WIP Hyperion Cruiser from Babylon 5 - 3D-Palace Community Forums

ckirmser · #1 09-28-2008, 08:42 PM

My TV blew it's brain recently and, while it was in repair, I discovered hulu.com. There, I found Seasons 1 & 2 of Babylon 5, one of my favorite SciFi shows.

After watching a few, I decided to model something from the show.

I was going to start with something ambitions - the B5 Station itself. But, I had forgotten that I had downloaded a finished model of that long ago when I was going to model the station in SoftFX Pro and Bryce. But, my PC at the time couldn't handle the size of the model, so it sat in virtual storage.

Since then, I've gotten a new PC and Max, both of which can easily handle the B5 model. But, since that was done, I had to pick something else. At first, I was going to do a Starfury, but I found a better set of three-views for the Hyperion and decided to go with that, instead.

One of the attached shots is just a render with no lighting and the other is with lighting and the two turrets mounted on top.

This is kinda fun and I'm going to use this model and the one I DL'd of the B5 to learn lighting and animation.

Comments and crits welcome!

dmacb · #2 09-28-2008, 09:37 PM

It looks fun and one cool way of expanding your skills! Go for it and keep us posted!!!

ckirmser · #3 10-02-2008, 05:12 PM

Added a few more turrets, couple of main weapons and some probes and antennas - B5 sure seems to like lots of things sticking out...

sandmanninja · #4 10-03-2008, 02:17 AM

Looking good!

Yeah, I think it helps with scale (a bit), too. You have this ship/station and these probe-line antenna sticking out... if the antenna probe thingies are 10 meters long, the ship must be HUGE!

ckirmser · #5 10-05-2008, 05:46 PM

Added some more nose candy and turrets. For an idea of the scale of the thing, that blue thing at the top is the top of the bridge. The gap between that and the layer just beneath it is a little over 2 meters. The length OA, from main engines to the tip of that long probe is 1,187.5 meters.

The two shots are a close-up of the starboard HPC turret and then a long shot centered on the same turret.

Hopefully, when the time comes to paint this thing, the flat sides of the various cylinders and other curves will wash out and look smooth.

dmacb · #6 10-05-2008, 06:20 PM

That ship is HUGE!!! Cool... keep up, please!

ckirmser · #7 10-05-2008, 07:56 PM

OK, just added the last turret; a dual railgun on the bottom of the foward hull.

I think my next step is to work on engine detail and maneuvering thrusters.

sandmanninja · #8 10-06-2008, 12:25 PM

Looking good!

I'm tempted to get my B5 discs out now...

Keep the WIPs coming!

ckirmser · #9 10-10-2008, 01:08 PM

Tried a little bit of UWV unwrapping last night. Took me an hour to figure out that ya don't just load an edited map into the UVW unwrap mod to get it to apply to the model. Self-teaching can be a pain.

Anyway, my meager efforts have shown me that making the model is the easy part. That's just lines and vertices which can all be placed with mathematical precision.

No matter how hard I thought the modeling was, making a decent map is excruciating. That requires artistic talent to paint a good hull image without it looking cartoony or just plain fake.

Making a good model just requires learning the tools; mapping requires talent. And, alas, my store of talent is not of the highest quality.

But! I shall persevere!

ckirmser · #10 10-23-2008, 11:43 PM

OK, here's a sample of my first attempts at mapping using UWV.

I'm not as artistic as many here are and I'm sure that shows, but, aside from that, I don't know why the colored bars and the EA logo are so bright.

I'm using Microsoft Image Composer - a free tool that came with Frontpage - to make the maps and in Composer, the yellow bars are actually much darker. Almost an orange. That's something I need to figure out.

Anyway, here it is for you to throw tomatoes at...