Oolite Bulletins

Hi guys, I have been searching for a ship in the 75T range and nothing really took my fancy. so being the Brave soul (idiot) that i am ,i figured that i would try my hand at my own ship after all " how hard can it be?" /quote Jeremy Clarkson.

easiest thing to do would be to edit a cobra to have the cargo space i desired, but after considerable thinking it seemed like cheating. The next thing you know i would increase the recharge rate and the laser cooldown rate and the speed.... nope. my as well just give my self millions of credit and spoil the game for good.

so i decided that i will have to embrace the Dark Side of OPX's , besides i heard a rumour there are cookies over here.......

Well as you can guess from the title i went looking for a suitable ship to model. I loved this show as a kid so when i looked at the show again and the models for the ship it seemed to me that the pod in the frame would easlily carry 75T . the cargo pod looks about the size of 2 shipping containers which hold approx 30T each. so in my mind thats close enough to say its a 75T ship with no cargo extension available.

The plan is to have forward firing lasermount ,shields,shield booster available ,upgrade to military laser,naval power military shields........i think 4 missile spots ecm of course. As for speed i think around cobra speed is fair, the model has 4 large engines which should compensate for the extra weight.....

i will attach some pictures soon.

i have a mammoth task ahead of me. i am learning how to use Wings 3D, i tried Blender but the current version didnt setup like the tutorial so i gave up as too hard. watched a few Wings tuts on you tube and im getting better(not really). Then there is all the rest to learn........

EDIT 2/10/2016... thats 2nd of October 2016

here are links to the latest model information.

https://app.box.com/s/u7fxzdzboduy1mhorbzkvrp1rgkrzmaj A fighter i was starting.

https://app.box.com/s/cjzdfb80azym7yd0qiu2e4oh6dxg125o Mulga

https://app.box.com/s/wk8i2shk4sry7scjeq2hj4ogl95qn77i Oogle/Eagle transporter

some pic to show what the ship looks like









now i know i am going to have to way simplify this, its way too fiddly to model but if the textures just hint at the cages i will be more than happy.
Remember this isnt meant to be an exact replica just a look of the Eagle.

The Eagle Transporter from Space: 1999 has always been one of my favourite ships in SF... it's be great to see something like it flying in Oolite.

Best of luck! Will look forward to seeing how you get on.

For some reason the first thing that popped into my mind when looking at those plans was "It would be really entertaining to see someone scrape one or two of those pods off in a bad docking!"

If you can, it would be really neat to see it both with and without cargo-pod, too.

Mammoth task indeed, Spud. My first model had less than 10 faces. But you may be better at 3D modeling than I ever was.

In case you discover it's beyond your current skill there are other possibilities. You could import one of the core models, say the Python, into Wings3D and do a little makeover on it. Send me a PM if this interests you. I have plenty of experience importing, exporting, and general tweaking of models in Wings3D.

Will watch this thread will interest, good luck with this spud42

CaptSolo wrote:

Mammoth task indeed, Spud. My first model had less than 10 faces. But you may be better at 3D modeling than I ever was.

In case you discover it's beyond your current skill there are other possibilities. You could import one of the core models, say the Python, into Wings3D and do a little makeover on it. Send me a PM if this interests you. I have plenty of experience importing, exporting, and general tweaking of models in Wings3D.

skills? yeah nope... this will be my first try. i already have a 3DS model but it is probably way too complex for oolite....
according to wings that model has 60 objects,49503 faces,103175 edges and 56694 vertices. my mistaken idea was to simplify this model but that would be an almost impossible task. so i will make a simple box model to give the impression of an eagle, after all we are not in the same universe.

Diziet Sma suggested pick a unique name as there are already a couple of models called eagle in the list. so.... what do you think about

Oogle ???

just for laughs i will link to my pitiful models as soon as i can figure out how...lol

ok have a laugh at this... dimensions are all wrong of course , i found out how to do sizes after i did this.......

https://app.box.com/s/zqi16az3smouhw225kiy

spud42 wrote:

according to wings that model has 60 objects,49503 faces,103175 edges and 56694 vertices.

At maximum detail level, the planet has 20480 faces, 30720 edges, and 12288 vertices. You might well find that it worked, if you've got a modern PC/GPU - I would advise merging it to a single object, though.

It's probably a little big for general use, though, yes.

cim wrote:

spud42 wrote:

according to wings that model has 60 objects,49503 faces,103175 edges and 56694 vertices.

At maximum detail level, the planet has 20480 faces, 30720 edges, and 12288 vertices. You might well find that it worked, if you've got a modern PC/GPU - I would advise merging it to a single object, though.

It's probably a little big for general use, though, yes.

i never intended to use it as it was.. far too complex.....

can i ask a noob question?
is there any difference in the models ie how they look with and without cargo bay expansion? would it be possible to have two models and only use the one ? i mean use a basic model then when/if you buy a cargo expansion use the second model? just an idea cause i have very long way to go on the basic model first.

off for more Wings 3D tutorials.. for the command module i need to truncate a cone and only use the part i cut off then duplicate it ,rotate 180 and join to the original..... a normal cone as i put on the front of the test model is pathetic...

spud42 wrote:

can i ask a noob question?

Always..

spud42 wrote:

is there any difference in the models ie how they look with and without cargo bay expansion? would it be possible to have two models and only use the one ? i mean use a basic model then when/if you buy a cargo expansion use the second model? just an idea cause i have very long way to go on the basic model first

As a rule, no, most of the time the cargo bay expansion is considered to be internal, the handwavium used is that it's achieved by rearranging and/or making better use of the internal space, etc.

That's by no means a hard and fast rule, though, and your idea is a good one, although since a bare-bones Eagle is just a cockpit and engines held together by a frame, a better idea might be two different sized cargo pods.

If you want to see an example of a ship that has both "with" and "without" cargo-pod versions, take a look at Paradox's D.T.T. Atlas.

Diziet Sma wrote:

spud42 wrote:

can i ask a noob question?

Always..

spud42 wrote:

is there any difference in the models ie how they look with and without cargo bay expansion? would it be possible to have two models and only use the one ? i mean use a basic model then when/if you buy a cargo expansion use the second model? just an idea cause i have very long way to go on the basic model first

As a rule, no, most of the time the cargo bay expansion is considered to be internal, the handwavium used is that it's achieved by rearranging and/or making better use of the internal space, etc.

That's by no means a hard and fast rule, though, and your idea is a good one, although since a bare-bones Eagle is just a cockpit and engines held together by a frame, a better idea might be two different sized cargo pods.

If you want to see an example of a ship that has both "with" and "without" cargo-pod versions, take a look at Paradox's D.T.T. Atlas.

awesome ship. basically thats what i meant the middle cargo pod on the eagle is exchangeable for quite a few different roles. cargo, passenger, science pods then there are the radio active cargo sling models. in later seasons there were a wider cargo pod and one with triangular extension on each side........

but i think i will construct the cargo pod out of Handwavium. Due to the cost of this precious substance only the sides will be modified enabling an extra 15 T of cargo.

I think the Tardis must be made out of this... damn rich those time lords....

on my research i found a reference to a payload capacity of 500,000 Kgs which is 50 Tonnes so with extension of 15T i will be happy and close to realistic... well as close as you can be in a scifi tv show... lol

Hey I was messing around with your model this morning, cut away the cargo bay area and modified the CM a bit. If you want to take a look here you go,

eagle1.4

Stormrider wrote:

Hey I was messing around with your model this morning, cut away the cargo bay area and modified the CM a bit. If you want to take a look here you go,

eagle1.4

cheers will have a look asap...
have been planning all day today. printing out the plans etc i have found online and taking into account the feet/meter paradox... it seems that the prevailing measurement in the ooniverse is the Feeter . lol

so i have been measuring and guessing and simplifying , just trying to get the look and proportions close. so in oolite terms for wings 3D it will be 102 M long 41 M across the landing pods...
i have to take a trip in the real universe now.. im out of Tea and milk....cant model with out Tea....
will try to make an updated model of at least the engineering module cargo pod and the service module with the 4 landing pods in "correct " scale later this afternoon/tonight its $pm in Aust now......

ok here is the latest partial model. thanks to Stormrider for the command module. i was going to have a heck of a time working out how to get that shape...
i have scaled it up to fit my new model and had to tweak the height and width a bit but i think it looks ok so far.

https://app.box.com/s/lvu7icpo8i2m9tq3fryahere is a link to this WIP....

maybe its just me but i had a heck of a time getting the slope on the cargo pod right. bevel is ok but it is only at 45 deg.... why you cant specify an offset bevel sucks....
then i tried to cut it off with a plane.. no go ... then i tried to collapse it.... nope . then youtube for not very helpful tutorials... they are either at the very basics or jump to more complicated stuff there doesn't seem to be that intermediate step. the manual is dry reading and kind of assumes you already know what the terms mean..so i figured it's only a model what damage can i do so i tried lots of stuff none did what i thought or behaved consistently.

finally it was a simple thing. just move the edge.... pick an axis,press tab specify how far to move it then hey presto....

now for dinner and to tackle those landing pods.....

and did i say thanks Stormrider? i mean i t thanks.. i will be stealing your engines next...

spud42 wrote:

so i figured it's only a model what damage can i do

So long as you keep some backups around so you can roll back to what you had before, it's all good..