Ship Design - Barracuda Long Range Tug

[pbar1469]

Hi nozmajner.

Again, thanks for that.

This is what I've updated and why:

- Engine nozzles update to match Lunar Shuttle. Indeed they even look better!
- Hole around the retro thruster. I forgot to update that one when I angled the front of the nacelle, that's why it look so weird. Done.
- Door frame indeed looked weird. Recessed it a bit.
- Antennas and area at the top. While I still like the idea of having the antennas, I agree that it looks better (and closer to the Lunar Shuttle), if that area was covered. So I went with a compromise. I'll cover that open area, but the closed area behind it is now open, which allows to place the antennas, looks better in terms of Haber design, and also get's rid of those two tri that covered that area, they were bugging me. What do you think? However, I now have no place to put a Laser mount. Where do you suggest it could be placed?
- Added more headlights and expanded the "harpoon" front area.
- Regarding the docking collar. Placing it under the ship in the middle of the magnetic ring would be cool, but in terms of docking to other ships might be complicated as the gear would probably interfere with the other ship's frame... Unless the docking collar extends out?...
Instead I've added two moveable plates, one on the "wing" that recesses onto the ship, revealing a hole, and another one with steps that also moves outwards to line up with the top steps, therefore allowing easy access for the crew.



- Added heat sinks to both the engines and the Hyperspace module
- Moved the docking collar a bit more inward, to allow for the HS module placement



Regarding the RCS at the back, which ones specifically do you mean?

Here is the new blend:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6f1KA ... sp=sharing

Also, here is a quick diagram of how the internal space works out:



Green - Flight Deck and Living area. Kind of open space
Yellow - Fuel compartments. The top one will be removed to expand the living area for the player usable design
Light Blue - Docking collar access, to both the living area and the cargo bay
Dark Blue - Cargo bay
Pink - Hyperspace module
Red - Energy banks and Magnetic gear assembly


Cheers!!

[nozmajner]

Nice.
- That compromise with the antennas on the back looks good in my opinion.
- The door frame still look a bit odd. Could you try recessing it into the hull, so we can compare?
- I'd put the gun mount on the nose somewhere, somewhat like the Sinonatrixs way. Even with some asymmetry.
- I usually use one time more rcs thrusters, like if I had a box, and all 8 corners have thre thrusters. The lunar shuttle for example has them on the top and on the bottom, both for the nose and the tail.
- docking collar on the bottom: yeah that makes sense that it's too deep under the clamp. I think the collars should have a bit of extension capability.
- the docking collar on the top feels a bit odd moved forward in my opinion. It looked more integral the older way. It does make sense with the internal layout you made. Also we don't have any set size for the hyperdrive yet actually. Or shape. Maybe we should start thinking about that too.
- what if you rotatenthat collar to line up with the surface it intersects right now? Maybe even move it a bit more forward, and you can connect it right to the living area, and you could move the fuel storage backwards.

You are marching forward at quite a pace with this ship. :) Good work so far.

[pbar1469]

Hi again!

Thanks for your support nozmajner!
Can't stop now, it's like an addiction!

So here is what I've done for this version:



- EVA door is now recessed.
- Moved "harpoon"/cargo scoop doors to the bottom of the nose, in order to allow it to connect to the cargo bay. It is now a full fledged Cargo scoop, no more "harpoon".
- Moved and rotated the docking collar.




- Added extra RCS on the top back (2 more each side)
- Cargo bay door now recessed.
- Added two access panels to the engines, for maintenance purposes.
- Added an access panel to the Hyperspace module.
- Added a view port on the top living area, Potentially the upper living area could come installed with two passenger berths.
- Added hand rails to the sides of the cargo doors.
- Filled the gap on the sides of the cargo bay, looks better (compare with image in my previous post).
- Added a gun mount in the starboard sensor area. Just to see how it looks...

With all this, some new questions came to mind:

- Should there be a fixed radius size for docking collars? To make them all "compatible"?
- How to calculate mass for a given ship? I'm going with the basic conversion from cubic meters to Tons. Is there a better way?
- Like the thruster empty objects, is there one for cannons?

Here is the .blend:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6f1KA ... sp=sharing

As for the areas, I've refined them a bit, taking into account that the harpoon and the top fuel tank no longer exist:

Docking collar and Energy Banks+Gear assembly:



Fuel Tanks (3) plus Cargo bay and connection to Cargo Scoop:



Living Area and Hyperspace Module:



Cheers!!

[nozmajner]

Can't stop now, it's like an addiction!

Good :)

- Yes, the docking collars need some additional standardization. I aim for it, but sometimes I forget about properly measuring it other then eyeballing it. Your collar is about the size of the Lunar Shuttle's, which is about compatible with the Kanara for example. Pumpkinseed and Mola also has similar collars.

The Malabar has some bigger collars, but the ship itself is also quite bigger. Which brings me to the thought I had, that there should be at least two or three standard size, as in we currently have a light-medium-heavy classification.
Here's the comparison I did a while back in this issue about external docking.
- I think the EVA door looks better this way, feels more like if it's a part of the ship, not an afterthought.
- I think you should not overdo the harpoon until we have some more intricate way to define external weapon mounts (turrets mostly.) This one looks like a minigun.
There are tags for externally connected cannons, but none of the current ships use it, because it's a very rudimentary system. Also there are tags fot the forward and rear firing guns, defining the direction and place of the nozzle. Our wiki has them listed.
- I like the access panels for various parts. maybe the ones on the nacelles could use some "padding" where they meet with the heatsink area.
- For hull mass I usually use the volume of the ship, I found a handy chart about some existing crafts densities. I use them to "eyeball it"
Also be aware that Blender's volume calculator can give bad results when the mesh is not watertight (has holes or inside edges, aka non-manifold), and usually overestimates the volume. If you build a nice tight collision mesh for the ship, then that could be used for vol calculation for example.

[pbar1469]

Hi again.

Couldn't be as fast as I wanted for a reply, but here it is, finally.

- Redid the weapon so it now is mounted on the nose, just a simple laser cannon.
- Access panels now have some padding as per suggestion.
- Added two more RCS at the bottom.
- Added the "thruster" and "thruster_linear" tags. Hope they are correct.
- Added all camera tags.
- Added gun tag.
- Added landing tag.
- Created the collision mesh.

If you have the time, I would really appreciate you could validate the tags and the collision mesh.

I don't know what is your opinion on this nozmajner, but do you think the design is ok to move onto the UV part?

Thanks so much.

Here is the ship:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6f1KA ... sp=sharing

And here is the collision:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6f1KA ... sp=sharing

[nozmajner]

Yes, it looks good and ready for UV-ing. :) Wow, it's always fun to see a ship maturing during it's development.

- I think the weapon looks much better this way.
- Most of the tags look good. The rear camera one is upside down, and camera_up should be camera_top. And the landing tag is very slightly lower than the gear/magnetclamp. Also a thruster tag on the front is a bit mispaced relative to the nozzle. (viewed form the right).
- I have a strange feeling about the engine nozzles, they seem to be a bit thinner than I remembered. But they most likey work this way, when they get their textures, so no problem. And if they happen to not work, it's trivial to fix them later anyway.
- The collision mesh could be way tighter. It can be quite from-fitting for most part. It doesn't need to be UV-ed, so it won't stall that anyway. Why it's in another .blend file? You can put them on another layer with the M key in object mode. Makes organizing, and even modeling it easier.

The layer convention I usually use with ship models:
- 1. High LOD
- 2. Medium LOD
- 3. Low LOD (if I make one)
- 4. Tags and decals
- 5. Collision mesh
- 6-15. spare layers, mesh backups and reference objects, like a little guy, or other ships for comparison.
- 16-19. stuffs for rendering, like extra lamps, ground planes, etc
- 20. Camera and basic lamp setup.

[pbar1469]

Ok, all fixed.
New collision mesh, layer 5, tight as can be! :-)

Starting with the UV, but will have to look into your presentation again!
Any other good UV tutorials I should watch?

Also, given that the ship is only about 10K tri's, does it make sense to create a low LOD model?

Thanks!

[nozmajner]

Nice! Don't really know any UV tutorials, I learned the bulk of it a long ago, mostly on my own. Blendercookie should have one among the Blender basics series.
I usually imagine it as if it's a papercraft model I need to cut up and flatten. Your modl is blocky enough, you could even make a model out of it using the unwraped layout. (But that needs a lot of additional work. I once tried it with the Amphiesma)

10k tris definitely needs at least one LOD. But it's easier to do it after the unwraping.

[pbar1469]

Hi all.

These last few weeks have been a bit of a mess for me in terms of shifts (I am a Ground Crew dude at an airport), so I haven't been able to do some UV on the tug yet.

Next week will be much better, so I'll try to get something rolling...
One question btw, I have applied the mirror modifier in order to do the full UV for the entire complete mesh. Was that a good idea? Or could I have done the UV with the mirror still there?

[nozmajner]

No need to apply the mirror. There's a mirror UV option in the modifier. U is for horizontal, V is for vertical. It will mirror the whole layout along the image center on the selected axis. So you just need to enable it, then do the layout on one side of the UV space. Makes life a lot easier.

(Airport ground crew? I might have questions about that. :) For an sf animation project of mine I want to research the behind the scenes stuff for airports.)