Family time

 I've had a few days away from Blender. Time with the family. Good times!

Before all that started, I created a quick terrain. Added some composite effects.

Dawn mist

Wild idea: planets orbiting a star in a volumetric nebula

I'm toying with various ideas, but I don't feel a strong drive to pursue a particular direction.

Maybe...

• More terrain stuff with True-Terrain 5
• A Traveller starship
• Orbital Elements Luna settlement
• Something I haven't thought of yet...

Sea fort test

Escape Island

 

World creator terrain sculpt -> True-Terrain 5/True-Sky -> GeoScatter

I'm getting a bit better with scattering. This isn't finished. I more readily spot where natural terrain scatter sits on the wrong side of random or unnatural.

I also recognise that you need to scatter in layers because no single scatter pattern will look quite natural.

Finally, I now see how you need to be economical. More objects in a single scatter pass might be called for, but as you need multiple layers of scatters, it's best to work with as few objects as possible to get the desired result. Ideally, you can bolster your scatters when you have all the layers in place and know how much resource headroom you have left. 

The little stone building is from PBG2 (Procedural Building Generator 2).  I've forgotten how to use the add-on, getting wonky results. I had better go and check if it's fully compatible with Blender 4.2. Most likely, I'm just not using it correctly...

Once I'm happy with the rocks and pebbles, I'll add a small boat to the beach.

Shift Carrier

I got positive feedback from the ship's design and book author, Charles E. Gannon. Some elements don't match up with his thinking, so I'll be doing some reworking soon. I'm happy to! He especially wants to see the Hab module arms unfold, as this function hasn't been visualised before. I guess I will be completing my studies in Blender's Rigging-Fu.

Shift Carrier Commonwealth. Unfolding in a video soon.

Shift Carrier update - TEST TWO!

 I made a test video this morning while waiting for the boys to get up. It's rough around the edges and a bit rough in the spaces between the edges. The lighting is too flat. Some areas look bad in close-up. There are missing bits, one audio and one transition glitch.  I'll declare this as a "proof of concept," so I'll go back and refine, polish, restage, re-title, re-time—all that stuff.

My misspent youth

 
It's rare that an idea for a render pops into my head that's so strong that I drop everything and go off and do it. The thought process was as follows. "Hmm, arcade machines are a good, easy subject for a Blender scene. Boy, I wasted so many ten pences in my childhood! What if my favourite roleplaying games had tie-in arcade machines? Ping!!!

Simple start

One isn't enough. Some small variations

Fun referencing classic box/cover art

Environment

Misspent Youth

Terrains

 I'm feeling a bit better today. Although I have a backlog of housework, I had some productive time with True-Terrain 5.

Diorama

New feature! Give terrains that " model mounted on a wooded board" look.

True-Terrain's co-creator approved and noted that you can adjust the terrain's edge textures in the material parameters.

While doing some tidying up I rendered a quick animation:

Later in the evening...

Lakehouse

I cobbled together a lake house in about an hour.

A work-in-progress scene featuring this dreamy little holiday property.

Wider 

Back to the Boulton...and now the Gordon-Class sloop

As I'm at a bit of a creative impasse for the Orbital Elements/Aliens survey station, I decided to blow the dust off the Terran Republic Cruise. I intended to tidy up the ordnance, tweak things here and there, and then build its sub-craft, the Gordon-class sloop. 

The tidy-up

Window glow is back

A bit more order to the top-mounted drones and stuff

On to the Gordon-class

First bash! 

It's a joyous thing when you start a model, work on it, and then suddenly finish it. What, no third restart, no crisis of faith on the third day? Maybe this is because it's a small boat, not a critical design. It's described plainly as an "arrowhead," "streamlined," and therefore, a pretty basic shape to work upon.

Finishing point

Starting last night, I worked for about an hour on the basic form. I started work again at about lunchtime, with this level of completion reached after a couple more hours.

Put it into place...

I need to fix some things to animate this scene. If you look closely at the Bouton with its spin habitats deployed, there are two turret hardpoints where there should only be one. It looks like one of the turret hardpoints was pegged to the spin habitat's hub as a mirror point because as the spin arms were rotated, the turret also moved. If I try to animate that spin habitat, then the turret will fly around the ship like a bee.

Viewport

Still a bit meh.

 

World Creator terrain with some scatter and the True Terrain 5 treatment.

Ship project.

I've sketched out another ship inspired by the Alien/Aliens franchise. It needs a lot more work. You must nail Alien ship designs because the original ships are so darn good. 

I could jump back and do something else in the Terran Republic universe. As a break from 3D work, I recreated the map in the first novel.

I now remember that an expanded ma appears in Book for. I'll do it at some point.

A few days of feeling meh

 I caught a cold from one of my children. It's not a dreadful cold, just one that knocks you a step back and robs you of any chance of an A-game in anything. 

I've become a bit unfocused, but I've done some playing around and learning. I may have started a new ship project when what I should be doing is finishing off existing projects to a higher standard.

I should go back to the Boulton and redress the ordnance. Build the Gordon-Class sub-ship. I should do another tidy-up of the Shift Carrier. 

A space truck...

I'm unsure where this fits in, but I like it. I will finish it.

Space...

I did some practice space scenes. I felt like I'd taken a step back with the lens flare. I may need to actually read the documentation as it looks excessive to me now.

Physical Addons renamed PCO as Planets. Makes sense.

World Creator released a brilliant update. There are some incredible new filters. One, called scattering, actually embeds scatters into the terrain geometry. This looks like it could be great, although I notice that when you carry the geometry into Blender, it looks a bit less effective because it needs massive polygon density to look its best.

Traditional scatters with Geo-Scatter

Moon Again

Shift-Carrier first pass completed

 

I tripped myself up badly when I used instances for the passenger pods (hidden under those bullet-shaped bonnets) on the right-hand side. Moving the ship model causes the instances to move independently. They float off in a random direction. I'll learn how to use instances properly before using them again.

Test Video!

Shift-Carrier Commonwealth - Cargo containers

 

I got part of the way into the cargo section. Spy those little crates attached ahead of the big water balloon thing. I'd have to a lot further except I had house work and shopping to focus on today.

Kraken of space...

Nearly done.

Once this initial build is complete, there will likely be a lot of optimisation and instancing. The render takes a long time to start, almost certainly because of the massive polygon count.

Shift-Carrier Commonwealth

 The Commonwealth is progressing...

The Water Rings pack a serious polygon count, I can tell you...

Apparently, I got the length wrong. It's going to be another 400m in total length...

New project, new True-Terrain 5 release

 We got another TT5 release. This looks like it's getting close to a final version heading into general availability. There are now a lot of really lovely presets that make getting great results as easy as a couple of clicks. Previously, you needed a maths degree and several days of experience experimenting with noise filters.

Quick Luna terrain test

True-Terrain 5, with its powerful new water system

New Project

So, the Boulton-class ship is waiting for a final cleanup. Instead of working on it's sub-craft, the Gordon-class Sloop, I decided to go big, very big.

I will tackle the giant interstellar ships from the Terran Republic novel: the Shift Carriers.

Illustrated below is official art by Ian Stead that featured in the second edition of the first novel, Fire with Fire

Ian did a great job of producing tight, easily understood schematic drawings and illustrations. I'll approach it differently, with a bit more artistic freedom and make the ship way -- way -- way more detailed. Also cinematic.  I don't recall doing a ship that's 2000m long. 

The design follows some of the hard SF theories used in the Avatar films.  Power comes from matter, annihilation for power and Fusion. The ships are equipped with big radiators or heat sinks and use suspended animation to keep passengers frozen during relatively long transits.

Art by Ian Stead (https://www.artstation.com/biomassart)

Main truss segment

This truss/cage forms the spine of the ship. Two transit tubes, each 3 m in diameter, are included.

The central truss runs the whole length of the 2000m-long ship. Here's one side of the main drive block. This section is about 500m, so about a quarter of the overall length.

Drive block

Engines and pipework

I need to place the power plant at the forward end. It stores anti-matter, which requires zero-failure magnetic confinement, or the ship instantly turns into hot particles.

Boulton holding station...

 I've reached a culmination point with the Boulton. I'll go back and fix and improve things at some point, but for now, it's kind of done.

I will build the two Gordon-class Sloops that will attach to the back of the Boulton. I may also make a quick video.

Folded away

Folded out

Flare!!!

Boulton's on patrol

Commonwealth Ship Moran