First and latest

 The Kennedy-class Missile Carrier is a starship from the hard science fiction roleplaying game "2300AD". Its got a realistic look that manages to look functional and also ready to leap into a fight. I love the design. It's blocky nature makes it an easy subject for a hard surface modelling project. It just happens that it was pretty much the first proper thing that I built in Blender, 7 years ago. 

So here it is again, built in Blender 2.9. Once again, the proportions were taken from Laurent Esmiols Lightwave renders, which remain the gold standard for depictions of the ship. 

Once again, the battlefield on which I eventually fall is the texturing. I've made more effort not to let the bad geometry mount up. Fingers crossed I can get some useful UVs for the start of the effort. 

IFS Suffren: progress report

Never quite...

A poem is never finished, only abandoned. ~Paul Valéry

So I've done a presentation render of the Kennedy, thus far. Finished then? Never, but sometimes finished enough. In this case there are some tweaks before she moves to the paint shop. Missing turrets on the forward section, a piece of cable work that 'sets off' that 'neck' between the nose and the spin section. The odd nip and tuck.

Kennedy Close to completion

Blender in action - this is my standard modelling layout. Good isn't it?

Going in for the (detail) kill

It's 12:40 and Noah has been crying on an off since about 11:20. I'm posting this entry as a break from his quivering tonsils. I'll have to go back with a new sleep plan, although I've already used up all my tricks.

So what about the Kennedy? Tonight I made solid progress on the surface details and made some decisions on where my design parts company with the references. Turrets are mostly in place. Whilst I've kept the general layout of Laurent's drive section I'm holding off actually fitting a thrust nozzle. I tried to make the turrets a little less sexy with the bulbous emitters rather than barrels. This may need to change - I'm still making my mind up about approach.

Tomorrow, if I get scrape the time I'll have this ship modelled to completion. Horrah!

Kennedy work continues

Laurent Esmiol's fantastic interpretation is impossible not to reference - although I think Ian Stead's more recent Sketchup work offers plenty of valuable lessons too -- and a reminder about the turrets. I'm finally approaching the fine-detail stage of the build which will definitely be the hardest part for me as I find blender doesn't allow me to use entrenched workflows and build strategies.

If I'm happy with the model I'll do a proper job of the texturing and lighting and maybe even aim for a short animation.

Close to finishing the main parts. Fine details, next.

My first ever Kennedy - created in Caligari trueSpace (1998ish)

Progress interupts progress...

Progress on the Suffren has been interrupted by some other progress. This other progress is one 2300AD's most iconic starships.

Suffren progress

Still lots to do. Those spin arms look awfully spindly, especially when compared with those on Tom Peters' rather more muscular original design. I still feel like I want to stretch the model a tad. Maybe 10-15 to give it a slightly less stunted look. Tons more detail required.

Suffren WIP

Limited time. 2+ hours of Blender polygon bashing. I wanted to tackle one of the simpler 2300AD starships. Looking a little squat but the 7:1 ration between length and average width broadly fits with the GDW write-up.

I'll complete the basic form, add some more details then get this sucker textured. Then what? Arcturus Station, maybe...

So I just learnt how to use Blender....

Blender Before
I had a play with Blender many years ago - back when Caligari was still actively developing its trueSpace 3D package. At that time I thought that Blender was an extremely worthy bag of spanners - a wonderful idea that looked and felt like it was trapped in the UI straight-jacket. This was, I must confess, a snap decision based on hours (actually probably minutes) of attempted use. Clearly I hadn't been willing to suffer the mental pains or productivity dips that result from trying to work with a new set of complex tools.

A holiday challenge
It dawned on me that I hadn't really tried to get my head around a new 3D package in well over 10 years. I wanted to remind myself what it's like, having spend many months on more technical learning challenges, like getting to grips with Hadoop and Big Data. Now usually the Christmas/New year holiday gives me the biggest allowance of the year for self indulgence - which has often resulted in days of playing computer games. So this year I decided to invest that free time in learning to use Blender. I assumed that one of three things would happen:

a. I'd give up because of some serious limitations or because it's just so horrible to use that I could see now value coming out of the effort. For the record, about 2 years ago I fell madly in love with SketchUp only to drop it like a burning rock after seeing what happened when a scene got moderately busy.

b. I'd be so impressed with Blender that I'd undergo CGI apotheosis, becoming a Blender evangelist, throwing away all my old tools and floating around the internet of a cloud of Blender love.

c. I'd get to grips with Blender, learn its strengths and weaknesses and then go back to 3DS Max 4 with a new set of tools to call upon when required.

So one month later, which is it?

Well, having a 15-month old son has resulted in a big reduction in the time I had available to invest, so I'm actually only half way through where I thought/hoped I'd be. But I'm still on the journey. Still enthusiastic. So far though, I'm somewhere between b. and c. depending on what kind of 3D output I'm looking to produce. I don't consider myself quite an evangelist but I'm increasingly an enthusiast and supporter.

Today, Caligari is - very sadly - a footnote in 3D modelling history while Blender has grown into a very respectable tool that has proven capable of (limited) production-quality output. When the full feature film (http://gooseberry.blender.org/) is finished you can remove that 'limited'.

 Blender still has a reputation for being unfriendly to new users, I think this is true (to some extent), although I'd add that if you want to do 3D modelling and animation, and you want to produce work that is worthwhile - that people other than your mum will appreciate - then you have to be realistic about the time commitment required for learning the tools and techniques - not to mention to apply and practice 3D art.

Spending an hour per day for 2 weeks, (doing a combination of reading/watching and using) is what I consider a foot-in-the door for learning Blender modelling. At that point you'll know enough to Start up Blender and get working on something without constantly needing to search the documentation or every little thing. It's a fair investment, but well worth it because when proficiency is reached they a creator of worlds you will be.

Random thoughts on my journey into Blender are discussed here.

LC10 sketch

I've spent rather too long trying to get the base form right for this old bird. She's no beauty but then the speed benefits of a stutterwarp drive gives the LC10 some huge advantages over reaction-drive driven alternatives.

I'll try and turn this into a detailed model, providing a I don't get derailed.

Ron Cobb: Science Fiction Design Hero

Remember Total Recall and the 5-second sequence of the shuttle making a VTOL landing? I loved that ship and yet nobody references, draws or builds it. Seems like a great design for a 2300AD starship...

I made an exhaustive and fruitless search of the interwebs for production stills or sketches of the Mars Shuttle that featured in the 1990 version of Total Recall. I loved the design - it seems something of a noble ancestor to the ship that featured in Prometheus.

This morning I dusted off my DVD copy and did a sweep of the extras - captured this great piece of Ron Cobb production art showing a non-VTOL version of the shuttle with passengers disembarking.

 

Screencapture - 3/4 view

 Screen capture: mostly front-on

An hour of pulling and turbosmoothing vertices to get the rough shape:

If I'm happy with the results I'll post the finished model.

Aliceport Orbital

Just a test render for Beowulf's orbital space port.

Beowulf: a closer look. Kudos to Colin Dunn, 2300AD's writer/line manager for supplying me with his detailed fractal-based world map. I used a high resolution satellite photo of Australia to provide a more realistic set of land features. However, some community members felt that it looked a little too barren. I think I'll do a follow-up with some added coastal vegetation.

Beowulf -- a new planetary modelling scheme

I'm still struggling with realistic HD planet models, or more specifically their materials. Hugely complex interplay of light and atmospherics. Lots of little understood effects being applied thanks to some decent online tutorials.

I don't seem to be able to make my clouds full bodied and also subtle, cloud layers see to be either ghostly or ghastly over-the-top.

Onward and upward!

In case you missed it: KAMROV K29 Fast Boat

Designed on a whim back in March this year, the K29 was just an idle experiment in designing a very fast ship using the Mongoose edition ship building rules. It can be done, especially if you're not needing to deck out for extended trips.

More of the Albion Battlecruiser

Arrangement - along with the initial sketch, scribbled in my work note book during the daily progress meeting.
Deck plans will be done once I've completed some Traveller 5 "Herald" work.

Full disclosure: The Bison really is a shameless ripoff of the Valkyrie SSTO-TAV-37 B-class Shuttle Craft from the film "Avatar". The Bison is slightly more 'wingy' and the thrusters don't need to tilt.

Albion-class Battlecruiser

Britain's new warship, HMS Albion was shown in public for the first time today. Called "Richelieu on a budget" by some critics, it appears to indicate a possible shift away from the "Under the wing" policy where Britain has for many years deferred to the French Imperial Navy for capital ships...

Even a journey of 7.7 lightyears must begin with a single step

You know, I really didn't need yet another blog. I've already got a handful of sites that have long been crying for updates. However, I've had an itch for a while, a niggling urge to hammer keyboard and splatter pixels on the subject of 2300A.D. which I consider to be my coming of age role playing game. I'll be writing background material, scenarios, drawing maps and designing and illustrating starships. Watch this space!