Topic: Grendel class Cruiser for Download

[MajorRacal]

Playable version of Gorn Grendel class Cruiser available to download from:
http://gornracal.tripod.com/index.html

MajorRacal  

[Rhaz]

Very cool - I missed the anole earlier, got 'em both now

 

[ModelsPlease]

Yeah I missed that first one as well.Great work sir.
-MP  

[Dizzy]

     

[Rod O'neal]

I'm really enjoying all of these releases from you. Cool looking Gorns. Thanks for the ships. Is this meant to be a CA or a CL?  

[starforce2]

those are actualy quite good...

[Kaenyne]

Neat! Neat! Neat!

[Chrystoff]

Okay, those are some good looking Gorn ships. Will you be doing a whole series? I hope you will!!  

[MajorRacal]

I'm stunned - relatively high praise from Starforce2!!  

The Grendel can be either a heavy CL or a light CA, whichever you prefer, although in the smidge of a text file, she's listed as a CA.

As for further Gorn ships, I'm not sure.  These are the only one's I've done (thus far), and to be honest I'm trying to hammer through the backlog of meshes I've already created so that I (and other people) can actually see them in the game: it's been almost a year for most of them, so new ships are kinda getting the back burner treatment at the moment.  Hiowever, since people seem to like them, I'm sure there will be more in the works soon enough.

Admittedly, none of my texturing is as detailed as I'd like it to be, but we've all got to start somewhere - I'd anticipate reworks in the future as my skills develop, but you know I'll keep you all informed.

Thanks

MajorRacal      

[ChrisJohnson]

I really wasn't a big fan of Gorn ships from SFB lore.  In my opinion, they're more like more-simplified feddie Saucer plates connecting to each other and two nacelles in a vertical position rather than more a horizantal one like the Federation and most other species of ships use.  Now, when Interplay released SFC1 with their KA-ish ships (On the most part, Fed, Klingon, Romulan, and Gorn vessels came from Klingon Academy, and the rest made by Taldren), I really liked the way they were built.  They were really alien-like, yet reptilian at the same time, a perfect combination, even if they are stapler-ish to you guys and not a good design.  They're better than just saucer plates and two nacelles, much more original than that!  They represent the Gorn the best to this day, as a fleet.  Skinman had one pretty close though, in design.

Despite all that, I kinda like these.  They kinda stray from the saucer plates I eat on every day and they venture more towards an alien-ish design, and I like that in the details.  One thing that kinda bothers me... Is the fact that they represent sharks more than reptiles, or like a hybrid.  But then, it seems to make some form of sense, viewing the universe as one big ocean.  But then, it's kinda if-iffy on how alien it is.  So I have mixed results.

But just as the model itself, the detail you put into, it is really, really great.  I absolutely like it and I would encourage you to do more if you wanted to.  And since you probably do want to, just think on the positive side of this message, which is how you put detail into your models, like how a lot of great modelers did.  I'll definately download this!

[red_green]

Quote:
I'm stunned - relatively high praise from Starforce2!!  

The Grendel can be either a heavy CL or a light CA, whichever you prefer, although in the smidge of a text file, she's listed as a CA.

As for further Gorn ships, I'm not sure.  These are the only one's I've done (thus far), and to be honest I'm trying to hammer through the backlog of meshes I've already created so that I (and other people) can actually see them in the game: it's been almost a year for most of them, so new ships are kinda getting the back burner treatment at the moment.  Hiowever, since people seem to like them, I'm sure there will be more in the works soon enough.

Admittedly, none of my texturing is as detailed as I'd like it to be, but we've all got to start somewhere - I'd anticipate reworks in the future as my skills develop, but you know I'll keep you all informed.

Thanks

MajorRacal      

Nice work there. Yea texturing can be the pits when your starting out. It can take 4 to 5 times longer then meshing, depending on how much detail you put in. It can be tedious with a lot of mapping and placement. I downloaded one of your Romulans I like. I notice that you had mapped a bunch of triangles each as seperate groups and then used the same texture on each triangle or set of triangles. I must admit that was really creative and kinda cool. Though with mixed results. Some areas looked good while in others the textures were getting way too stretched.  After doing quite a few ships. Some better than others    I found to avoid the stretching problems. I will put the mesh in game with no textures and I take a screen shot with it centered from the top view. That way I have  the ship outline. I simply copy, resize and paste into a 1024 map.
Then you can map the entire top faces of the ship right on top of this map and position so it fits inside the borders. Then position  your textures like you want. You can do the bottom on a second map. Then group side areas and nacels seperate.
This works on many ships though not always real odd shaped ones.

Just trying to give a suggestion here.  You have some real impressive stuff at your site so far.