Oolite Bulletins

I have indeed, although at first designing some crazy space castles for Fuedal states that are way beyond my current modelling capabilities.
Part of the reason I haven't yet attempted a rock-hermit is that unlike Griff my ability to model mechanical things is relatively useless, I find Blender a tricky mess to fumble my way around what with its habit of selecting unintended parts of the model along with that which you wanted to. The next minute you look round there is suddenly a great twisted pyramid in the middle of it, or single vertexes too many turns ago to UnDo without fiddling about for an imperfect result.
I don't mean to be mean about Blender, its a fanatastic tool, it's just that I don't use it enough to get around these obstacles. I'm sure there must be a wealth of short cuts to acheive things in much easier manners.
So currently Blender remains my number one choice for organic modelling and UV mapping.
I tried Wings before too and didn't feel comfortable using that either, until recently I've downloaded Sketchup and have knocked together a basic shuttle in it (an automated barge).
Its much easier and you can import/export to Blender to continue modelling and unwrapping.
My recent sketches have been concerned with the lack of traffic between planet and station, and that there should surely be a wealth of shuttles of differing purpose going back and forth (although without creating a jam), seeing as each planet only has twelve stations, so I shall first practice making mechanical objects with these and they can go in my ZygoTraffic OXP.
Maybe then I will feel confident enough to make a dock that doesn't look like a cartoon next to Griffs

ZygoUgo wrote:

[...] designing some crazy space castles [...]

Easter Island heads ... massive Easter Island heads in space, with docking posts in the mouths.

Disembodied wrote:

Easter Island heads ... massive Easter Island heads in space, with docking posts in the mouths.

LOL! That would be awesome

@ZygoUgo: So I'll wait without holding my breath

Not far off.. I ended up with multiple designs with different faces (invented planetary creatures), and towers all over the place, and plasma turrets that look like eyes for, well, the eyes. Influences by russian designs and colours, I ultimately wanted to make partially modular Russian, Asian and English/Germanic style variants.
It's all way beyond me as such but it's fun coming up with ideas, perhaps in the future if I manage to make modular rock hermits.. yet...

Rather than make a whole 3D model, another option might be to square off one plane of the asteroid and add a bas-relief carving around the dock port - like the "mouth of truth" from Venice:

or the (much older, and much flatter) one from Rome:

That was indeed my idea, however it turned out that modelling bas-relief was just as tricky as full 3D.
I'll see if things change now I'm going to be using Sketchup as my starting point, at least that way I can pick away at something without me screwing it up.
I attempted the bas-relief style idea on the coin I made for escort contracts, but it ended up looking like a cross between some bobbly toad and a mashed potato accident, hence the vector 2D head instead.
The heads I designed had the docking bay set back inside the mouths so that you had to fly between huge pointed teeth first.
I was also going to add an approach avenue of matching style sentinal statues that would turn to look at you, and shoot lasers from their eyes if needs be, all very Terry Gilliam, give me ten years

EDIT: Come to think of it couldn't I make the sentinels as models for plasma turrets, then locate the firing point from their gaping mouths? Is that possible?

EDIT: Sorry Disembodied, I can come across as very rude sometimes even though I really don't mean it that way. Yes that's perfect, we obviously think alike I've been pondering this for over a year now but haven't found a way to do it without messing about in Blender in a way that I just don't enjoy. Hopefully Sketchup will offer me a lighter more enjoyable interface to mess about with.

ZygoUgo wrote:

EDIT: Come to think of it couldn't I make the sentinels as models for plasma turrets, then locate the firing point from their gaping mouths? Is that possible?

Quite possible: just bear in mind that plasma turrets have a full 180 degree hemisphere firing arc, and are not intelligent enough to check if anything is between them and their target, including other bits of their own ship, so be careful with the positioning.

ZygoUgo wrote:

[...] all very Terry Gilliam [...]

Sounds good to me! Thinking of Gilliam - specifically, the dream sequences in Brazil - I just did a quick search for 3D models of samurai masks (also, they have big wide mouths), and found this page, which might be of interest:
http://web.cfa.arizona.edu/art437a/schedule.php

Under "Week 8" there's a section for making a mask, with some resource files and a (quote long and detailed) tutorial. I think it's for Autodesk Maya, but the principles might be useful for other software too ... and of course the good thing about carving an asteroid is that it doesn't have to be incredibly detailed: the rougher, the better.

Well I still haven't got round to doing anything more than ropey sketches of space castles, but at least I was being distracted by finishing off my nebulas..
New version (V.1.3)..
http://www.mediafire.com/download/t67ul ... .3.oxp.zip
Here's some piccies showing off examples of the increased detail and look it gives, this is using 30 real nebulea, 39 hand painted from scratch, and 7 real then painted over..





Over time I am very likely to add more hand-painted nebulea as I've developed my own wee method for it that doesn't take too long, enjoy!

EDIT: Thankyou for including me in the newbie OXP's list!

Those look just absolutely gorgeous! Well done!

I agree, these look really great! nice work

Thanks guys I've spent a lot of time trying to 'optimise' this so it's good to hear, I'm likely to add more variants over time and in that stage also shrink all the PNG's for download's sake.
I wanted to rid the last version of lone single nebula's that were obviously repeating, managed it to a certain extent I think. There's a couple of overpowering recurring shapes that I've noticed since that I'll sort for a future update.
Could I also ask that this OXP be added to the main list as a finished OXP, along with retro start-up and mine and Keeper's version of escort contracts? Thanks to anyone if you can!

Zygoroids is still listed as a WIP.. Do you consider it finished also?

Hi Dizi Thanks for asking, I don't really consider it finished as such but thinking about it functionally it is, so it may as well be listed as such. I really should get round to adding some more variants some point
Thanks for taking a look!
WIPs would be ZygoTraffic as I was intending to use it to get a better grip of scripting & was intending to add some features to it, ZygoBuoy also as I never got round to addressing the loss of flashers when the buoy is destroyed and replaced.

The Zygoroids look great in-game - but more variants would be cool.