpedo pack, still needs a little work but looks a bit better and is much cleaner. I then relocated the Narfics onto the angled area created by the recontoured ventral surface, gives them excellent field of fire and freedom of movement without impinging on other weapons, and makes them look like little arms tucked into the belly. I then added some vertical stabs onto the aft end of the wing stubs, they look great from straight on forward, but not as good from other angles, will play with them a bit. THere is still plenty of room in the nose of sensors, but the terrain following sensor array will have to be moved because of the guns, no avoiding that. I will also put sensor pods onto the fins I added. After that I will recounter the aft end and those flat surfaces at the face of the inboard "wings." Onto the pictures:

[Knight26]

THe underside, I would have doen this work last night, but was hunting around for a new fridge, mine went to pot, well rather it vented all of its freon in a freak accident and I was told to just scrap it by the repair shops. SO now I have to take off from work early and trek out to Northridge to get a new fridge because that is the closest strore that has one that will fit in the space in stock and a $100 less then anywhere else.

[Knight26]

Hand me the key:

Ok the design is just about locked in, and I am now going to start the detailing process, which will result in some modifications as I go. ANy suggestions for areas that need work are greatly appreciated. ANyway, the updates are as following, I reshaped the aft end made it no quite so flat, though there is still a big flat area. I also recontoured the front of the "Wings" extending them forward and shriking the size of that front drag magnet. I plan to add some hardware to that flat area, maybe even an array of cooling vents. Aside from that all I did was hollow out the engines and give them a new front end, makes them look a lot more like the A-10's TF-34s. I may move them a little though because the connceting pylons look like they may not match up properly now, will work on that later when I start detailing the engines. THe next step is the landing gears, once I have them figured out and intigrated I will start the detailing work.

[Knight26]

Oh yes I also added the sensor pods and ECM pods to the fins. Comments?

[Knight26]

Ok, the landing gear are in, one more feature, the boarding ladders, and I can start the detailing process. Of course with the addition of the landing gears that heralds the return of our flight test crew to start the inspection process and Graham's favorite rendering trick the mirrorplane. Sorry Graham I know you hate it but its a nice way to show off the top and bottom in one shot. Onto the pics.

[Knight26]

As you can see the nose gear is the standard Splicer nose gear I have been using, what can I say, I like it. The mains are all new, based on one of the concepts I rejected for the S-5000s undercarriage. The fold down and rotate the pad since they are otherwise angled. I think i might have made them a tad too big as they come close to impinging on the engine mounting pylons, so I moved the pylons a little to compensate. So, any comments?

[Knight26]

Also I was thinking about it on the way home and I decided to make a number of varients for this design:

1) The standard varient, the one seen here.

2) The Gun boat varient, mirroring the right side to the left giving two A/M cannons, and the torpedoes but no missiles.

3) The missile boat varient, mirroring the left side and giving it two missile packs.

4) The ECM varient, strip off all the weapons except for a couple missile packs for defense and pack it full of ECM gear, this one would be a four seater.

5) The shuttle varient, similar to the ECM varient possibly with additional personnel carrying pods in place of the main weapons pods.

[Knight26]

"Climb Aboard, We're expecting you, the gun boat...."

Sorry i couldn't resist, anyway the full undercarriage, including interior of the gear wells are in as are the boarding ladders, one on each side. I will start on the wing stubs and fins next and work my way in and forward, not sure why I go that way but what the heck.

[Knight26]

"Open wide and say ah"

Sorry for the lack of updates, was a budy weekend, I finished the wing stubs and fins but there is not much to see there so I will wait until later to show them. I did do significant work today on the anti-matter cannon though. I figured out the openning mechanism and modelled the forward arms of the weapon. The arms are actually both the same piece just revolved 180 degrees, in that way they are interchangeable, nice feature I think. Well it seems that interest in this one has peatered off somewhat so if there is no further interest I will hold off on updates until the end and just show the finish product. Well I hope you all like this and look forward to your comments.

[Knight26]

Ok, the anti-matter cannon is completed, including a new barrel, which actually has multiple barrels, they all fire at once though to make sure that the anti-matter does not react prematurely. The mechanism fully opens and closes and all the panels are on as well as a few more vents, and interface ports. I look forward to your comments. BTW the lighting is bad because I did this at work, I will make a render later with it attached to the rest of the fighter and hopefully get the barrel lights to work, they are not cooperating. Also if by 600 views there are no more comments I will stop posting updates until the end when I post the final WIP pretexture. Oh and those little holes on the side of the main unit right around the pivot joint, those are where the maintenance crews insert their manual hand cranks.

Edited October 28, 2004 by Knight26

[Knight26]

Ok, the weapons are mounted, the Anti-matter cannon and the missile pod, which has been detailed. I also added a basic color map that is 50% blended into the old base color. I will start on the engines tomorrow. Also I figured out why the new panel lines are so much harder to see, I'm not cutting them as thick as before, I will play with those on the engines. Let me know what you think.

[Knight26]

the next two shots show the differences before and after the texture was applied.

[Knight26]

and with the texture map blended in

[Knight26]

Ok, the engines are done, but I may redo them, had some problems building them and they came out taking up way too much memory, 60 MB for all four to be exact. Also I had some problems with rendering once they were inserted, so I had to delete the light sources, I will try reinserting them later. Tomorrow I will start on the fuselage.

[Knight26]

Check out that body:

Ok the main fuselage is complete, I just have to do the forward fuselage and nose to do. I will be redoing the engines though, I like how they came out but for some reason they weigh in at 60MB+ on their own and double the total file size. So I am going to redo them try and figure out what caused the problem in the first place and eliminate it. The next two pics I have split between the textured and untextured version to see how different it looks and see which brings out the panel lines better.

[Knight26]

Abs of Steel:

Rear Ventral view, C&C People?

[Knight26]

time for the dramatic shots:

above and behind, the panel lines really come out here, especially the ones that are a nod to the VF-1

[Knight26]

parting shot, comments?

[Knight26]

Ok 666 views, number of the beast baby and this beast is done, well nearly, I just have to make a few little tweaks to the cockpit and redo the engines. Enjoy and tell me what you think. Also does anyone have a good shark teeth texture they wouldn't mind loaning me?

[Knight26]

And of course Pete and Grunt have come for their inspection, they give a big thumbs up.

[Knight26]

Someone ask for a face full of anti-matter, cause here it comes.

[Knight26]

Five view registry shot, I really should add a view of the right side of this one.

[Knight26]

Last shot for tonight, a before and after picture. There were some texture issuesm please excuse them.

Edited November 1, 2004 by Knight26

[Knight26]

Splicer 3000 during exo-atmospheric trials over CATR station.

[Knight26]

I started texturing this bad boy and except for some clean up, especially on the sides of the torpedo packs, I have finished the aft fuselage. I will start on the forward fuselage later and then move onto the anti-matter cannon and stub wings before tackling what should be the very hard to do, engines and missile pod. Let me know what you think.

[Knight26]

Ok, I finished the forward fuselage and cockpit exterior tonight, I will start on the anti-matter cannon tommorrow after work and then move onto the missile pod before going to the engines. I will wrap it up with the easy stuff, the stub wings, canards and verticals, as well as the engine mounts, landing, gear, weapons, etc... The weapons are just a matter of converting the textures from other models. Well let me know what you think. Oh yes and the one picture is before I did the cockpit.

[Knight26]

Update, will start on the missile pod and engines tomorrow, like the markings?

[Knight26]

Update, texturing is completed, I was going to do a family portrait but AUTOCAD can't handle all three fulyl detailed models in scene togehter, oh well, guess this is another escuse for SuperO to tell me to change packages already. Enjoy the pics.

[Knight26]

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[Knight26]

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