Oolite Bulletins

Your ship designs are very quirky and interesting Mandoman, but one of the issues I see with all of the recent ones in this thread, is that your predilection for flat colouring reveals the highly faceted nature of your ships. Have you considered using smoothing groups? Or, as others have suggested, adding some level of texturing detailing to mask the facets.

Personally, I don't mind the multi facet look. I suppose many don't, though. I've used smoothing techniques, but it doesn't totally eliminate the faceted nature of my ships. I build them, and paint them the way I see them in my mind, and I love doing this. Blender is one of the best things that has come along in a long time, for me. I'm sorry you don't like how they look (not really), but I don't suppose it's going to change much any time soon. Quirky? I'm not sure how to take that.

I like the faceted look. Gives the ships a look like they've got structural reinforcement at the facet joins.

I guess that's about the way I see it as well. What would such space craft look like, anyway? Is there already some hidden knowledge as to what they "should" look like? I like smooth as well as the next guy, but the facets don't put me off a bit.

They 'should' look like whatever the ship's architect designed them to look like!

Like the man said.

mandoman wrote:

Personally, I don't mind the multi facet look. I suppose many don't, though. I've used smoothing techniques, but it doesn't totally eliminate the faceted nature of my ships. I build them, and paint them the way I see them in my mind, and I love doing this. Blender is one of the best things that has come along in a long time, for me. I'm sorry you don't like how they look (not really), but I don't suppose it's going to change much any time soon. Quirky? I'm not sure how to take that.

I don't recall saying I don't like how they look specifically. As for some of the points you've raised - yes, you're right, we don't build FTL spaceships, so we have no idea how they might be constructed, so ships might not be constructed from curved surfaces (as we build what limited space faring vehicles as we have now) - but some of the faceted nature is clearly due to an interaction between, Oolite's lighting model and Blender's triangulation of what I presume started life as purely flat surface when you created them. (See the ringed area in image). All I was trying to point out was that with a subtle change in the way the model is constructed, the graphical/modelling tool limitation would be less obvious. I see no "engineering" reason of why a perfectly flat engine cowling (I presume that's what it is) would be constructed from two triangular pieces of metal before being welded together.

As for quirky I think I was referring to your love of Star Trek-esque nacelles (even if that's not what they are, it is what they remind me of) of many of your other ships. I didn't mean to cause offence - calling them dull, or rubbish (which they're not) I thought might have caused offence if that had been my intent (which it wasn't).

Of course the best thing (there are many equally best things!) about Oolite is that we can each shape it the way we see fit (and share it with others who might also like to shape it in a similar way), others who do not want their Ooniverse remodelled as such do not have to DL the OXPs...

Keep up the good work and keep designing those quirky ships, as somebody who has only modelled 3 ships (only one of which was a design of my own, others were replicas of ships seen in comics) and has released none of them, I admire your continued output.

Triangles are the strongest shape, and what happens if a whole engine plate is blown away instead of half of one??

EDIT: Holy crao, I just now realize how much I LIKE the faceted look!

Mandoman - Congratulations on reaching the 1000 post mark

Rese249er wrote:

Triangles are the strongest shape <snip>

Really? In what way?

DaddyHoggy wrote:

In what way?

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say it's the most stable. A good example is the experiment I've done in school once with different shapes made from paper. Another good example is a bar-stool.

...or just look at any steel structure - a tower-crane is a good example, formed from squares/boxes with diagonal cross braces to triangulate it.

We do that for rigidity against weight.

Having worked with aircraft and submarine manufacturers when working for the MOD (the closest things I can think of to spaceships) - such structures are much rarer if not non-existent, either in the internal structure or surface panelling.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

... submarine ... the closest things I can think of to spaceships

[completely off-topic]Submarines are cool... especially large, golden submarines. Yes, it's Leif Erikson Day![/completely off-topic]

Whoa, you guys are having quite the conversation here. DaddyHoggy, I have no doubt that you are quite in the right. To be truthful, I've experimented with smoothing techniques in Blender. I never really get what I'm looking for. A lot of times I smooth an area that looks particularly triangulated, only to throw the whole ship out of balance, which requires moving other parts/areas around to go where they belong. One nasty little thing that happens after smoothing is the model DOESN'T look out of joint, but nicely smoothed out.....until I go to paint. As soon as I move to "Texture Paint" mode, or even to "Object" mode, the areas I smoothed pull away from the rest of the model, requiring me to "fix" it, which looks all smashed together in "Edit" mode. It's never an easy process. I will also admit that I am new to this, so there are a huge number of things I don't know, or understand about Blender, but I'm working on it. Maybe I'll be able to defeat the triangulation bug yet.

ShipBuilder, I didn't even know I had posted that many times.

El Viejo, good one.

Smivs, good illustrations.