Topic: Gorns (updated 10/26)

[Rod ONeal]

Meshes by: Atolm
Textures by: Me 

There's 6 in all. These are the 1st two. They still need HPs/DPs and brk.mods Hopefully i'll be able to get them all ready soon.

[Starforce2]

good grief...those kick ***!!!!!! Normaly I'm not that thrilled by gorn but these got me excited.

[Mr_Tricorder]

Very nice!  These are excellent models.  The color scheme seems unusual for gorn ships, though.

[Victory]

yeah, a bit to blue for gorn if you ask me, but excellent looking ships otherwise.

[OlBuzzard]

What era ? The color of the texture maybe a bit curious ... 

But other wise :

WOW !

Super Job !

 

[CC22]

Nice going. I know how hard it is to texture a model from scratch, or near scratch. . The textures do remind me more of Andorian or Federation rather than Gorn, though.

[Rod ONeal]

good grief...those kick ***!!!!!! Normaly I'm not that thrilled by gorn but these got me excited.

Starforce likes it? (Thanks, man. Knowing that you generally, ummm... "dislike" SFB (which these are based off of) designs I just had to give you a little shot. )

Lots of comments/questions. Thanks, I like that. It sucks when nobody's interested. The grey color is from SFB. The warp glows should be red and the impulse blue, if I were to be totally accurate. I took a bit of artistic license. To me, the blue and grey work well aesthetically. That's why I used it. I took styling cues from Desty Nova's Gorns and Atolms TMP Gorn cruiser for the textures.

Atolm made these meshes way back in Oct. of '03, where they've resided on my HDD ever since waiting for textures. The textures are from scratch, a first for me. I asked him for something that looked like SFB but was more up to date than their designs from the 70's. I wanted the basic bubble (saucer to you Feds ) and hull configuration to be the same, keep the rounded nacelles, and add recessed saucer rims. Something that would fit in well with the 1st movie (1701-A) for the styling. By this time the Feds and Gorns had started technology exchanges (according to SFB). So, there are some purposefull similarities with them. I also asked that he keep the polies to around 2500 +/- 10% so they'd run good in game for most people. He hit on all of the requests. Even the DN with 3 bubbles is in at just under 2800 polies and looks pretty darn smooth at the same time. It'd be nice to have some more mesh details (bridge, weapons, etc...) but the limit on the poly count, and the overall round design, precludes that, unfortunately.

I imagine SFB/SFC Gorns to have armored looking textures. Their basic tactic of closing to point blank range and slapping a tractor on their enemy where they slug it out toe to toe (the Gorn anchor) would seem to require that to me. I also tried to make them look a bit "scaley" (they are lizards after all). That was hard for me to do with the bubbles because of how you have to distort the texture to change the aztecing from straight to round, but I think I got it on the rest of the ship pretty well. I've got some ideas to try to get that better on some of the other ship-classes. This is also my 1st attempt at decals/emblems, registries, and spot lighting. I'm still not totally happy with the spotlights, but they're as good as I can get them at the moment.

Thanks for the comments, and I don't mind my styling decisions being questioned. Sometimes I even listen and change things. So, if you think that something different would look better, don't be shy.

[Rhaz]

These are very cool - a good TMP look.

Rhaz

[Kana]

Very nice, can't wait...we can always use SFB themed material IMHO....

Kana

[CC22]

Thats a great attitude to have over your work 'tis nice to see. Thanks for the explanations too as they've made things much clear in regards to how you have developed her. Btw may I ask, what program do you use to create the textures? Photoshop or good ol' PSP?

[ModelsPlease]

Fantastic job !!!!!!!!!!!!! But I too question the color of the textures. You da man HotRod.
 
-MP

[markyd]

Me Likes 

I have no idea what colour gorns should be... so you could sell this to me easily 

[Rod ONeal]

Well, (according to my non-scientific poll ) the color isn't a big hit. Maybe you guys could give me something a little more specific to go by? Is it the grey color? The blue hues to the overcoating? The blue glows?

AFAIK the closest thing to a canon Gorn we have is SkinMan's version of a Gorn that almost appeared in DS9. It's green. I'm really full of green alien ships though in Trek. Klingons, Romulans, and Borg (The Borg aren't actually green, but they might as well be with all of the eerie green glows.). SFB Gorns are grey with red glows. More of a true B&W grey than I'm using. I'm trying to spruce them up a bit with the blue hue.

Here's some shots with the DN rendered in OP. I added a little spacey background for contrast, but the model itself is as it appears in-game (lighting, shading, etc...). This way you can see how she looks now and give me some suggestions for possible changes.

Thanks all.

Oh, one other thing. Please keep in mind the era is early TMP. Think Enterprise-A... Early K'tinga. Not TNG with the more exaggerated shadings.

CC2, I mostly use photoshop, but the light maps were done in psp. I find the psp lighting and contrast easier to use.

[Starforce2]

maybe it's not the hull color the the nacelle glows and whatever those slots are on the saucer (shield emitters..? too large to be windows) But maybe try yellow drives or the original stock drives.

I reread a post above and since you already have red markings on the nacelles, a color that usualy clashes with blue anyways, I don't think red drives would be bad looking, and if you went with a blue impulse perhaps try different shades of blue or brightness levels, even textures on the grilles themselves...

[Kana]

For an SFB style ship, especially as maybe an advanced (x-ship)/TMP era, I think this color, and everything else is just fine...but you could also use this as a reference...

http://www.starfleetgames.com/minis/GRN/Gorn1.pdf

Kana

[ModelsPlease]

Nice catch Kana.

[Kana]

Yeah I think there is a thread with a link to all of the races on the main modelling forum...something about sfb modellers I believe...

Kana

[Captain Adam]

.

[GotAFarmYet?]

I think they are beautiful as well, always wanted somethingto replace the current gorns with.

As for the colours the blue and grey look cool!
and for anyone else, well that is what retextures are for, changing colours only is easy

[Rod ONeal]

OK, here's what I'm doing... When I first showed the DN to Atolm he asked if I could do a version with green glows, to better match his later era Gorn CA that he recently released. That should have been my 1st clue that the blue glows might not be real popular.
When I showed it to my GF she said, "It's really blue." I said, "That's it? Is that all you have to say?" She said, "Well you can't expect me to gush all over everything that you do." That should have been more than a clue. More like El Kabong's guitar up side my head! (Does anyone here know who "El Kabong" is?)

Well, I still like the blue, (as do some others) but I can compromise.

Here's the green glows for Atolm->

To coordinate better with his later era Gorn here (shown for reference)->


...and, "truer to SFB", red->

Thanks for everyone's input. After doing the other colors, I've decided that I like the red best. Although I still like the blue a lot.
Some of the comments might prove useful in the future, as well. I now know what color scheme to use for Andorians, for example, if I ever do any.
A bit of a special thanks to G.A.F.Y. I'm glad that you like them. You're one of my texturing mentors (along with a few others). The level of detail that you put into your textures is awesome, man.

I'll get all of the models done and then I'll get them posted.