Topic: Can someone design me some ships?

[strider74205]

HI, I'm mostly a lurker here but i post occasionaly in praise of the excellent models and sketches here.  I saw the positive response to the Lexington Project and I thought perhapse I could get some help.  I'm writing a story (probably novel length) that I eventually hope to have published.  Its set in my own universe and I need some ships designed.  I'v tried to do some but my imagination is so shot by TV and movies (my artistic skills aren't that great either) that everything I try ends up looking Trek-ish.

A brief synopsis of the story:

500 years in the future Humanity has become a repressive empire that dominates the galaxy.  100 or so years before the story takes place Humanity engaged in an aggressive war against three most powerful alien civilizations, eventually conquering them and enslaving them.  Now the entire economy of the empire is dependant on slave labor.  like most such empires it is corrupt and ruthless (thats right, humans are the bad guys).  This story takes place on Earth, on which the only remaining population is a slave camp working fields that provide most of the sector's food supply, it has a proportionatly small population of humans who are guards and administrators.  The story is about a reluctant but charismatic alien who is asked to lead his people in uprising against the humans and the battle fleet which is sent in to put down the uprising.  might sound cheesy but I'm really going to focus on character development to push it beyond "mere" sci-fi.

Thats where you guys come in.  I need someone to design me a battle fleet: Battleship, carriers, cruisers, destroyers, tankers, fighters, the works.  Sketches will do great, there are some wonderful sketch artists in here, but if anyone wants to do some models that will be cool too.  What I'm looking for is a very militaristic and dark look, no sweeping lines and beautiful starships but hard edged warships.  These are not nice people (though i will be doing a lot of moral abiguitiy with characters .

Anyway any help you can offer will be much appreciated, and credited heavily if it ever does get published.

thanks 

[manitoba1073]

well depends on the style u really want as there is many different styles out there ie BAB5,Star Wars, and so on, even lots of other games have some really nice ships that might do.

[strider74205]

quite right, I'v always been attracted to the B5 human style of ships because they are very functional and militaristic, which is very much the feel I would like.

[manitoba1073]

do have anyway to render .mod files or would u rather prefer prerendered pixs.

[strider74205]

is there an easy/free way to render .mod files?  using taldren's modview maybe?  if not then prerendered.  I just need designs in whatever format so i can have consistency when I need to describe a ship.

[Red_Green]

Hey Strider, sounds like an interesting project. I am more of a sweaping lines kinda guy instead of hard edged design. I was wondering though, will you be needing an Alien fleet as well? Though it sounds like the Aliens are with out outside help and might have to rely on what they could steal for ships at the beginning. I'd be better suited for alien ships as my texturing style is more abstract.

None the less I might give the hard edge miltant look a try. Though it will be a couple weeks before I get time to try this. 

[intermech]

How about a ship like I have on the home page of my website?

http://www.freewebs.com/interstellarmachine/

Recently I have been working on some non-trek, non-SW, non-anything, type of designs.

Interstellar Machine

[strider74205]

red_green:  Some alien ships would be great!  The universe that i have got in my head lends itself to a whole lot more than just the book i'm writing now.  I may expand it into a trilogy or write like a series of short stories about the war or something so for that I would need some alien ships.  The three alien races are as follows:  The main character's race are medium human height with four arms, another race are around 10 to 12 feet tall, bulky and agressive, the third race are around 7 feet tall, slender, and have wings.

intermech:  I really like the design, but at first glance its a little clean and happy looking for what I'm going for. do you have some other angles i could see it from?  btw I really like the intrepid prototype (i'v wanted someone to make that ever since i saw it in The Art of Star Trek)

[Red_Green]

Intermech, great design there.

Strider, if I remember correctly Intermech makes low poly models to run on 'older machines'
That design of his could be given more bite by adding greebles to the mesh to make the hull look rougher in appearance. That adds to the polycount but that isn't important here I guess.
Perhaps too, having less windows and making the textures darker would make it less happy.

I like it though. It has a real good mix a various elements in it and could have a lot of variations  if a fleet were based of of it.

[Grand Master of Shadows NCC37385]

How many views of each ship do you need? Besides human and alien, do you need various classes of ships? Destroyers, frigates, scouts, fighters, stations, freighters, etc? What kind of propulsion systems? Everything determines how they will look. What are you going for?

[strider74205]

just a couple views of each ship.  And for now i'll just need human ships but later some for the three alien races.  I need just about every class you could think of that would comprise a battlegroup.  A Battleship, a couple of cruiser and destroyer types.  Frigate and corvette designs.  Especially i need drop ships and fighters cause they will feature heavily.  I'm still working on the particulars of space travel but i'm figuring on some sort of interstellar network of established trade corridores that are large enough for a fleet to pass through and accelerate ships to incredible speeds.  The only engines that would the ships would need would be sublight engines.  I really like the vertical engine bank on intermech's designs.

[Grand Master of Shadows NCC37385]

I tried several designs before I came up with one I thought would fit. How this for a start?

[strider74205]

That looks really cool shadow, very close to what I'm going for.  Were you planning on adding more to it?  My only suggestion would be more guns  (you can never have too many guns.

Seriously it looks very menacing, i like it.

[Grand Master of Shadows NCC37385]

Is this better? 

[strider74205]

I LOVE it!!!

[Red_Green]

Yea I like it also.

Here are a couple designs I did a few months back. I lost these meshes off my hard drive, SO if you want different vies, I'd have to remake them  Also the color scheme can be redone to whatever. I have an entirly new concept. Though I am running with an Andromeda ship kick so won't be getiing to that for a bit.  These are meant as aliens.

If I hadn't lost the meshes I was going to add on  some new ideas to the one in the 1st pic. 









Ugh I can't get the pics to work,

[Red_Green]

I found the meshes   None of these were ever released. If you think you can use em but in a different color scheme I can do new textures. I can make the models more detailed also by adding more layers of trim. This shows my basic design tendencies. Which is a bit retro.

[strider74205]

Those are great looking

[Kane]

They look GREAT.

Nice work guys.

<S>

Kane

[Red_Green]

I just want to show what impact color can have on how the ship 'feels'